Recalled to Life

I knew it had been a long time since I'd posted, but even I was embarrassed to see that my last post had been over two weeks ago.

There are reasons for my absence, but no excuse. I spent most of that first week in August at GenCon, the nerdiest gathering on the planet. And while I did run the "Orc Stomp 5K" while out there, there was very little else that involved actual physical exertion. Unless you count the steak dinner Friday night; that was a workout.

The other hitch in my training was the family vacation coming up August 20-31. I always knew that I'd have to suspend my training for that fortnight, but I never knew how I'd negotiate that pause. Would I do some other workout, and if so, what? Hard to get motivated when you expressly disavow your fitness goal. even temporarily.

Plus, I finally admitted that I had to shut down the running until my achilles tendonitis subsided. I seem to quit running every August, though the past two years it's been especially bad. I suspect that the 19:48 I ran in a 5K on Memorial Day 2010 was the last race I ever really wanted to run, so you can imagine it's been hard to do any hard running workouts since then.

But I've figured out a way through this vacation period that recharges the batteries and deals with the suspension of running: FitBrawl.

FitBrawl is the latest of this slew of obstacle-course races that have become the latest fitness fad. These races can involve little or no running but all involve a series of obstacles kind of like Ninja Warrior. Maybe more emphasis on strength than explosive power and raw grip strength as you find in Sasuke. But still, they're a lot more fun than another 10K. I did the MetroDash this summer in New York (the Meadowlands, actually) and medaled in my age group, which was about as well as I exepcted to do. I've been looking for another to do, but wasn't really into the mud crawls that seem to dominate the obstacle-course schedule.

FitBrawl seems to fit the bill. About a thousand yards of running and a dozen obstacles or so seems right up my alley. But the real plus is that it lends itself to a training regimen that'll get me over this hump.

The race is September 17 -- the date of the annual 10K around my hometown that I really never want to do again -- so I've got a little over a month to train. And one of the obstacles, "The Brawler," is a straight-up workout set as follows:

50 Pushups
50 Thrusters, basically squats with an overhead press of 30-lb. dumbells
50 Renegade Rows, where you get into plank position with the DBs and raise each to your chest -- one at a time
50 Burpees, with a pushup at the bottom and a jump at the end
50 Situps, with NO ONE and NOTHING holding your feet down!

That last one seems like a cruel joke, but this set of 250 reps figures to be a perfect diversion in my workouts until I get back to the rope work this fall.

I tried the Brawler this past Friday, and it took me 44 minutes and change to finish. They penalize you 10 seconds for every missed rep, so I would've had a faster time if I hadn't done a rep and they'd just penalized me all 2500 seconds. But Sunday I tried it again and finished in about 24 minutes, then again yesterday I finished in 22 and change. So the time is coming down, to the point where I may do two circuits for a workout. I figure if I can do this routine I'll be in pretty good shape, and the exercises are new enough to me that I can feel the soreness that comes from a new stress. Now all I have to do is pay the hefty fee to run the race.

And I do mean to blog about the new season of ANW. Heck, I meant to do a podcast about it,
but it doesn't look like there's much point in that now. Maybe after the season's over entirely I'll get back to it, when there's no point in trying to be timely. For now, I can focus on FitBrawl and plan for the next phase of Ninja Warrior training.