I am Sparta!

CrossFit Central held a UTB yesterday, and as always, it was a great workout AND a lot of fun. There were more than 90 people there. Rows and rows of us, dropping into squats and pushups on Jeremy’s command, while the curious and the slack-jawed lined the bridge over our heads, watching the action. The workout was challenging in a I-feel-fit-and-inspired way, which was good because it was only my first workout of the day.

Check out the complete, panoramic version.

The second was the Keep Austin Weird 5k. According to Dave (and the all-knowing webbernet), it was about 98 degrees during our run (jog, walk, straggle) yesterday at 6:00 p.m. We ran most of it, slowing down to walk and bitch about the heat for a total of, maybe, 7 minutes or so. The heat was so oppressive it wasn’t worth talking about — and AIDS Ride rules** were in effect anyway.

Along with the traditional water stations, the Keep Austin Weird race has “fun stops” along the route, I suspect as a means to distract runners from the fact that the course feels like it’s on the surface of the sun. One of the fun stops was one of those ring-the-bell contraptions usually found at some rundown carnival. Swinging the sledgehammer made me feel like a strongman and after a few attempts — and some coaching from the members of the Austin Police Run Team (“It comes from the hips… and the heart. Do you have an ex-husband?”), I hit the target hard enough to hit the 9… “Hercules.” Not bad.

I’m sad that my CrossFit peeps will be gone this week. But it’s for a good reason. They’re competing at the national CrossFit Games, and I hope they trounce the rest of the competitors. Back here at home, I’ve challenged myself to do Spartan workouts M, W, F, and S on my own, with runs on T, Th, F, and S. There have been a few Spartan workouts that I didn’t get to do that looked like fun (a.k.a., difficult enough to be silly) so I’m going to do them this week. I think I might also try Annie (are you OK), too.

And in my last bit of CrossFit Central news, I was surprised (and delighted) to find a photo of myself on the CrossFit Central home page today. I am Sparta.


See the full-size version here, or visit CrossFitCentral.com

**AIDS Ride rules
In 1997 and 1998, Dave and I participated in the California AIDS Ride, a 580-mile bike ride from San Francisco to LA to raise money for AIDS organizations. Ride all day, camp at night, have transformative experiences. If you know me at all, you know camping and I are not a promising combination — and Dave and I have, as they say, “a lot of heart” but not a lot of speed. So we knew the Ride was going to be very challenging for us. And we promised each other that we wouldn’t complain. We knew what we were getting into. We knew it was going to be hard and scary and demand things of us we couldn’t predict before we started, so we vowed to be supportive of each other and to fight to remain positive — or to at least keep our mouths shut when negativity was winning. And so we did. We mostly didn’t complain. And we had a wonderful experience. Life is best when AIDS Ride rules are in effect.

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