I've had the phone cemented to my head all morning. I've been calling bookstores to see if they'll carry my Fourth of July story. It's been a lot of fun and they've all been great, but now I have to get a bunch of promotional packets sent off, so I haven't even run yet. I'm supposed to do to runs today. I'm thinking they're going to be back to back when it's ninety degrees outside!

Tomorrow is our upper body-circuit.

Warm-up - 5-20 minutes
Seated Row - 2 minutes
Lat Pulldown - 2 minutes
Cardio - 4 minutes
Bench or chest press - 2 minutes
Overhead Press - 2 minutes
Cardio - 4 minutes
Twisting Bicep Curl - 2 minutes
Incline Bicep Curl - 2 minutes
Cardio -4 minutes
Tricep Dip - 2 minutes
Tricep Pulldown or kickback - 2 minutes
Cardio - 4 minutes
Plank and Side Plank - as long as you can hold them
Crunches on ball or floor - 20 reps
Cool-down and stretch

I did time to switch things up a bit. Since you're not doing a predetermined number make sure you keep moving, but go slow and controlled. If you want to adjust the minutes up or down a bit for time constraints or to push a bit harder, that is fine by me.
Notice also I gave you a bit of abs. Please make sure you hold your abs in tight when you do those exercises so you don't build them protruding out.
If you need exercise descriptions - go to my website - www.camichecketts.com. It's under the links page - strength training guide.

Have a great day.

We started our summer field trips today. We rode on an CVTD bus from Smithfield to Richmond, played at the park, ate at Pizza Villa. Everything was great and fun, until we missed the bus coming home and found out the next bus would be there in an hour and a half. Field trip gone bad. Our cute friend, Deanna Erickson, saved the day. She called up the transit office and asked them to send a special bus for the six moms stranded with twenty wild and worn out kiddos. So we got home safe and we might take the bus field trip off the rotation next year!

Tomorrow is our interval cardio day. You all know how it goes. Warm-up, then do one minute high intensity, followed by three minutes of easy intensity, repeat the cycle 4-8 times, then cool down.

I hope you're all doing good on your goals this week. I only had two e-mails for entries last week, so the chances are good you could win if you kick it in gear! You're really going to want your own copy of The Fourth of July Here's your chance to win it!
Any questions about the contest, e-mail me camichecketts@yahoo.com.

Do you all spend most of Monday cleaning and doing laundry? No wonder everybody dreads Mondays so much.

I won the eating/exercise competition with my friends last week so everybody is coming to my house to do windows. Isn't that awesome? Some of my windows haven't been cleaned since I moved into my house! Don't tell my friends. They've got a big job ahead of them.

I hope you all had a great weekend. We went golfing at Birch Creek. It was such a fun date. We played a scramble, so it didn't even matter when I hit my ball in places that it would never be retrieved.

Tomorrow is our upper body workout. I'm thinking after next week I'll change the workout schedule again. You should do that every eight weeks. You should try to vary your workout all the time. I try to do different exercises, different orders, different sets and reps, hopefully you don't get sick of it. It's hard though. How many ways can you do a bicep curl? You know?

Warm-up and cardio - 5 - 30 minutes
Seated Row - 3 sets of 12
Lat Pull-down - 3 sets of 12
Assisted Pullup - 15 reps
Cable Fly - 3 sets of 10 (You use the upper handles of a cable machine, holding one handle in each hand, you press arms together in front of you, keeping arms straight with just a slight bend to the elbow.) If you have a band you can do it with that, just wrap the band around your back and fly together in front. If you have weights, lie on a bench or step and do the fly. Wow, that was a long explanation for one stinking exercise.
Lateral Raise - 3 sets of 12
Bicep Curl - 3 sets of 12
Hammer Curl - 15 reps
Tricep Dip - 3 sets of 12
Tricep Pull-down or overhead extension - 15-18 reps
Cool-down and stretch

As always, if you need exercise descriptions, check my website - www.camichecketts.com. If you don't have much time or you get bored easily - just do one set of each exercise. Make sure you do all the exercises slow and controlled - no flinging of the weights, girls.

How are you all doing on the competition? If you haven't heard about it, we're setting goals for a week at a time - any health or fitness goal you want - If you make your goal, send me an e-mail - camichecketts@yahoo.com and I will enter your name in a drawing. I'll draw the end of June for a free copy of my inspirational suspense novel - The Fourth of July.
Hope to hear from all of you this week. Good luck.

My honey just bought me a bike and trailer. Now I can go on rides with my boys, instead running behind them with my jogging stroller and making them wait at every corner. Plus, think of all that money we're going to save on gas! I don't know if it'll ever equal the cost of the bike and trailer, but I'm sick of supporting the oil billionaires!

I ran twelve miles this morning, straight up Smithfield Canyon. It's not really steep, but still uphill. Now I'm trying to eat high quality food and keep moving so I can walk tomorrow.

Tomorrow is our rest day and my free day to eat treats. Hallelujiah! I'm going to eat ice cream and a bag of Ghirardelli chocolates that I've been saving. I'm going to be sick.

Monday we'll do mostly cardio and some lower body.
Warm-up and cardio - 20-60 minutes
Squat - to the center, then step wide and squat, back to center, then to the other side - 20 on each side
Clock Lunge - 6 total for each leg
Step-up - 2 sets of 15
Plie with a calf raise - 3 sets of 12
Hamstring Curl - 3 sets of 12
20 minutes more cardio (if you like)
Cool-down and stretch

I'm reading an article by Dr. Stanley Bass who has more letters and credentials behind his name than I have room to write! It's talking about the symptoms patients will face when they quit eating junk and fill their bodies with high quality food - depression, headaches, pain, colds, chills, etc. Sounds fun! But it makes a lot of sense that your body has to adjust and expel the low quality nutrients that were there before.

My thought on all of this is that it's better to take baby steps to eating good. I'm always trying to improve our diet, but I do it slowly. Mostly because it's hard mentally to make a drastic change. I really do get depressed when I think I can't eat anything I love ever again. I always have a free day once a week where I can eat chocolate, my mother-in-law's homemade rolls and ice cream. I just make sure I splurge on the foods I really love. It's not worth it for me to eat french fries because I don't even like them, but if that's your weakness - go for it. Just do it sparingly.

The next thought about baby steps is to choose one thing to improve on and then do it for a long time. I take six months to a year to adjust to something. For example, several years ago I gave up butter for the calorie-free spray butter - I love the spray butter now. Then I switched to only wheat bread, then I started adding tons more veggies to all our meals.
Don't think I eat perfect. I'm still trying to give up mayonnaise, peanut butter and chocolate. But I am great at rationalizing, peanut butter has a lot of good protein and fat in it and chocolate is my sanity. Maybe the mayo has to go next!

There's my mini-lecture for today. I hope you all have a great weekend and do some fun cardio tomorrow. I'm getting ready to run The Wasatch Back Relay race. It's a race with twelve people on a team. We run from Logan to Park City - through the mountains and valleys. It's really pretty and kind of nuts. We have three legs each and the race takes over 20 hours, so you don't sleep. One of the legs of the race goes straight up Avon Pass (7.5 miles straight uphill) and another goes up Ragnar (which I guess is an insane slope to run - I've never volunteered for that one!). Anyway, I need to go on a long run in the morning, hopefully a twelve-miler. We'll see how I do.