Category: burbathlon

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Where’s Your Head At?

I have been struggling, struggling, struggling with being able to focus lately –  in most areas of my life, but fitness and training especially.  I have had too much trouble deciding where and what I want to spend time on, so not only is my training all over the place, but I’m not in headspace to set goals, and as for blogging about it… well…

I’ll try to give you an illustration of the fitness/training part of my brain lately:

This probably plays fast and loose with the laws of the Venn diagram, but it’s the best I can do to sort through the jumble.  Let’s break this down some more:

  • Triathlon, comprised of Swim, Bike and Run.  This is still my biggest love, still a priority.  The temptation to let things slide due to the “off-season” is there, but there are also arguments that there shouldn’t be an off-season (Tridot calls it “Out-Season”) especially if you haven’t had a heavy “On-Season”.  On the other hand, maybe it’s the time of year to work on strength, like say through…

  • Crossfit.  Confessions first: with only a few months left in the year, I realized I’m in danger of the sessions I bought back in January expiring.  I’ve been even worse than sporadic up until that point, but I did manage to step it up in the last month or so, still falling short of the twice a week I wanted. What I like most is that I’m often addressing muscles in the posterior chain; easy to neglect, but very important muscles. 

    Big workouts have given me Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS), which for me always sets in 2 days after the workout, which really throws off the idea of getting back in there for a WOD (workout of the day) 2 days later.
Besides that, the other problem I have is that it’s time consuming, which is a weird thing to say given that I’ve seen WODs that are 10 minutes long.  Still, I have to drive there (it’s short, but that’s still more than using the in-house corporate gym or my basement or running.  There’s the warm-up and skills portion (which I’m grateful for), yet they start when everybody is ready and there, not just when I want to get things moving along.  There’s no shower at the box, so after I drive back, I still have to shower and change.  The truth is, where there’s a will there’s a way, so these kinds of excuses shouldn’t be an obstacle if I really love doing it, but I guess I don’t.  I’d love to improve in some of the skills (pull-ups, dead-lifts, pistol squats and handstand push-ups come to mind), but I don’t get to pick what comes up in the WOD.  I recently tried (again) snatches, but I didn’t do so great with them; it just feels like flirting with injury.  Forty-somethings need to play it safe sometimes, which brings us to…









  • Parkour*.  The asterisk is for the fact that I’m forty (did I mention that already) and I don’t have the tolerance for risk that doing head-over-heels flips would entail, but I do like working on jumps, balancing and climbing during Burbathlon. What I’d really like to achieve is the Kong Vault (or at least the Monkey Vault). I just think it might come in handy, especially if I ever try an Obstacle Course race again. What I’ve been working on is getting my legs through with my hands on the ground (or any surface really). It’s an exercise in flexibility and discipline, really.



  • Nordic Skiing. This one is marked as being outside the benefit zone of triathlon, but according to what I’ve written before, maybe it shouldn’t be. At any rate, Nordic skiing is one of my favourite forms of exercise, and as they say on Game of Thrones, Winter is Coming. I got lucky finding a pair of roller-skis at a ski swap, and knowing that the snow hasn’t been reliable in recent years, I snagged them. When I get a chance to practice with them for more than 10 minutes, I’ll write up a little review, but based on my current experience, I won’t feel safe using them to commute to work any time soon.





  • Martial Arts. For reasons I can’t quite understand that myself looking through local places that offer Kung Fu like Wing Chun, and/or San Shou. I also have nostalgia for Jiu-Jitsu. The problem is I’m still in position where I can’t leave the house in the evenings. Most things that I have seen after work are right during the time when I’m helping the kids to bed, and they’re still not really putting themselves to sleep so that stuff it’s probably going to have to wait.
If I take a look at my accomplishments in October (for example) the calendar looks like this:
The Little Standing man is for Circuit Training = Crossfit WOD or Tabata Bootcamp

That could be worse. Some swims, some bikes… too few runs. At the very least, I joined a Govember Bike Challenge hosted by Jamie at From Couch to Ironwoman, and it’s gotten me on the trainer.

Are you madly off in all directions like this? Do you have “Fitness ADD” too?
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Burbathlon and Matrix Workout Remixed

Remix (Broader Context): A remix may also refer to a non-linear re-interpretation of a given work or media other than audio. Such as a hybridizing process combining fragments of various works (from Wikipedia).

