2 Ways to Supercharge Your Fitness This Weekend

Malians at the 2015 Summer Splash in Montreal

Local to Burlington, VT? In a fitness rut? Sick of just [insert activity here] day in day out?

Or maybe you're training hard but without any great purpose... in which case, try these two things:

1. Come down to the Burlington Waterfront on Saturday, August 29 between the hours of 9am and 12 noon. Put yourself through one of Malia Racing's classic fitness evaluations and see how you stack up! Top men's and women's results will get a free month of training and paddling with the crew!
2. Join one of the Malia practices Monday and Wednesday nights. We launch at 6:00pm from the Lake Champlain Community Sailing Center. If you've never tried dragon boat before, you'll be in for a treat (not to mention a full body workout that will test both your cardio endurance and muscle strength)!

That's it - simple really. Come down and try this dragon boat thing before the season ends and we're forced indoors! (More info: maliaracing.com)

Personal best in the Miami marathon (and period!)

the marathon girl

G's back, full of vim and vigor as the saying goes. The Miami sun did her a world of good,  she came home with two medals, and shaved 9 minutes off last year's time in the 13.1. That's HUGE!! Congrats to my girl. Next year A & I are going to join her in the fun. A 5K on Saturday followed by the 13.1 on Sunday... with 25,000 runners. Sounds like glorious mayhem!

But, despite her accomplishments in this race, she has proved incapable of coming up with her rendition of last month's fit test.

"I was on the beeeeach!" she says, throwing up her hands. "You can't write on the beach!" (No, of course you can't - the stupid little umbrella keeps falling out of the drink and rolling across the page. What was I thinking?)

I'm not feeling particularly verbose today. We're both hurting from yesterday's circuit. We were divided into teams of 4-5 people, and had 5 stations to attack: PLUs, bench press on ball (with 30, 40 or 45lbs barbells); jump rope; wall balls, and lunges. The goal was for each team to complete, between them, around 2000 reps of each exercise. Can you do the math? 2000 divided by 4 people = 500 reps. HOLY MOTHER OF GOD. We did our favorites first (for me that's bench and jumprope, followed by wall balls, PLUs and lunges, in that order), then attempted the ones we weren't so crazy about. I have blocked out everything past 220 reps on the bench, 600 jumprope jumps, 150 walls balls, 160 lunges and somewhere around 140 PLUs. At that point it was just getting to an even number, crawling over to the wall, marking down your number, crawling to the next station, and trying to make those parts of your body that weren't seizing up to keep going. OK OK so it wasn't quite that dramatic, but we did seriously want to puke at the end of that. We were nastier, sweatier, smellier than we'd been in a long time. It was AWESOME.

Today we've been exchanging texts since 7am.

We're gonna hurt today.


I am sore.


I can't lift things up or put them down.


Lord, my legs hurt more than the day after the half marathon!


My abs just said "hello!"


I hurt from neck to feet.


My legs... owwwww....


Manhattans are a great way to forget your pain though! Now a good night's sleep and two-hours of practice tomorrow. Can't wait!

Fit test part deux (for real this time)

So.. as promised, here is the sad sordid story. (Well it's not really sad or sordid but i like the alliteration. It's part of this whole writing adventure I'm on. But I digress.)

In a nutshell, I cried twice, almost broke my face, bashed my still-recovering-from-surgery foot, and rowed one-legged pretty damn well. G's test wasn't quite as dramatic, but it was kickass all the same.

So the test was going to look like this: bench press (do the max weight you can for 3-5 reps), rest, pullups (max u can do), rest, 500m for time on the paddling erg, rest, and then a 12 minute run for distance. Those who can't run get to row on a regular rowing machine for 12 minutes.

It comes to my turn on the bench press. The comedy begins in earnest when I give my answer to "how much weight do you want?" I know what I want the weight to be, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to make it all compute. This is worse than when G and I are at the gym training. I look at what's already on the bar - two 25lb plates - and try to figure out how much I need to add.

So, if there's 50 on the bar, and the bar is 45, that makes... oh shit. Umm... 95 right? Ya, right. Ok. Phew. That wasn't too hard. So how much do I need to add? [My fingers come out and I start going thru the numbers...] 135 minus 95 leaves... err... ? I try to get thru the math.. but I am stumped. I start to panic. I start walking circles around the stupid bench, trying to make it look like I'm just psyching myself up when in reality I'm becoming more and more traumatized by the whole addition and subtraction thing. 

G sees my consternation and comes over. "Help!" I message her telepathically. TelePATHETICally. Ugh. Really? It's not like it's fractions or decimal points for crying out loud.


Well, HA, G can't figure it out either. We're BOTH idiots.

"L, how much weight do you want?" asks our trusty spotter for the day.
"Err... 135?"
"OK, so take everything off and put on two plates."
 DUH!  

Bench gets readied, all is well. I get down to business. One... two... two and a half... two and three quarters... bloody shoulder freezes up and no matter how much I push (or try that telepathy thing again) I can't get it all the way up for the third one. I rack it and stomp off, tears of pissed-off-ness welling. BLARGH. Walk it off, try again. No big deal. You got this.

One of my teammates, bless her, offers encouragement and helps me set up for the next try. I decide to go down 5 pounds.... I get down, unrack the thing, and BANG, drop it right in my own face. Well SHIT and OW. BIG OW. Somehow we get it off my head and I catch my breath. OK, focus, let's try this sucker one more time. Unrack, down, up, down, urghh... forget it. I'm a mess. Nothing is cooperating.. least of all my brain.

I stomp off a second time. Pissed a second time.

I go to the locker room to calm down and notice my mouth is all bloody. Oh great. Please don't tell me I knocked anything loose in there! (I haven't, it's just a flesh wound!)

OK forget the dumb bench press. Focus on pullups.

