Friday, July 8, 2011

Flashback Friday: Parkour

A potent cocktail of heat and stupidity reduced last night's trail run to a dizzy death march. My course was the rough trails at Sand Run, starting with the 1.4-mile loop between Merriman Road and Portage Path, which is also a par course.

I have run this par course loop before but never did any of the exercise stations. This time, hey, why not? The first few stations were more like a warm-up, with arm circles, side bends, toe touching, and so forth. I figured since I was running beyond this loop that I'd just skip anything that focused on the legs to instead work on my core and upper body.

The first difficult exercise was a leg-lift station that got my lower abdominal muscles a good workout by sitting on a bench with my legs propped on a pedestal and then lifting them up. The next several stations were difficult, with push-ups, a hand-walk across parallel bars, sit-ups, chin-ups, and reverse somersaults suspended by rings. A little more than 28 minutes later, and I was done. But I still had more to run.

Within the next mile I knew I wasn't going to run as far as I'd planned. The heat was melting me, and my par course adventure had drained my energy.

Instead of working on distance, I decided to run hill intervals, bolting up the hills, jogging down, and only walking the flats if need be. Another mile in, and my walk breaks more resembled drunken stumbles. A little more than 84 minutes later, and I was done, as in D.O.N.E. Done.

Back Talk 
Wherein Katy Perry gets all the comments

Apparently, the only thing that stuck out to Ian, Joja Jogger and Ironman By Thirty in my last post was the mention of going to a Katy Perry concert.

Answer: Call it payback for all the old-timey and hillbilly concerts. She puts on a good show though. T.G.I.F.

Happy Hour is nearly upon us, teammates. Have a finely brewed weekend. Run well and drink well. Cheers!

1 comment:

Carolina John said...

Parkour's core doesn't play games. It's a seriously tough workout. have a great weekend!