My July Adventures!

In the blink of an eye we’re past the halfway point of 2021! It’s wild how quickly this year has been flying by. I can’t say that there’s been exactly any particular adventures as it seems for myself to be a month that didn’t technically go so well on one side but still there’s some pretty fun stuff to share. Let’s just jump right in!

Staying Active Update

July 1st Walk 4.63km 50mins
July 1st Evening Walk 1.43km 18mins
July 3rd Walk 4.39km 48mins
July 10th Walk 1.42km 18mins
July 11th Walk 1.41km 18 mins
July 17th Pool Workout
July 18th Walk 1.45km 18mins
July 25th Pool Workout
July 31st Walk 4.75km 51mins

Not a whole lot to report back on staying active. I got plagued with pains and all sorts of fatigue during the month so as much as I tried to keep up with walking and staying active, I fell apart a little as the walks went a little shorter. I still tried to stay active but more doing pool workouts, which to be fair was one of my goals in last month’s staying active update for this month. Can’t say its a complete fail, right?

Gardening Update

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A post shared by Kim (@tranquildreams)

The abundant rain season in July has really done favors for the garden. Sure, we had a few really hot days but the good amount of rain meant everything’s growing pretty nice and harvests are coming in. Its been a few years since zucchini harvest has been any good but this year is looking nice. The new raised garden is doing great as well for the eggplants and we’ve harvested a few as well as the little cherry tomatoes which we have a rather sweet variety. Even the cucumbers are starting to do okay. We got one but there’s some more that are almost close to harvest as this post goes up.

The other big project was getting the front yard looking good as I’ve truly neglected it a lot. My mom had given me some plants from her garden and hoping to find the spot for it after I tidied up the front, we got to work and planted in the new plants (both front and back but didn’t take a closer picture of it) but also added in the mulch and bought a new hydrangea plant to create some symmetry in the front yard. The picture above only shows one portion of the front yard. The garden is doing really well. The next part is to get rid of the pesky vines at the back and added some more mulch to my bee garden and finally figuring out a bee bath probably. In time, it should be done.

2nd Dose of COVID-19 Vaccine

I got my 2nd dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at the tail end of July. While the first dose basically had no side effects other than arm pain, the second dose was pretty intense. Headache for 3 days and muscle pain for 2 days really hit after the first 24 hours passed. I affected productivity and life in general so I resorted to calming teas whenever I wasn’t at work and sleeping earlier since I try to stay away from painkillers in general.

Fantasia International Film Festival 2021

Like previous years, around this time is coverage for Fantasia Film Festival. This year is no different. You can expect reviews for Fantasia going up as soon as today. This year is the 25th edition and the film rundown is looking fantastic. I have a pretty ambitious schedule so fingers crossed that I can get the coverage done. I believe the virtual platform is geo-locked to Canada but if you are in Canada, you should give its extensive film schedule a look.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for the July adventures!
Not a whole lot of adventuring in general but things are getting done!

Hiking: La Boucle du Mont des Trois-Lacs (Brompton, QC)

After a few weeks of rain and heat wave, we finally managed to get out for another hiking trip. This time, we went back to the same area as the previous hike to do the other trail in Brompton part of the Les Sentiers de L’Estrie. You can see the previous hiking recap HERE.

Brompton: La Boucle du Mont des Trois-Lacs

This trail is a fairly decent length at 4.8 km. Although its ranked Easy, its still pretty much our second hike of the year in heavy humidity weather. Luckily, we did go fairly early so the heat hadn’t hit and it was mostly cloudy as it was getting ready to rain. The hike itself is easy although its a lot of constant steep elevation. A lot of the path is like above where its climbing up steep rocky paths. Its a nice challenge as a second hike and didn’t feel too long. There are three lookout points along the path.

The first lookout point was pretty rewarding as it marked a good part of the beginning which was almost all uphill and was quite exhausting as the warm-up stretch. The view is a bit obstructed but still, the lake is visible and while its hard to capture on the camera well, the view was pretty decent.