Whenever I go out to do a Burbathlon, I have to admit I usually improvise.  I have a few bags of tricks that I use with park benches, picnic tables and playground equipment, and the exercises number more than the slots I find to do them in, so no two Burbathlons are alike.  Still, variety is the spice of life, and Instagram has been great for finding new exercises to ‘Remix’ my workouts.  To wit,

 The horizontal pull-up from Shauna Harrison.



Dips…

Handstands like Running Rachel:





Box Jumps like Electra-Fi:



Matrix Workouts

I’ve also been remixing these (You do remember Matrix Workouts don’t you? Try those links if not).  The one sentence refresh: a workout comprised of exercises organized by muscle/movement groups (push, legs, pull) in the columns, and priorities (core/balance, power, endurance) in the rows.  I’d always noticed the overlap between exercises that help build core strength and balance while hitting a particular muscle group and those that build endurance in the same group, but I’ve decided to stop worrying about the dividing lines between the two. 

Here’s how I structured the latest incarnation:



Push (shoulder/chest)
Legs
Pull (Back/Biceps)
Core/Balance
Handstand hold (max time) – against a wall
Rolling Pistol Squats
Plank Rows – 1 minute
Power
Incline Chest Press (dumbbells)
Deadlifts
Seated Cable Row
Endurance
Push-ups – 1 minute
Jump lunges/split squats
Negative Phase Pull-ups


  • Handstands are making an appearance here too.  My biggest weakness is always anything with overhead work, so by sticking to bodyweight stuff like this, I hope to become stronger without compounding any problems.  Against a wall I find I can hold it less than a minute so far.
  • Pistol Squats are the ultimate one-legged squat and great for building a runner’s strength – I just can’t do a full range of motion on them though.  There’s lots of ways to scale them: holding on to something, reducing the range a little with a box under your butt, using a Swiss ball to do them against a wall).


I had the idea to use the latter half of a technique that practioners of Shorinji-Kan Jiu-Jitsu called a ‘Judo Roll’ (N.B. not an roll that would be used by someone who does Judo).  It’s a shoulder roll where one heel gets planted and you rise up into a fighting stance, and that rise has some similarity to a pistol squat – I apologize for not being able to find a video.  The momentum for the roll makes getting up from the bottom a little easier – in theory.  I started on my back and rolled backwards up to my shoulder and tried to complete the latter half, but I was only able to rise all the way up using a bar and occasionally touching a wall for balance; and even then I could only get 5 reps per leg.  I still believe that this exercise can pay dividends to strength and balance – especially for runners, so I want to keep working on it.

  • Plank rows – I’ve used these before… a.k,.a Renegade Rows.
  • Incline Chest Press with dumbbells – I struggle with any kind of overhead press due to shoulder stability issues.  This lets me approach that functionality in a controlled fashion.  When I think about it, what does a classic bench press simulate? Not too many situations where I have to lift things while lying flat on my back… this is more like it.
  • Deadlifts – You could argue that these don’t belong strictly under the leg category, but the first time I started incorporating them in workouts, I felt it in my hamstrings most the next day.

  • Seated Cable Row – this breaks my ‘No Machines’ rule and isn’t very functional, but in the Power row/category, I do want a little more targeting of my latissimus dorsi_and trapezius  muscles for now.
  • Push-ups – doing them for 1 minute straight.
  • Jump Lunges – still struggling to get 1 minute’s worth straight through.
  • Negative Phase Pull-ups – I can only do about 1.5 pull-ups, so making a workout out of that seems pointless, but by jumping/climbing to the top of the movement and lowering myself as slowly as possible, I can get more reps out and help my muscular endurance.  This is functional and makes up for the seated cable row.
After I get through a circuit or two of the 3×3 matrix, I’ve been adding a little capper or two that I find and haven’t been able to fit in otherwise like Shauna Harrison’s (her again?) one-legged jumping squat …



or Trainer Davey’s Pike-Jack Push-up

I need to wrap up this post… I haven’t had a workout in 2-3 days, and I’m going out for another Burbathlon… I might mix in Mom’s Little Running Buddy’s Focus for 5 while I’m out there.

When it comes to exercise, who do you beg, borrow and steal from lately?

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Midweek Motivation: Seek The Hard

I wanted to get this post out for Monday as in “Motivational Monday”, but instead I’ll steal from Kovas at Midwest Multisport Life and do “Midweek Motivation”.



