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!