The second viewpoint was heading towards the peak at the turn. There’s a pretty intense section going towards this point as well. Its some narrow paths and such. The view is a bit lackluster as this one took a lot of moving along different rocks on the slop to catch this view. We were a bit worried that this was the peak and the view that we were going to have to deal with as it left us wondering where the three lakes were.

Of course, after another fairly exhausting trail around the mountain moving uphill, we get to this final lookout point at the second half of the trail with a roped off boundary to look out at this view with its three lakes. If you look far enough, there’s even a fourth lake in the far distance.

The trail itself is rather surprising that it is an Easy level trail since there was such constant uphill trek and a few steep areas to go up and down on. The path is however fairly straight forward. Its mostly a forest trail with just bushes, trees and shrubs and not a lot of flowers or colorful plants. Its mostly just greenery .

For us, we’re trying to hike closer to home so the Eastern Townships is a good spot for us. I’m not sure if we’ll be coming back to Brompton area for this network of hiking trails since there’s only one more trail here that we haven’t done. I’m thinking we’ll move onto another area for the next one but not sure which one yet.

My June Adventures!

In a blink of an eye, we’re at the end of June and summer is here. Weather’s been a bit nuts here with a crazy heat wave/drought and then the last few days has been raining and much more comfortable. A little update on the Montreal confinement situation or well, we’re pretty much deconfined at this point although still get cases everyday so you can decide how you feel about that situation. Of course, with this ease of situation, my work situation is getting back to pre-COVID normal soon, which I’m not too sure how I feel about it but I don’t make the call so I just have to follow through with it. Although, today’s announcement (I’m writing this the day before posting so I don’t know yet if its going to happen) is supposed to make wearing face masks mandatory on public transit so that’s definitely rather reassuring.

COVID-19 is part of our lives now for over 3 months now so it has to be addressed before we head into other things that has gone on this past month! Let’s check it out!

Nike Training Club – 4 Week Program

I’ve slacked off during the entire lockdown phase and really struggled to get back on track with working out. The weather is warming up and hiking is starting back up (as you will see later on) which also requires a little bit of outside training to make sure my muscles are strengthened and build a bit of endurance to do the harder trails so I’m getting back on track with another 4 week program on Nike Training Club to kick things off. This time is different from before as I’ve added in the running option.

As the month ends, I should be getting back. Thing is, the weather turned so nice that I ended up being the most motivated to go running as you can see above so I didn’t stick to the program a whole lot but at least it made me want to be more active in other ways like pool workouts and hiking and running while still adding one of the workouts from the program to get some weights or body weight exercises in. At this point, its more of a guideline than following the program and its in the final week.

Movies and Tea Podcast

As I’m getting a rhythm of getting our archive on Youtube for Movies and Tea on a weekly basis, if you  haven’t caught up with the first season of Movies and Tea, you can start catching the episodes every Monday. The general idea now is that while we get through Season 4, I’ll be updating the archive of Season 1 every week until we start up Season 5 and that will be uploaded when it goes live so that we’re not always behind. Currently updated to Season 1, Episode 5 with our big Resident Evil Franchise episode.

With that said, I’m not going to go share all the episodes of Movies and Tea posted on Youtube but here’s the latest one above so that you can go check it out and subscribe to our channel if you enjoy it!

Hiking: Mont Cathedrale (Carre) & Marais du Kingsbury

First hike done and the recap of the hike is already posted so you can check it out HERE.

Summer Game Fest

We might have lost E3 this year but Summer Game Fest is the next best thing with a bunch of conferences spanning over May to August. We’re a bit late to the party so missed out most of the May events but June included the Playstation 5 reveal and conference (Recap), EA Play Live (Recap) as well as PC Gaming Show 2020 and a new show called Future Games Show (Recap). We didn’t get around to doing the recap for PC Gaming Show and now its already weeks later so a bit late to do it however, you can check out our thoughts on the other shows. There was a bunch of other things like developer showcases which present the new Crash Bandicoot game titled Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for this June update!
I’ll share some garden updates next time. I just forgot to get all my pictures taken.