I was riding along during the bike leg of the Muskoka 5150.  I was somewhere around the halfway mark and had some of those nasty hills behind me, and I found myself cruising along and thinking to myself: ”This is nice…”

Then it hit me.  I found it “nice”, because it was easy (there might have been a slight decline) and this was a race, I shouldn’t find it easy, and I couldn’t afford to savour it or draw this out.  The easy, downhill or even flat parts should be over as quickly as possible, and I needed to get to the next uphill climb – I needed to Seek The Hard (part).

On that day, I tried to blast through the easy parts and get to where I was really working; on that course, in that weather, it wasn’t hard to find.

Seeking the hard in training is just as important – that’s how you get the most out of the time spent, and make yourself ready for any hard parts you face in training.

This last week, I sought the hard in my training.

On Sunday, I tried this WOD from AllAroundJoe, which combines swim intervals, burpees and sit-ups.




I completed the 5 rounds of 200m swim, 10 burpees, 10 sit-ups in 25 minutes flat, then did the 800m swim (after stopping to put on my wet-suit... doing burpees in a wet-suit on a hot summer day isn’t ‘hard’… it’s stupid… important to know the difference).

 On Tuesday, I did a modified bike #WorkoutHack with less hill repeats due to the crazy heat and humidity. Check this out:





On Wednesday I tried our corporate gym’s ‘Tabata’ class. A warm-up, then 6 different Tabatas (most involved altenating whole body exercises on the 20 second work intervals). It was… intense, to say the least.

 Friday was another hot day, and my weapon of choice was a Burbathlon. I’m hoping training in the heat gets my body acclimatized to it should the weather be as punishing on race day. I used this article to shape the kinds of strength work I’m trying to build into my Burbathlon workouts.






Fitness bloggers love to discuss what their mantra is; what do they repeat to themselves to keep digging deep and find the strength to keep going when they simply don’t want to anymore? Seek The Hard… I may have found mine.

What’s Yours?

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Felicitous Friday: Week in Review

Another week has gone by with enough interesting developments to merit a recap post!


  • On Tuesday I did a new record for longest swim workout using the ‘Ladder’ workout from Meals And Miles’ Swim Workouts Compilation.  That was before breakfast, and I made it to a Gravity Machine class for lunch.  If I had one more workout/form of exercise, I could have called it another Trifecta Tuesday, but since I didn’t, we’ll call it a #FAIL 😉
  • Those two workouts made me a little sore for Wednesday, but it was some of the nicest weather we’d had all year, so wild horses weren’t going to keep me from doing a Burbathlon! I wasn’t too intense on upper body strength exercises, but I did fit in lunges with a park swing, box jumps on a bench, push-ups, step-ups on a stump, balance beam on a few logs, as well as jumping and (simple-)vaulting some logs and a baseball diamond fence.

    It starts with a hill and a path into the woods….
    The Big Hill to Climb
    Dips in the trail…


    This pic was taken in a colder season… but you can see the lunge with a swing.

  • That all left me too sore on Thursday to do my planned workouts, so recovery it was… especially since I neglected to wear compression or foam-roll the night before.
  • Friday is a day of excitement.  I tried out a bike workout hack that I’ve had rolling around in my head for a while, but you’ll have to wait to see it..  The rest of the weekend is jam-packed with activities and get togethers including initial planning this year’s Levac Attack and a Fitfluential Tweet-Up (or whatever we call get-togethers of online friends) to welcome Pavement Runner to Toronto, where he’ll be doing the Goodlife Toronto Marathon.


How was your week? Is your weekend full of fitness and excitement?

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Spartan Race Recap

I ran the Sprint Spartan Race the weekend before last.  It’s an experience I won’t forget, but I don’t really mean that in a good way.  The Spartan Race seems to pride itself on toughness, and part of that seems to be to keep race details in the dark, and give racers a surprise.  OK… so you should train yourself for general fitness, and rest assured you’ll be running a lot of hills.  I did the Warrior Dash the year before (I never got around to writing a recap), so this post will draw a lot of comparisons between the two events.

From the pre-race preparation email:
Greetings Spartans,

CLICK HERE to download the BIB LIST. The number on the left of your name is your CHIP number, use the search function in the PDF to search for you name. For Macs, use command+alt+ F to find your info.  Before you arrive at the race, please write this number in Permanent Marker on your Fore-Head ONLY. If you cannot open the PDF we will send an online version tomorrow.

