Playing Outside

This morning I had been planning on heading to the gym for a really boring and long spin bike ride in order to keep up with the half-Ironman training plan. I have to tell you that I thought it sounded pretty hideous to spin for two hours. Although I would have been quite happy to ride my real bike for two hours today! The weather was gorgeous!

Since the weather was so nice and I wasn't so keen on heading indoors anyway for a workout, I decided to go with Drew today. His personal trainer, Billy, leads a Park class every Saturday at 10:30 (which, frankly, is a little late for me to go on a regular basis). But, since I didn't have a bicycle, I decided to just get outdoors and skip out on the real plan for today.

Drew and I walked to the meeting spot on the Upper East Side. Once we got there and Billy arrived, the group headed over to a grassy spot near the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And that's when the fun started! Billy had us form a circle and immediately we started doing a circuit of squats, jump squats and squat thrusts. Since that wasn't enough fun, he then had us lie down on the ground and go up into a pike position and then from there, we had to flip-around to a push-up. Don't ask me how that worked. It was a lot easier than it sounded.

In that initial circle we also did a push-up circle where we would all do 5 push-ups, but do them one at a time so that you had to wait for everyone else in the circle to do their push-ups, while holding yourself up. I think we did the push-up circle at least 2 times, but maybe it was three. It's hard to keep track. There was also a ridiculously long holding of plank position.

I have to say that as a kid, circles were always really fun. They generally involved story time or sometimes a parachute. Today's circle wasn't so much fun. Maybe Billy should buy a parachute for these classes? That might make it better.

Once we were done with the circle stuff, he had us do a couple of sprints along the road. The first one was shorter than it was supposed to be because when Billy said "run to the orange cone" the leader did the natural thing and ran to the first orange cone. Not the second orange cone, like Billy had wanted us to do. I have to tell you, I felt bad for the other bikers and runners out there on the road. Here was a group of 20 or so people jogging into traffic and then turning around and sprinting all out. And we were doing it on the wrong side of the road (the non-running side).

When I got done with my second sprint, I was standing next to Drew and I thought he said, "I'm not even breathing hard!" I immediately told him to pipe down! I didn't want Billy to hear that Drew wasn't breathing hard. I wasn't in the mood for another long (slightly uphill) sprint. Except what Drew actually said is, "you're not even breathing hard". He was paying me a compliment. Either way, I didn't want Billy to overhear the whole exchange!

After that, we headed over to the Great Lawn. Billy had us line up in 4 lines while he set up a series of small orange cones (the start and finish lines). We had to do various things - sprints, karaoke, side shuffle, bear crawl, bunny hopping backwards and forwards and try to have our group come in first. Except that it turned out that there wasn't really an incentive to come in first because we all ended up having to do the same amount of push-ups after each round.

Then Billy broke us down into two groups and had us do some more sprints and things. The first one, I was sprinting against Drew -- and I beat him! Okay, technically Billy held Drew back for a couple of seconds while I got a head start, but I think that if he had tried harder, Drew could have beaten me. So I'm still going to put it as a win in my book!

I should also say here that both Drew and Billy were keen to point out that I am a very bad bunny hopper (backwards or forwards - doesn't really matter). Seriously, I have to be about the worst jumper of all time. I am totally incapable of jumping with both feet at the same time. This is why I stunk so badly when Drew and I did our own stair workout and he kept wanting me to jump up the stairs. I am pretty sure it's all a mental block, but whatever it is, it makes me a very bad jumper.

After all this stuff with the cones, we went out onto the loop around the Great Lawn and Billy told us that we'd have to run around the Loop, do 50 push-ups (using a park bench) and 40 dips (also using the bench). I opted to be in the first group and get the running over with. Gmap Pedometer says that the loop is 0.53 miles around and Billy told me that I finished in 4:12, which is super-de-duper fast and I'm not really sure I believe that time, but I'll go with it! I finished up with the push-ups and dips and that was the end of class.

Drew and I went to get Coconut FrozFruits with two other people from the class and we all chatted for a bit. Then Drew and I decided to jog home from the Great Lawn. He'd been asking me for a while now to show him the Bridle Path, so we ran on that for about half of the way home. When we got to Tavern on the Green, I decided that we should run on the Road so that I could show Drew where the "S" was (where we start our speed work in Terrier). I said that once we got to the S, we should sprint the rest of the way to the bottom of the Park. I actually was pretty close behind Drew - he didn't pull that far away from me - so I was pretty proud of that.

All in all, a pretty good workout for skipping a bike ride. I'm just going to go ahead and say that the cross-training will help me in San Francisco and leave it at that!

Park Class
Time: 1:07:40
Calories: 660
Maximum HR: 191
Average HR: 155

Run Home
Time: 11:01
Distance: 1.20 miles
Pace: 9:10/mile
Calories: 126
Maximum HR: 194