What have you been up to?

Hiking: Marais du Kingsbury & Mont Cathedrale

As Montreal starts reopening gradually (well, a lot of stuff is reopened at this point, except for a few things), the things we were looking forward to reopen the most is obviously the parks for hiking and such. Due to weather and the current situation, not all the parks are open but we did find quite a few to choose from. The husband decided that our best chance was to head further from the downtown area to the Eastern Townships to check out a trail part of Les Sentiers de L’Estrie. We’ve done a few other trails from that network before but this year, we’ve been thinking of getting the pass which would pretty much get back its worth if we do three more trails in the network and that sounds like a good deal (and doable, provided the reopening doesn’t launch a second wave of the pandemic).

First Stop: Kingsbury, Le Boucle de la Riviere

Kingsbury

The hiking plans didn’t quite go as we planned even if we did head out the time that we intended, early in the morning. Our first stop as planned was to go to Kingsbury and do a 7.2 km hike. However, the instructions weren’t too good and we soon realized 30 mins in that there was a sign saying that the suspension bridge had collapsed. This trail is pretty much a trail by the water and marshlands. Uncertain of whether there was a detour or not, we decided to go back to the car and head to the next location.

Collapsed suspension bridge

And we were off to the next location pretty much spontaneously. I suggested to go to the next hiking area in this network heading back the way we came so that at least we’ll start later on the actual trail for the day but lower the travel time back a little bit.

Second stop: Brompton – Le Mont Cathedrale

Things not going to plan was apparently the theme of our first hike as we had intended on doing another trail but got mislead to believe we were on the right trail when it wasn’t. Oh well..these things happen and we ended up doing a fairly decent intermediate level hike (not what we had planned since we’re obviously not in that great of shape with the lockdown and such). I’m not quite sure how long the trail actually was but it was quick elevation to Mont Cathedrale so it was rather tiring to do, plus the scene was really lovely.

If you look at the actual website, this trail is supposed to start at another parking location and then not only do the mountain but also a “Ruisseau Ely”, which we saw signs for but didn’t pursue it.

Overall, its a decent trail, in both cases. I’m going to say that this is one of the times where its less maintained than we’ve experienced before. I think its just the current times and the parks and the later than usual opening to not have addressed these things. We had a few hiccups in our plans but still, it was a decent few hours of hiking that we got out of it. Les Sentiers de l’Estrie has had a few places that we’ve done before like, Mont Chapman last year (that also had pretty confusing directions). That’s it for this hiking adventure! We’re looking up the next hike right now and will check in with the next one soon (hopefully).

 

What’s Up Week 17 & My Weekly Adventures: Its been a few days and I’m finally back!!

Welcome to the duo segment post of What’s Up and My Weekly Adventures!

Due to the lack of things going on and if you haven’t noticed, my unannounced hiatus for the past 4 days, its been rough and mostly just out of control on the work life personal side of things. I did give a warning last week but things just got more intense. Hence, to save everyone an overload of the same thing, I will do both segments together in this post. Lets start with Whats Up and move onto My Weekly Adventures!

READING

• Forever People (Review)

I finished up Forever People just in time for the blog tour so I will keep things brief here so you can see my thoughts over on the review. Overall, its a good story: good premise and compelling characters to say the least.

PLAYING

• The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

The husband and I finished up The Vanishing of Ethan Carter very soon after we started it. Its a pretty creative indie title with a lot of mystery and nice execution on gameplay and narration. Plus, the game sets itself in a visually stunning backdrop. I’ll be editing the playthrough after last week’s Rime. It’ll take a little while to get things back on track on my end.

WATCHING

NOTHING…absolutely nothing. I can tell you that I’m planning on catching up with all the Marvel movies in the next little while: Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp as well as all the other Pixar stuff in case it gets removed from Netflix at some point and get around to rewatching The Shape of Water for the next Movies and Tea episode.