I guess a Spartan doesn’t have a job that he/she has to go to the next day.  I thought this was a joke, but it was repeated later in the email and they were trying to enforce it at registration.  Most pictures I saw from before I raced seemed to show a minority of people who actually had numbers on their face, but at the starting line I was a little surprised to see how many people played along.  I wonder how long it takes to scrub off, though it would become apparent that the ideal Spartan Race demographic has nothing but tons of time to kill.   I just wrote my number on both arms (accidentally backwards on my right) – I’m used to body marking from triathlon.

I was aiming to get to the race parking lot around 2 hours before (they recommend at least an hour), and we managed to be there 90 minutes before my race was supposed to take off.  After waiting in line for a shuttle bus (yellow rocket school bus), the ride there and making it through registration, I had all of 10 minutes to spare.

For a place that caters to both cross-country skiing and mountain biking, Hardwood Hills was not exactly stroller friendly.  Maybe I should have let the $15 spectator fee dissuade me from having my wife and kids along, but we like to do things as a family, and I sure love the moral support.

Like I had said, I had about 10 minutes to get my timing chip and find the starting line.  With some of the requisite pumping up (and spraying with the fire hose), we were off.

I did like the course layout; at the Warrior Dash the year before, mud was the first thing encountered, and it happened right in the beginning before different paces over different terrain could thin people out a little.  Here, we went a good way before encountering obstacles.  I really struggle to remember every obstacle and its order after the fact, so I just tried to put them in table form below.

The mountain bike/cross country ski trails can get narrow, meaning there were bottlenecks at certain junctures.  The only time I really minded this was when one fellow decided to look back and check how his team-mates were doing, right between two trees we all had to run through.  I had some success communicating with racers I wanted to pass:”Coming up on your right/left”.

The trail presented a lot of climbing and descending, and if you do one of these, hill training is the best thing you can do to prepare.  It was a nice, natural environment to be running through.  Anyway, on to the –

Obstacles!

Name Description Comments
Mountain Crawl Up a hill under a camouflage net meant going on all fours If you’ve ever done mountain climbers, this is what they’re for, only here you’ve got to move your arms too!
Culvert Tunnel a Belly crawl through plastic tubing I was too big to really get my knees involved, so more than anything else this meant pulling myself along with my arms
Cargo Net A loose net about 10-12’ high.  Climb up, over and down the other side You swung around a fair bit making falling off a real possiblity.  I got my foot caught just as I had the other on the ground and wanted to leave the obstacle.  I did a jiu-jitsu roll to get free!
Rope Climb Straight up a rope (with no knots) for guys, rope ladders for girls I doubted my upper body strength on this one, and after a quick try, I realized my technique was lacking too.  I did the 20 burpees instead – the only obstacle where I did that.
Kettle Bell Pulley Raise a couple of kettle bells to around 20’ by pulling a rope down. One of their ‘obstacles’ which is more of a straight fitness/exercise station
Mud Pit Barb Wire Get under the barb wire by crawling through the mud Ow.  There were roots to scratch up your knees (see photos).  You couldn’t avoid them because you couldn’t see them.
Mud Pools Without barb wire you still have to wade through hip to chest height mud By the time you get out, you’re carrying another 5 pounds worth of mud in your clothes.  A hallmark of these kinds of races
8’ wall Get over the wall Did it in one jump and pull-up.  Burbathlon came in handy…
12’ wall Guess…. Unless you’re the size of a pro-basket ball player, you need help of other racers (or to cheat by grabbing a foothold along the side of the wall – that was me).
Bag of Cement Carry a bag of cement (20-30lbs, I figure) on you shoulder (or however you choose) about 100m or so This was one of the easier ones for a parent of small children.  There was only one bag, and it never screamed in my ear.
Spear Throw Throw a spear at a large straw dummy.  As long as you make contact, you’ll avoid extra burpees. Lucky they’re lenient on hitting the target.  My throw grazed it lightly.
Wheel Barrow Cart a wheel barrow-like device for 50-100m. Not much to say
Crooked Balance Beam Stay on the narrow, zig-zagging beam or do burpees Proud I didn’t fall off.  Burbathlon came in handy…
Fire Jump Jump over flames 2-3’ high Another jiu-jitsu roll for me – OVER THE FLAMES!  I got an ‘oooh’ from some spectators
Rowing Machines 20 rows on a rowing machine/ergometer Obstacle?  Sure…
Hay Bales Climb over hay bales using the attached netting
Gladiator Gauntlet Two guys with padded staves and a third un-armed (to push or wrestle you?) By this point the race had run longer than I planned and I thought of my wife having to deal with two screaming kids.  This must have given me the crazy eyes, because I barged straight through those guys with body checks.  They managed to take out my friend Rob though (see photo)
Big Ramp The final climb.  There are ropes, but it’s still slippery and steep. Managed to make it on my first try, though I benefited from watching people in front of me.

