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Editor’s Note: I am currently going through the Farrell’s Extreme Bodyshaping 10-week program. I introduced my reasons previously, and this is part seven in a 10 part series following me throughout the program.

After doing well in our five week testing, Aly and I were over the moon with where we were at in our 10-week program at Farrell’s Extreme Bodyshaping. Despite her battling through a painful knee and some aches and pains, we were feeling good.

Then last week came. We were cruising along in week six when I got a call from Aly on the rain-soaked Wednesday afternoon.

Her vehicle, which we just purchased three months ago, was flashing warning signals at her and smelled of “burnt hair” as she said.

Something was wrong with the charging system, and she was just leaving work, which is roughly 40 minutes from the gym.

I told her to get as close as she could to the gym and I would come pick her up. In the meantime, I decided to change into my workout clothes while I waited for her inevitable call. And it hit me that I didn’t bring any workout shorts in my rush that morning. There’s zero chance that my cargo shorts would make it through a kickboxing workout without splitting in multiple places. At that point, I’m anticipating having to pick Aly up from the side of a rainy freeway, but I need to run to a store that carries workout shorts.

I ran to Wal Mart while keeping my phone in my hand to help Aly at a moment’s notice. Luckily, that call didn’t come. Her vehicle made it all the way to the gym, and she got there right as I was getting back from Wal Mart. I went to look at it, and it promptly died, but at least she got to the gym.

We trudged through our workout, knowing we needed to line a car up for Aly to drive and to be able to get her car to a mechanic. But we were both still happy that we were able to work out, despite the obstacles.

Luckily, the car worked again for about a mile, but that’s all we needed to get it to a buddy’s shop down the road. We left it there and then picked up my parents spare car that night so Aly had something to drive to work.

Unfortunately, a $500 fix later, and it was shaping up to be one of those weeks.

On Friday night, we had a niece’s birthday party to go to in Stillwater, and missing our workout never crossed our mind. With two dogs at home, however, we needed to come up with an alternate plan. I went to the early morning class and Aly went to the afternoon class and I picked her up from the gym on my way down to Stillwater after picking up the dogs after work. We ended up in Stillwater until pretty late, and after leaving there, it’s a long drive back to our home in Isanti.

With all of that running, our bed felt almost too comfortable on Saturday morning when it was time to get up for our 8:30 a.m. class. Aly and I both silenced our alarms and seemed like we had no intention of getting out of bed to make it to class. We had perfect attendance so far, so what would be one missed day?

To us, it would’ve meant a weekend of regret and anger for being lazy. The staff at Farrell’s always say showing up is the hardest part, and on that Saturday morning, it was true. But Aly eventually got out of bed and that motivated me to follow.

We got to our workout just in time and although it wasn’t our best class in the six weeks, we were there and we were working.

When it was done, I couldn’t have been happier that we made it to the class and didn’t skip out.

To top the busy week off, we made another long trip on Sunday, but this one for a wonderful reason. Aly’s sister and brother-in-law welcomed their first child, an absolute beauty, Vienna June, on Sunday morning  and we visited them at the hospital in Waconia, which is an hour and a half drive from home.

And I get it, most of this column is just me talking about how tough this week was at times, but my point is that life happens. We make excuses all the time to not get to the gym and not worry about our health. I badly wanted to make an excuse this week. I had excuses handed to me. Stressed from a large mechanics bill, fatigue from non stop running, just needing a day to relax. They were sitting there waiting for Aly and I to use. And we said ‘No, thank you.”

This program is important to us. Making it to every class is important for us. We wanted to take this journey seriously, and once we saw the results from five week testing, we knew we had to keep pushing through, regardless of what real life throws our way.

I didn’t want this column to just seem like everything has been rosy the last six weeks. There’s been challenges and real life has happened, but as long as you keep moving forward, good things still will happen.

On a quick aside, earlier this week, I did hit a milestone that I did not think was going to be possible in my initial 10 weeks.

In our first week, there were parts of classes that involved planks for 30 to 45 seconds. I could never plank for more than a few seconds in the beginning, so I instead put my knees on the ground and just put as much weight as I could on my arms to simulate a plank as close as I could.

I had stuck with that strategy for a few weeks, but then I started to try to hold actual planks for a little bit longer each time as the rest of the class moved to 60 second planks.

Well, on Monday, midway through our kickboxing workout, we dropped down for planks and I blocked everything out mentally and was able to hold the plank for the full 60 seconds. My arms were quivering by the end but I had made it.

Turns out, life really does come at you fast!

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