Sibling Rivalry

My brother, Mike, did HIIT training with me today! Man did that push me hard! Mike has always been the athlete in our family so yesterday when he said he would do training with me this morning, I will admit that I got a little lump in my throat. I knew that there was no way I would be able to keep up with him!

So I was up bright and early, got myself mentally prepared, took my Jack3D and got my game face on for him to arrive at 8:30 am! He was there at exactly 8:30 and he was ready to go. I was sooooo nervous!

So we started out on our 2 minute warm up before our first interval of sprints. Two minutes was up and we took off...of course he shot out like a canon and within 20 seconds he was out of sight. I thought at that rate he's be in Baltimore by the end of our training. :o)

After our first sprint, he walked in place (more like circles) waiting for his heart rate to come down and let me catch up. I caught up with him just in time for our next interval to begin. I was pleasantly surprised in myself when I was able to maintain a steady pace and keep him within visual. I was only about 20 yards behind him.

We continued the interval training for about 25 minutes. The "Hill of Hell" as I call it (its a hill with about a 70% incline) about killed him. Hills are definitely easy for people with shorter legs. I had the advantage being I'm about 7 inches shorter than him. After that hill, I was able to maintain pace with him and we hit it pretty hard for the remainder of the HIIT.

I noticed that I was making much MUCH better time on the course. Where I am normally around 20 minutes, we were approching at 17 minutes. That was pretty darn impressive to me! That meant that I was about 3 minutes faster than my last HIIT on this course. Mike was PUSHING me HARD! I was so proud that I had made up time and I was thankful that my competitive streak with my baby brother was pushing me to surpass my previous goals!

The last 2 minutes I could tell were getting hard on Mike. I challenged him to one more sprint and he lived up to it. He pushed me hard, yelling at me, "Don't let me beat you!" and in that sprint I thought I was going to puke! I was only about 5 yards behind him the whole time, pumping my arms and legs hard, feeling my shin splints and praying that finish line would move closer to me! We finished hard and then had a nice cool down walk home.

I am so thankful for a supportive family, people that push me to my limits and being able to laugh and compete with those that I love. Thanks, Mike for an awesome HIIT training today! See you next Sunday! I'm READY!