BINGING

• My Daughter’s Boyfriend (女儿们的男朋友, Season 1)

Currently binging: The Brightest Star in the Sky, Put Your Head on My Shoulder, Z Nation (Season 1), Idol Producer, Rush to the Dead Summer (rewatch)

My Daughter’s Boyfriend is a 6 episode variety show which follows the daughters of 4 different famous fathers (actors and soccer player) and watch how they interact with their boyfriends over a few weeks time as they comment on various aspects on relationship and how their views and their daughters view on marriage, life and everything else changes. These shows usually can get very heartwarming and China has a lot of these variety shows from different angles and in the end, other than watching the relationships here whether its the love life or the father-daughter one, the main thing here is usually opening up the channel of the importance of communication and family and probably talk through some issues that everyone at one point or another might encounter in dealing with these different situations. Its 6 episodes and I thought it was really good. I’m not going to write about this show but it seems to already be greenlit for a second season so I’m looking forward to it.

As for the other shows, I’m pretty much watching the same things. Due to having a lot of overtime at home, I ended up rewatching Rush to the Dead Summer in the background while trying my best to stay on track with my two current favorite shows The Brightest Star in the Sky and Put Your Head on My Shoulder. I’ve been also semi-watching Z Nation with my husband but not completely focus although the show really doesn’t seem to have that much depth in Season 1 yet. The new thing this week is Idol Producer which I went back to watch to see how boy group Nine Percent started because a good few of them is now Nex7 which I think has some potential to do well and is the focus on Master in the House which I didn’t get a chance to catch up with this week but will get back to soon as well as Great Escape and such.

What have you been watching/reading/binging/playing?

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Suffice to say not a ton happened so I’m going to keep it short and sweet as its pretty much the upcoming post recaps and such that I’ll be talking about. A few upcoming plans and perhaps some seasonal segment revivials and all that great stuff. The few days off reminded me of how much I miss writing and editing and recording so I have a few things to also deal with and get back on track on all projects.

Restaurant Discovery: Mama Dumplings

Its been a crazy hunt looking for  a dumpling place not on the island of Montreal or more specifically Chinatown and by complete spontaneity, I drove by one  a week or two ago and since then have gone two times with my friend. I’ll have a post soon about it.

Movies & Tea Podcast: Crimson Peak

If you didn’t see the reblog last week, Movies and Tea has a new podcast episode for Guillermo Del Toro’s Crimson Peak. My first time viewing feelings back when it released and this rewatch definitely had some differences.

Easter Weekend

Easter weekend was probably a mistake thinking back now with all the overtime but I think it also charged me up a little. We didn’t really do a ton for Easter weekend and mostly just relaxed and took advantage of the relatively nice weather and took care of some chores like changing tires and you know, taxes. However, my husband and I did go for a little walk in a park and its nice because the park itself has a lot of workout stations so I’m planning out some way to incorporate cardio with these exercises to get into shape. Add some changes here and there and whatnot. Only 7 weeks until my best friend’s wedding and I’m living in constant fear that I won’t fit into the bridesmaids dress at the lack of exercise, especially after this work rush. We are still working out the workout routines and such but the big plan starts in a few days after I’ve recuperated some energy.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for this Weekly Adventures!
What have you been up to?

Hiking: Reserve Naturelle Montagnes Vertes

Its been something like over 2 months probably since we’ve gone out for a hike. It had to do with a lot of different reasons for both of us. It definitely wasn’t for the lack of desire, I can tell you that much. A part of it had to do with the extreme heat we had over the summer. When we had time it was either too hot or too busy (with events and other stuff). We’ve actually been doing a fair bit of research on hiking so we had a few place in mind when we wanted to go this past Sunday (aka yesterday, if you are reading day of release).

My husband found this Reserve Naturelle Montagnes Vertes via some friends on Instagram and told me about it. If you all don’t know, while nothing else is a big concern for us, the biggest one of them all is the road work galore going on everywhere in the city. Even my little town on the suburbs has roadwork. Its honestly a little annoying. However, this one headed away from the Montreal island and into the Eastern Townships area.

