Run Like Monkey

We had a great Spring weekend at the cabin last weekend – perfect, perfect weather.  I got out for 2 great trail runs, both turned out to be longer than planned.  So I’m recovering this week from a probably-too-aggressive increase in mileage (I am supposed to be nurturing an injury).  But it was too fun!

Saturday morning I went for what I thought was an 8 mile that turned out to be 10.5.  I went first thing in the morning and the dry parts of the trail were very firm and fast, but plenty of ice slowed me down.  Sunday I decided I would be “smart” and go later in the day when it would be warmer and not so icy.  My 5-6 mile plan turned out to be an 8 miler and it was wet, muddy, slushy, slick, snowy, icy – I think just about everything!  It was again slow and I was feeling gassed from Saturday (this was my first back to back of long runs).  Walked lots of uphills and called small inclines uphills so I could walk them.  But it was again a blast, and fun to be outside in the Spring!  Nessie loved every minute:

I work in absolute flatland, and hill training is literally no where to be found nearby.  Its a 4 mile round trip just to arrive at a nearby park, where the very slight ups and downs can be measured in single digit steps.  I definitely need hill training for my race plans this year, so what’s my alternative?

flickr image credit: Zach K

I hit the parking garage!

I have done both stair reps and ramp reps, I think the ramp reps are here to stay.  The stairs have only a slight rise, so not a huge quad workout unless I go doubles, which is almost too much quad.  My real goal is to be training for walking hills during ultras and getting comfortable with the transition from walk to run and vice versa, so the ramps are actually a better fit.  I have to say though, this is boring.  I really have to remind myself why I’m doing this to stick with it.  Doing the math only ate up a couple reps – 300 paces to the top, roughly 1200 feet, roughly 3 round trips up and down for a total of 1 mile.  After that, you are on your own!

The gawking crowd isn’t too bad over lunch – a handful of people coming and going, lots of cars in the ramp.  But when I did it before work the other day while the ramp was filling I swear I caused a gawker slowdown.  If they think this is weird, just wait until I show up doing this in my FiveFingers or, even worse, my huaraches!  I even plan to start eating lunch during these reps to practice eating while moving – I’m sure this will get phoned in at some point.

I was inpsired by Adam‘s series of 20-minute challenge workouts to give the 20-minute pushup challenge a go.  I had been doing loose sets of 20s and25s off and on, so was curious to see how far I could go.  My first attempt got me up to 139, which I was pretty proud of.  My next attempt went up to 143 – not bad, and I had already done Fitness Yoga earlier in the day (harder on the arms than it sounds).  Then my running buddy Phil dropped the bomb – he had done 200!

That’s when I realized the problem wasn’t my arms – it was my head.

photo credit: obo-bobolina (http://www.flickr.com/photos/obo-bobolina/)

I needed a strategy – this was an endurance test after all.  I realized that if I did 10 per minute, that would already be 200.  So I attacked my next round and did 203.  Then Jeremy drew another line in the sand by doing 230.   w000ttt!!!  This was getting fun!

So last Sunday after getting home from the lake, I set out the timer and hit the floor with the goal of doing 12-rep sets every minute.  That worked for about 9 sets, then I started dropping them back for a few.  I then worked back up to 10s and did them gradually more frequently than once per minute to catch up.  It was amazing that after just a few shorter reps I could get back up to 10s.  Total this time:  238.

I will break 240 next time I do it – just to say I can.  But the interesting activity here is not the total number, its the experience of pushing through exhaustion and breaking limits.  I never would have thought I could do 200 pushups in that amount of time… and then I did.  This is great for the upper arms, but its even better for overall endurance – physical and mental.  This is definitely going to be a core cross-training exercise for me going forward.

I saw this the other day on Make TV and could not resist:

Kelly’s comment:  why wouldn’t you just run?

My comment:  I want one!!!

Be sure to watch the video to see them going down stairs, riding ramps off of picnic tables, etc.