After all that, I felt pretty proud to have finished.  I had expected to finish in under 45 minutes (since the race was described as being 3 miles+; i.e. something around/over 5km), but in reality it turned out to be over 7km and took me nearly an hour.  Cue the smiles and victory poses.

Shark Boy and I show our muscles

Hulk Hogan has 24″ pythons… I have pyth-nons

The smiles were not to last however.  The rinse off facility was a meagre garden hose (Warrior Dash used a fire hose, and even that doesn’t get much of the mud off) which had yet another slow, long line-up.  After getting some over-priced food ($23 for a personal pizza, and order of fries, and 3 ice-creams) to feed our starving selves, escaping the venue involved spending over 2 hours in line to get onto a school bus back to the parking lot.  When it started to rain, my wife took the baby into shelter, but someone had to stay with the stroller and hold our place in line, so Shark Boy and I risked hypothermia; he was visibly shivering well before we were able to board, and unfortunately, he’s a little too dynamic to stay still under a tent roof with his mother – it takes both of us to manage our kids for any extended amount of time.  I tried to keep us under the umbrella, but there’s only so much that will do.  Fortunately, once some extra buses beyond the paltry 2-3 that had originally been doing the shuttling showed up, the better nature of some of race participants took over.  The people in front of us in line wanted “to make sure the kids got on this bus”.  Back at the parking lot, another long hike back to the car and we were finally in warmer air and on our way home… through weekend cottage country traffic.  My wife later compared the experience to being at the airport with small children; you have no-where to go and you’re penned in so you feel like a hostage, while hearing the kids’ screams of irritation, boredom and discomfort.

Afterwards, I hoped to find my time results online and find a few photos for this post, but every time I found myself, I seemed to be a background player… and as for the results, check this from the post-race follow-up email:

Congratulations on your Epic achievement,

…

Results can be found HERE Please use the search function to search for your name. For some participants you will find the Letters TBA by you name, some of the Data stored on the timing box suffered damage there was a small electrical fire by the finish line, we have sent the drive off to see if we can extract the information in the meantime we will keep you posted. 

…

If you were part of the group that were unable to receive a T-shirt at the end of the race. We apologise sincerely, our final shirt delivery had been held for inspection for Canada Customs for over 3 weeks and despite our best efforts to fly in replacements we were unable to to get the total. HOWEVER it is looking promising that the shirts will be released in the next 48 Hours and when you crossed the finish line you would have given your CHIP Number and Size please confirm your desired Postal adress by CLICKING HERE and we will collate your request with the finish line list and you will receive your T-Shirt.

We would like to apologise as some of you may have experienced line ups at Bag check, showers or the shuttle bus. We would like to Stress how important your experience is to us and we have committed to solve these problems for your next race. 

I had grabbed an extra large T-Shirt (I wear Large) on my way out of the finisher’s area since I couldn’t find a large, and having my fans/family there meant not having to deal with the Bag check.  The basic theme of the event’s problems seems to be that they want as many people showing up as possible (they get admission money for both participants and spectators), but they don’t ensure any reasonable service for all those people.  They either need to cap admissions lower, or spend more on what it takes to get people in and out or wherever they need to be.  I stand by my initial assessment that I got by reading the intro email mentioned at the top of the page: SPARTAN RACE – An event for Morons, by Morons.   I’ll never participate in this event again.

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Getting Back Into Good Habits

It’s been so long… I really shouldn’t have let it get this far… I don’t know if there’s even a point anymore… I don’t even know how I’m going to get started again…


These are the kind of thoughts that run through your head when you’ve been absent from something you’ve been meaning to do regularly, and it’s the same whether we’re talking about exercise or writing a blog.  It’s almost worse in this case, since the blog is mostly about exercise and training.

I’ve had a long hiatus from both, and I don’t feel good about it.  I’m not going to dwell on why it happened, it’s in the past.  I was able to get back into exercising easier than back into blogging, but I think the key is the same in both cases, like Nike tells us: Just Do It.  Don’t overanalyze how to make your grand return, just start with something. 