For some of you looking for a decent hike, let’s say, this location is pretty cool. From the moment you start entering the path heading to the natural reserve, its a fun time. We actually saw a deer on the way in. We stopped so that it could frolick back into the forest. Its was an impressive thing. We do a fair amount of road trips and deers aren’t exactly a rare creature in our forests but we’ve never actually seen one on the side of the road. Second reason this place is cool is because its less than two hours to get there by car plus there are three trails which pretty much level up in difficulty (I would guess) by length. The Decouverte (aka discovery) is more of a flat forest walk that passes by a marshland. We ended our trip diverging onto the Decouverte trail to pass by that one. However, we did the estimated 3.5 hour hike on the Etang trail which leads to a lake called Lac Fullerton. Its really nice there and you could see mooses swimming in the pond if you are lucky. We didn’t see anything but it was gorgeous. If you are feeling confident and are experienced, then you can do the 6 hour Sommets (Summit) trail. We obviously weren’t since over 2 months of not hiking makes us quite rusty. Plus, I was breaking in some new hiking shoes so not exactly feeling that ambitious either.

Here’s a few of the parts of the trail. I love it because it passes through a lot of water, little creeks and such.

This hiking trail is pretty good. One of our criteria for hiking is a quiet location where its not frequented a lot. This location literally is like a little stop station with maybe 4 car spots if everyone parks properly. Suffice to saw, we saw nothing other than insects and chipmunks and frogs and such. There were mostly the same type of flowers because those are things I take pictures of on hiking trails. The times for the hike are pretty accurate too. We took about 4 hours to walk it mostly because at one part, it gets a tad confusing and we doubled back to double check the trail and find where we had to go again. The second thing is how natural it is. This one has a really narrow path in a lot of spots to not interfere with the growth of the plants and such. Its why finding the track at times was hard because it has rules of how to respect the natural reserve and not disturb the environment there like not stepping into puddles and going off the path.

We absolutely loved this spot. It reminded us a lot of one of the trails in Saguenay Lac St. Jean where we went into a fairly deserted but challenging trail that we vowed to go back on day when we are in better shape to finish it and get to the top. We were 1 or 2 kms short the first time but due to time and lack of energy for the upward climb, we decided to head back. Hopefully we will get back next year or something for it. However, for this one, we are thinking of going back to do the Summit trail eventually however, as I was getting stuff together for this post, the part is entering into hunting season in a few days so will be closed. If you do plan on going, this summer, its best to check how their schedule is.

As for us, we’ll be heading out hiking again soon. We should have a few more hikes before winter arrives.

Workout Round-up: Week 9 &10

I’m going to be reasonable now and say that from now on, I might be changing this to biweekly. Weekly commitments are a little intense. Even biweekly sometimes gets a little crazy, mostly because as much as I want intense workout schedules, its actually proving to be more stressful than it being a healthy change in my life. So I’m doing mostly workouts on day offs from work. During the week, I tend to do a lot more walking and well, with Fantasia season, its a lot of standing also.

I think right now, I have some great routine set with Zumba and pool workouts. Honestly, I know it sounds crazy but these two things combined actually do quite well plus they put me in a fairly happy place even when I’m dying of fatigue to push a little more.

Week 9

Monday

We opened our pool finally so I’m super happy to get back on a back to back day following off last week’s Sunday pool workout with a little of the same. I did do an extra round here from the day before.

To be fair, I didn’t write it here as workouts but Friday, Saturday and Sunday was Montreal Comiccon. I spent 5 hours on Friday, 6 hours on Saturday and 6 hours on Sunday pretty much walking and standing around a lot covering the event with the exception of four 45 minute conferences. Its one of the main reasons why I kind of took it easy during the week to kind of rest up for the intense weekend.

