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With a cold 3.5 degrees at boot camp this morning, I always say that the hardest part of getting yourself to an exercise class is putting your feet on ground from your bed.

The distance may only be 3 to 4 feet however this can present many challenges at 5.30am in the morning when hitting that snooze button for an additional 10 minutes sleep is very hard to resist.

Yet once you are all the rest is easy as at some point need to venture out into the cooler weather to either go to work or to a gym, fitness studio or outdoors if you’re doing a boot camp. The funny thing is that once your warm find that very quickly you’ll be down to a T-shirt entering a smart and it’s when you’re grabbing a drink you will find steam rising from your body.

One thing that you’ll experience is absolutely amazing sunrises and iridescent blue skies following the previous clear nights skies and cool mornings. Whilst most people are snoozing and oblivious to the most absolutely magnificent sunrises.

We’re very fortunate in Australia went by our morning temperatures rarely get below 4° unlike other countries around the world. For instance in Scandinavia if you go training outdoors you need to keep moving as your perspiration quickly freezes if you stay stationary for any given time.

While there were predictions of above average rainfall for this winter, this has been revised to average rainfall. Luckily this week has been rain free for our boot camp training so we have enjoyed being outdoors.

Also remember to stay hydrated as you are still perspiring and will need to replenish the lost fluid.

While Australia has been feeling the effects of climate change, this years La Niña has been particularly savage, with ferocious cyclone activity in northern Queensland and massive flooding across Brisbane, greater Melbourne and country Victoria.

The effects can be better appreciated when you look at a satellite image of one of the inner Melbourne parks where we train.

Edinburgh Gardens - Melbourne, January 2010

Edinburgh Gardens - Melbourne, January 2011

You can really see the difference in the health of its vegetation and lawns from January 2010 to January 2011. Usually you’d expect the parks to be a little dryer, with large sections of brown grass, however given the amount of rain we’ve had over the summer the lawns are looking lush and green.

In the five years that I’ve been running boot camps at Edinburgh garden in North Fitzroy I have never seen it so green over the summer period. In fact, two years ago the winter was so dry it created large areas of exposed soil.

A number of senior meteorologist have noted that Melbourne’s recent climatic conditions are more akin to tropical north eastern Australia with high levels of humidity and torrential downfalls. A storm front will dump heavy rainfall over a 20 to 60 minute period as opposed to the more spasmodic rainfall patterns of very short periods of light rain.

In maintaining its reputation for four seasons in one day, Melbourne’s rainfall patterns are keeping everyone guessing. It’ll be interesting to see whether long-range forecasts that indicate Australia will return to drought conditions for a 7 -10 year period are right. The global phenomenon with whether patterns seems to be longer droughts and more intense, longer periods of rainfall.

While there was patchy showers across Victoria, a massive hail storm moved across over Melbourne last night. There was no mention of hail storms on the weather forecasts as this storm seemed to originate from nowhere.
While I always joke about it never rains at Boot camp, I think breaking the record with hail is going a little too far:))

The temperature dropped and while I was waiting at the Rotunda with a new Fitmate, the winds increased from 15-20knots to 35-40 knots with pea sized hail voraciously dawning upon us. Well boot camp was now officially over as we ran back to our cars.

Within minutes the ground was covered in a layer of sleet and the fallen hail collecting on the windscreens like we were up at the snow. Once the epicentre of the storm based, the skies cleared and the rain subsided.

With the cool 7º temperature, the hail was in no hurry to melt with piles of hail still visible after 20 minutes.

Well done to the 8 Fitmates who braved the rainy weather to venture out. While we do have sheltered areas at our parks, it’s game over when either it hails or there is a warning for one of these extremely nasty storms.

We had a similar storm in April this year with loads of lightening and thunder, once again we canceled the session as lightening and Fitmates don’t mix.

Funny Fitness Quote from our Melbourne CBD Fitmate after the session, when I commented that he did well for getting through the session after a big weekend, he replied that just getting to boot camp was a big enough achievement.

There must have been a lot going on in Melbourne on the weekend as our morning classes also experienced smaller attendances. I’m not sure if the looming big, nasty blob of unappealing weather had anything to do with it though.

For a lot of people the weekends are a chance to unwind, relax and chill out but there is the risk of too much of a good thing.

I know it’s boring stuff that people really don’t won’t to know about but we really have to try to stick to the safe drinking guidelines.
Think about your body like when you first purchase a brand spanking new car with 0kms on the speedometer. You can neglect your car by speeding away in the morning while the engine hasn’t warmed up, neglecting to change all the fluids regularly, ie oil, filters, water, brake fluid, transmission fluids etc. For the first 10,000, 20,000kms everything is ok but when you start to get to 50,000-70,000kms things start to deteriorate, it’s harder to start, maybe a little bit of smoke from the exhaust.

Well the same thing happens to your body, after years and years of neglect your body to will start to deteriorate.

Well another night of clear skies and no rain at Bootcamp training. very impressive considering that it poured cats and dogs earlier.

With the humidity at high levels and a cooler 13º, it wasn’t long before everyone was back to T-Shirts from the warmer jackets.

It was only exactly one week ago that a massive storm swept through Melbourne with lighten, strong winds and hail but miraculously it missed our Bootcamp.