Without further ado, let me tell you about my weekend workout.  A group of people from Jiu-Jitsu have commited to doing the Spartan Sprint and I’m one of them.   Having a group training day seemed appealing so it was scheduled for this past Sunday at High Park in Toronto.  The way we structured our workout was to do sets of 5 minute runs (each led by a different individual).  After the run, we did a Pyramid of Squats, Lunges and Pushups:

2 Squats | 2 Lunges (1 Left, 1 Right) | 2 Pushups
4 Squats | 4 Lunges (2 Left, 2 Right) | 4 Pushups
6 Squats | 6 Lunges (3 Left, 3 Right) | 6 Pushups
8 Squats | 8 Lunges (4 Left, 4 Right) | 8 Pushups
6 Squats | 6 Lunges (3 Left, 3 Right) | 6 Pushups
4 Squats | 4 Lunges (2 Left, 2 Right) | 4 Pushups
2 Squats | 2 Lunges (1 Left, 1 Right) | 2 Pushups

For my run, we did Burbathlon jumping over and on picnic tables and benches and ducking under railings and signs.  We also did some hill work and sprints.  Overall, we got very tired, very hot and very proud of ourselves.

 I brought the whole family along to High Park; Shark Boy played on the playground and the Lightning Kid had a nap.  On my last run I tried carrying Shark Boy along – he was game but once I wasn’t able to keep up with the group, I seemed to run out of steam.  We finished off the workout with some ab work (just because) and it turned into a lovely day… especially for ice cream.

Now that I’ve broken the seal on blog posts, hopefully I can get back into the full swing of things.

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Burbathlon Thoughts

Last week I got a chance to do not one, but two Burbathlons, and I tried a few new things.

On Tuesday the weather was warm enough for shorts (in March! in Toronto!) so off I went.  I had a water-bottle belt packed, but I’d been missing the bottle itself and I figured I’d hydrated enough in the morning to not need anything along the way… WRONG!

I found my mouth parched fairly soon after starting.  I ended up doing a little extra hill work with a climb straight up the Centennial Park Ski hill and another going up the service road (in addition to the hill that takes me out of the Etobicoke Creek Valley to the park, and the berm near Eglinton road.  I mixed in some squats, single-leg squats, push-ups, spiderman crawls and sprints (not necessarily in that order) into the overall run.  I also took the opportunity to start to prepare for the Spartan Race by practicing some jiu-jitsu rolls.

Jiu-Jitsu practices a lot of break-falling to avoid being hurt when being thrown, but at higher levels you can use them to dive over obstacles and land in a roll.  Unfortunately I’m so rusty that I was mostly practicing them in the grass from a walk.  Still, if I keep up the practice, maybe I’ll pull one off on race day.

For Friday’s workout, I swore I’d be better hydrated.  Pulling off random jumps and strength exercises (never mind jiu-jitsu rolls) with a bottle in the small of my back didn’t seem too comfortable, but it gave me a chance to try out a piece of equipment I bought last season with this sort of thing in mind…

 Salomon hydration packs seem to get good reviews (and I’ll write up and post my own soon enough)… I liked the idea of this one not only for hydration, but as a good way to have extra pockets for gadgets like my phone, camera, iPod, whatever.  Pockets are always hard to find on running gear, don’t you think?  I decided not to do rolls while wearing it though, since the hydration bladder might burst.

Speaking of gadgets, this was the first outing with the new Garmin Forerunner 910XT.  I’d lost my Forerunner 305, and I think I bought the new one out of some kind of bout of self-pity/retail therapy.  After the workout I joked with someone that my dirty little secret is that I’m only into multi-sport fitness for the toys. Yet another gear review post for me to write, but I will say that I got up and running with it without having spent a lot of time to set it up beforehand.

The other bit of gear I stuffed into the vest pockets was a skipping rope.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’m interested in some of the benefits barefoot/natural running has to offer without being willing to go ‘all-in’ on the craze.  This video really caught my attention:

What struck me is that he’s actually going pretty fast and his technique looks much closer to ‘normal’ running than most stuff I’ve seen.  I have real problems not heel striking even when I’m actively working on this sort of thing, but I loved the idea of using the jump-rope to implement the ‘natural’ stride, so I gave it a try for around 100m or so on this workout.

With the spring coming, I’m looking forward to doing more Burbathlon workouts, and maybe getting some of my own video to share.