Week 10

Saturday – Zumba & Freestyle Pool Exercises

Pool exercises: Knee Tucks, Shuffle, Breaststroke, In-pool jogging

As I thought back to the past week of recuperation and trying to get a workout in, I doubled down on the Saturday workout with a longer Zumba routine than usual and put in a few more routines that I had to learn so it was harder as it switch things up. After that sweaty cardio session, because we’ve just been stuck back into a heat wave, I went into the pool to cool down but also get some freestyle pool exercises inspired from the pool workout above. I love doing a few rounds of 30 reps for knee tucks and then doing shuffles in between. I did a lot of jogging around the pool and also worked in some swimming with practicing the worst form I have which is breaststroke so I had to focus a lot on the form and getting that slow and steady but effective.

Sunday – Zumba & Pool Workout

Pool Workout (2 rounds)

Another hot day over here in Montreal! I took the time to do a normal set of Zumba workout, this time with a few more familiar routines. I did research a pool workout and this time decided to focus on abs and core. It was a 2 rounds cycle. Because my pool is different from the one here, the crunches were a little harder so I fell for a few more reps and longer times for the other workouts while adding in some knee tucks at 30 reps. I still did some cardio with jogging and again, some more swimming.

Overall, a lot of the same but I was pleased with just getting that bit in.
I did have some walking around here and there to get from one spot to the next for the events, just didn’t bother to write them in.
You should expect that Zumba and Pool workouts (hopefully find more workout options) to be the summer focus.
If the weather cools down a little bit more, I will go back to getting in some jogging time, probably in August.

With that said, biweekly recaps is the new structure so I’ll see you with an update in 2 weeks! 🙂

Weekly Workout Roundup – Week 7 & 8

Week 7

Week 7 was quite the fail but I did manage to get one workout in on Sunday. So I’m going to just cut to the chase and talk about that!  Its time for a Sunday Zumba workout!

Week 8

We are starting fresh this week and I vow that now that everything is pretty much done, I’m going to get back on track.

Monday

Walk – moderate speed
Distance: 3.7km
Time: 40 minutes

Saturday

• 2 Hour Gardening (a lot of squatting..)
• 1.5 km moderate walking (evening walk)

Sunday

Our pool is finally open and today is literally 42C with the humidex and for those who don’t know, we rig up an A/C unit in our bedroom to cool down the house with our fan. Surprisingly with the new roof which is white to repel the heat, it helps to keep the house pretty cool. However, no better time to go hang out in the pool that my husband finally got to work after last year’s crazy algae problem. We spent almost an hour in there and of course, it wouldn’t be right to not own up to my promise that if he got the pool open again that I’d do an extra lot of pool workouts.

I did a variation of this one about 2 to 3 times depending on which moves. It did definitely give my obliques the most workout. Refreshing and fun. I actually even did some swimming but its hard to really quantify how much of swimming it did. We didn’t sit around so we were just moving about a lot. Anyways, I love pool workouts because my shoulder and knee joints sometimes take the zumba and the weights really badly so this helps a lot. I’m hoping to find some more exercises to keep some variety going.

That’s it for the last two weeks!
Sorry for combining both together but Week 7 was kind of a disaster so it was just easier to do it this way!

Weekly Workout Recap – Week 6: Slowly Back on Track

Suffice to say that things were not doing too good in the last two weeks. Last week in particular only managed to get in a Sunday workout. Still, one workout is better than none. I do want to keep at least a 3 workout thing in whatever form I can manage. With that said, there was a lot of creativity and things working out to make it happen.

Let’s just check it out!

Monday & Tuesday

The first two days of the week was the overwhelming crazy E3 coming to an end. With that said, it included a lot of coming right home to work on drafts and getting in the recap posts over to That Moment In. We were plagued with time zone differences as usual as well as just being bombarded with all kinds of news. Don’t get me wrong, I love every bit of it but just not so easy to get in workouts.

Wednesday

A day of unexpected events took its turn for Wednesday. Tuesday’s recording wasn’t able to be done so we did another recording after work. BUT..it was not a rest day. I had planned to go for a long walk at lunch and with an unexpected power outage at the office for an hour, I ended up having an earlier lunch and doubling the time I intended to go for a walk.