I take the plastic walking boot off one foot and my sneaker off the other. I hang on the bar and feel balanced for the first time in a while. I hang rod straight just like coach wants and when he says go, I go. One.
"Beautiful!"
Two.
"Yes!"
Three. "Yeah! Keep it up!"
Three-and-a-half...
"Come on, you can do it!"
Three-and-three-quarters...
"Do it!"

Ha, I do it alright. In trying to get myself up, my form disintegrates completely, I kick out with my right foot, and smack it hard against the cold hard steel of the machine. #$%! I drop and sob. Damn, that hurt even more than the face plow!

OK. Collect yourself. Breathe.


Time for the paddle machine. I adjust the seat & the foot rest, callibrate, sit, plop my re-boot-clad foot up on the plate and begin. I'm out of the gate at a 2:14 split rate... feeling strong and solid. Coach is happy. "I like it. This is beautiful. Keep it right there the whole way." The WHOLE way? Uh, ok. I'll do my best. I keep going, and suddenly my dumb boot slides, my butt slides.. everything is just sliding. It's hard to adjust when you're one legged and going for bust. Somehow I keep it together, but lose about 19 seconds in the process. DANG. Still, it's over, it's done and it's totally respectable.

Coach gives me the choice of ending my test right there, since I ran last time, and will run again next time.  But obviously I can't this time. So it's either stop now, or get on the rowing machine and have at it.
"Since you're here, go ahead and row. I won't have anything to measure it against, but go ahead, get your heart rate up." Dude, can't you see it's ALREADY up? :)


So I strap one foot in, rest the other one with the boot on top, and go. Whoosh whoosh. Yeah, this is it. 12 minutes.. piece of cake. I row hard. My split time is good. I've got a teamie next to me about to start. She sets off strong. We push and encourage each other. I watch the minutes count down. I get to the last 100 meters and crank it. My neighbor grunts encouragement at me. It's puke or shut up time. 10, 5, DONE. I roll off the machine and just lie on the floor, motionless save for my chest which is heaving like crazy.

"You ok? You look very white."
"Yeah coach. I'm good."
And I am. A few hiccups. No worries. March 24th I'll fix it all. (I better because I won't have any excuses. No boot, no face plow, no kicking, no NOTHING.)

As for G... well, she's still writing up her tale from a beach in Florida at present. Lucky mutt. So you'll have to wait for that installment. Actually, she's not just goofing down in the lovely sunny heat.. she's about to run 13.1 in the Miami Marathon. And she's gonna KILL IT.

Where are the bubbles??

Second fit test is the day after tomorrow. We're both starting to freak out. G because she wants to snag a spot on the boat; me because I want to keep mine. Even though I made the first pick, it's not a free ticket. In some respects the pressure is even greater now than at the first test back in November. I have to justify my spot and coaches' choice.

Trainings this week have been tough. Still a lot of humor though. And lots of positive energy. We started doing our routine yesterday, super-setting our exercises so we could get out of the gym at a reasonable time. At one point we looked at one another, raised our eyebrows and wondered if we'd somehow goofed up on the weights we'd chosen.

"Do your weights seem light to you?"
"Yeah. Yours?"
"16, 17, 18, 19, 20. Yeah!"
"Could we be THAT much stronger? Than last week?"
"Err... did u write down your numbers right?"
"You did them."
"Oh. Then they're right."
"Wow. This is crazy."
"I guess we're just beasts."

I don't know what was going on, but it made us feel great. We finished and went to hit the hot tub.

A very, shall-we-say, portly, sixty-something lady in a bright, flowered bathing suit was sitting in the tub. And taking up a lot of it. As I approached, I noticed the water was awfully calm.
"Hello. No bubbles?" I said as I got up to the edge. Please don't let it be broken.
"No bubbles."
"No bubbles?" I repeated, dazed. This was completely unexpected. And unacceptable. What does she MEAN no bubbles?
"No bubbles," she stated a little more forcefully now, with a meaningful look. As if to say "what don't you get?" But I got it now. It's not that there WEREN'T bubbles, she just didn't WANT any. Drat!
"Oh." She must have thought me thick as two short planks by this point. "No bubbles. Ok."
I got in carefully - my first time trying this out after surgery... didn't want to slip and fall and mess everything up, everything's been healing so well. G at my rear, we maneuvered around the lady's knees and sandaled feet (really? who does that?) and plopped down at the opposite end of the tub. It was too much like being in a bath and not the exciting, massaging experience we'd been anticipating. Grrr.

"Hey, there's sort of a jet over here," G said, "slide over here." I scooched over. It was weak, but it felt good on my still-bruised leg. The gentle pressure loosened some of the stiffness and eased the tension. I closed my eyes and started to doze.. as much as you can in that sort of situation. I started to lose my seat a bit and righting myself, glanced up just in time to see a man, also of considerable girth, who'd been looking over at us since we'd walked in, raise his bulk up and out of the swimming pool to our right and approach the tub. I was partly annoyed at the thought of having additional companions in the tub (yes I was feeling  decidedly anti-social, so what!?), but mostly I was hopeful that he would just hit the button and swirl up the water. Fat chance. Instead, he lowered himself in with great difficulty, and claimed a spot directly opposite the lady.

They seemed to know one another, and though she started talking at him, he seemed more interested in G and me. Sorry, but we're really not interested in small talk. We just want some bubbles!! 

Each time the lady (who, it turned out, was the man's wife) altered her position, G and I sent her telepathic messages, trying to convince her that she really wanted to get out. It was excrutiating! But eventually, out she got. G and I looked hopefully at the man.

"Would you mind if we turned on the bubbles?"
"As soon as she leaves, you go right ahead."
Yay! The day was saved!
"I'm big," he said, "but SHE wears the pants."