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Burbathlon Lives!

You may remember me talking about Burbathlon before and the unusually mild weather we’ve had this past week let me get out and give it a try again.  I decided to do live tweets with photos as I went along (though I wish I had turned on the Add Location feature).  I had written up various exercises with links in a Memo on my Blackberry so I could cut and paste the tweets; still it took up time I should have been putting into working out harder.  I don’t apologize for the fun I had, though.  I’ve marked the exercises I did on the map from Endomondo at their approximate locations.  Have a look at the descriptions below.

1.) The trail is gravel till here, but I run up the hill to get into the more forested area.  See the tweet.

2.) I did a balance beam routine down this log.  See the tweet.

3.) Our company running group uses this for hill training.   See the tweet.

4.) This pic didn’t turn out so well (maybe next time I’ll bring a real camera instead of my Blackberry), but it’s Incline Pushups against the fence.  Not the most challenging but I had done a 100 Pushups workout (Week 4, Day 1) prior to heading outside so there!  See the tweet.

5.) Next I did Single Leg Squats while holding onto the lamppost.  This area has benches and tables and little fences that I use for Box Jumps, Squats and other exercises.  Maybe next time, more.  I realized I was running long with all the tweeting and picture taking, so I started to head back from here.  See the tweet.

6.) This tree looks climbable with a good run-up and jump.  It is not, at least to me.  #FAIL.  See the tweet.

7.) The trail seems to be used by mountain bikers/BMXers.  That doesn’t stop me from jumping off or over these on foot!  See the tweet.

8.) I found a tree I could climb (it was leaning at an angle against another tree.  As any cat can tell you, the hard part is getting back down! See the tweet.

So that was a successful (albeit short and sweet) Burbathlon.  With the new snow, it’s going to be a little challenging to do these, but I hope to post more of them in the future.

By the way, this was done on the Etobicoke Creek Trail and I had the pleasure of doing a write-up for Loving the Run’s Unpaved Trail Series..

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The Multi-sport Mind: Introduction to Burbathlon

I wanted to make a post about my ‘Burbathon’ idea a multimedia affair, with photographs, video, maybe even maps so that I could really communicate the concept and have it be well-understood enough that other who wanted to give it a try could implement a comparable workout.  Time has been very hard to come by this week, so I think I’ll try and keep it short, with a promise of follow-up posts in the future.

I’ve often said that I seem to have fitness-ADD.  Once I had started running (and liked it), I worked my way up to the half-marathon level, and after having explained that I only did a HALF marathon for the umpteen thousandth time, I worked my way up to the full 42.2km.  While I’m proud of the accomplishment (if not my finishing time), my big problem with the whole experience: TOO MUCH RUNNING.  I love running, but following a marathon training program is about 6 days a week; and to me, it just got monotonous.  You can break some of those running sessions up with cross-training, but what if the cross training, was the sport itself? Enter triathlon, and I’ve never looked back.

Fitness ADD could be renamed to a more politically correct Multi-sport Mind; since I made up both terms, why not?  I guess I’m always wondering what else I could be doing.  Once I was swimming, biking and running, adding strength training to the mix was inevitable.  There is a school of thought that treats strength training as a sub-optimal distraction from triathlon training, but the multi-sport mind simply ignores such opinions.  So, when you add in the occasional strength exercise into a run, you’re starting to get the right idea; I had discussed this over twitter with Andie ‘The Fit Geek’, and she says she does this in what she calls ‘fun runs’.
You see a park bench, a picnic table, a fence, do squats so your butt touches the bench, or decline pushups.

But that’s not all!  I’m also attracted to trail-running for the simple reasons that I like the outdoors and forest environments especially, and trails (being softer) have lower impact which is nice to keep my Achilles tendinitis at bay.  I’m lucky to have the Etobicoke creek near where I live, and part of the trail is very rough and wild (suitable for mountain biking, if only too short, I believe).  So leaping over the bumps and jumps, hopping over logs, or balancing on them adds to the fun.  It’s like ‘Parkour Lite’ – since I’m too old and have too many injuries to try the really crazy stuff.  It’s largely inspired by events like the Spartan Race, Warrior Dash (which I did in July), and the Men’s Health Urbanathlon.

I think I’ve given you some idea as to the general gist of this kind of a workout, and I promise to elaborate in future posts.  Anybody else have fun things that they do while running to work on strength, agility or balance or just to break up the monotony?