Distance: 3.3 km – moderate walking

Thursday

It was a busier day at work with lots of little tidbits to get taken care of. Ended up not getting any workout done.

Friday

Another walking day scheduled in during lunch time.

Distance: 2.5km
Time: 30 mins
Moderate speed

Saturday

Zumba time today! I’ve decided to diverge away from the Tone It Up workouts as they were making it slightly routine and boring so I wanted to change it up with cardio. I can’t seem to find time to go out to run and my area has recently had a uncaught kidnapper/predator in the neighborhood so the city also advises against it. Its why I like Zumba as it raises my spirit and energy, a decent amount of challenge and is a full body cardio workout. Some repeats from last week but overall, some routines I just randomized on my Zumba playlist on Youtube.

Sunday

Father’s Day ended up with family visits and getting other things done. You’ll read about in the next Weekly Adventures. I did do a little gardening today. Although, I can’t say it was particularly exercising, especially since most of my day was spent E3 edits for Game Warp for next week.

Overall…

I’m slowly making the best of a busy situation. I got some Zumba in and a lot more walking than I usually did which was my form of exercising. I have been having some knee pains so the running has been taken off for a little bit until I get some running tape or whatever you call it. Things should slow down next week so I’m going to try to get back to weights, more Zumba and hopefully some jogging/walking sessions.

Weekly Workout Recap: Week 2

Hello everyone! Week 2 is here! I’m actually updating as I go along every day so its becoming a really nice journal log that you all get to see at the end of the week when I finish the Sunday workout during cooldown. A pretty nice cool down (after stretches), I’d say. Its been only one week and maybe its the mindset that I’m being more active than I had been so its putting me in a much more positive mood about everything.

If you didn’t catch my first week for this segment revival, you can find it here.

Tone It Up Bikini Series goes on for 8 weeks from what I remember so we are heading into Week 2. As I do these workouts, I’m also making sure to start building up the routine for next month so that I won’t stop although I’m debating whether to stick with a regular month of Tone It Up for fun and see how that goes. Less rambling this time and let’s start Week 2!

Bikini Series – Week 2

Monday
Booty (2 rounds of 25 reps/move)

Bridge Openers
Down Dog Booty Lifts (each side)
Squat Up-Downs (each side)
Booty Band Shuffle (each side)
Standing Booty Lifts (each side)

Tuesday
Arms & Abs  Rest Day

2.3 km walk at lunch

I know how this routine is supposed to be a hardcore 8 weeks thing but seeing as I haven’t worked out a ton and my wrist was starting to hurt from either gardening or some exercise thing, I decided to take the Arms day off just to recuperate and prevent any possible injuries, because that would just make everything worse.

Wednesday

Run: 23:53 mins for 3.97km
I did a little longer run. Ended up skipping the 5 toning moves.

Thursday
Abs (2 round of 25 reps)

Ball Rollout Equipment issues, changed to Push-ups
Mountain Climbers
Ball Pike Equipment issues, changed to Oblique Twists
V-Sit Crunch
Toe Touch

Friday
Total Body HIIT (2 rounds of 25 reps)

Single Leg Deadlift + Row (each side)
Squat Jacks (30 seconds)
Bridge + Chest Press
Bikini Walkout + Tummy Toners
Jump Rope (30 seconds)

Saturday
Cardio Abs + Arms (2 rounds of 25 reps)

Plank Jack
Bicycles
Knee to Elbow Crunch (each side)
Bicep Curls
Forward to Lateral Raise

Sunday

Rest day! (kind of…)
No 5K run/walk due to resting up for tomorrow’s hiking day trip.
No 5 moves as well as did 4 hours of gardening (gardening update tomorrow).

Overall…

This was a pretty good week. I kept up with a lot of the daily workouts and pushed through the more tired days, which helped to give myself a lot more energy. The running was also really good since I did a good pace that I was happy with. I’m starting to eat healthier as well. Definitely a great second week. I’ll check back next week with another update!