Decisions, decisions! Or... don't try this at home, kids!
As a longtime Peak Performance member, I have chosen to work with Mike's schedules, although I also like to keep track of the one in the binder that Dave provided the 26-2 group--to stay informed and occasionally to incorporate stuff into my workouts. The two schedules are mostly the same, and since I have committed to using Mike's schedule, I'll use that when there are differences. But today presented a quandary, a riddle, a challenge: Mike's schedule had on it a hill workout similar to the one we did on Tuesday night. Hmmm...I could do that. I've done it before, no problem. I love hills. Come to think of it, I'm happy with any workout you want to tack onto the calendar. It's all good! But then my curiosity got the best of me. Hmmmm... what's Dave got for today? As it turned out 100m sprints every minute. Try it barefoot. Interesting also. What to do? I like both!"Then why not do both?" came the mischievous question I asked myself. Okay, I recognize that there are any number of logical answers to this question, one of which might involve quads, while another involves hamstrings and still another, achilles tendons...you get the drift. Of course, I didn't listen to any of these logical answers.
I started warming up on the middle school track near my home, and figured I'd head across the street afterward for my hill workout. I still had the idea I'd stick with that, but there was that nice football field in the middle of the track and it invited me as a chocolate eclair invites a dieter with a sweet tooth. I practiced a few of the skips and other form drills, and the field kept beckoning. "Oh come on, won't it be cool to try this thing of taking off your shoes and running those 100 repeats?" Well, okay, but just a few to warm up for the hill workout. And, not quite trusting what kind of debris and bees I might step on (there were a lot of clover flowers...bee magnets!), I opted for keeping socks on. Started with a couple of repeats.
And I broke the world record too--in the 100-year-old category,* but it's a start.... And then, well, I got to thinking, well, it's only 100m. Why not another...and another.
Thinking along these twisted lines got me to a dozen. And then it was time to put my shoes back on. And the hill started calling my name. "You must be nuts," I replied. But heck, why not at least go up and down once, see how I felt. If I was too whipped, I could always stop. Yeah. Right. Find a gradual uphill, 90 seconds to two minutes. Well, okay 2 mins. sounds good. Let's go up for two minutes and if I'm still breathing, I'll keep going. And yes, mirabile dictu, I was indeed still breathing (not beautifully, but if aesthetics were the issue, I wouldn't have started this workout at all).
My two minutes got me to a bright red Mazda parked very visibly at the end of a driveway, making for a handy finish line. I continued my up and down progress for the designated fifteen minutes, wondering at one point if perhaps my timer had stopped and I'd found myself in a time warp. At another point, I saw a red car on its way down the hill as I was running up--yikes! my finish line was abandoning me! But no, the Mazda was still there, and my watch was still running and so was I, until I reached the Mazda for the third time.
Cooldown consisted of continuing up the road to the park entrance, then down the trail, past a playing field, crowded with summer day campers, another trail, and some long terraced steps out of the park (a crowd of noisy 10-year-olds being a bit overwhelming after such a workout...), and back down the same hill that had been the scene of my torture (no signs of blood, although the red Mazda remained parked where it had been).
----
* Here's the link, for those of you who are curious:
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0%2C%2C2-7-1442_1547135%2C00.html
I admit I didn't beat Flying Phil on every repeat, but we won't go there.
posted by DPMcManus @ 8:57 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home