Come rain or shine!

Last night's training marks 3 weeks since the group first started Hell Night at the Westcliff Stairs (aka Westcliff-hell-stairs-of-doom) for Urbanathlon 2010.

Our training continues up to 6 times a week in various locations and consists of various strength, cardio, speed and agility exercises working the entire body. The team is working well together, and each person gets a chance to add new exercises as we progress.

With the rains arriving last night (and the outside temperature still holding firm at a warm 20 degrees Celsius) we motored onwards, albeit cautiously, up the stairs. Until they got too slippery for our usual course, and we had to make a few changes. (for instance, we included literal footskating down the slippery roads. New Balance (850's) + Tar Road + Rain Water = Grip Fail. I somehow don't see this exercise sticking, excuse the pun, to our regular plan. Honestly though, it was loads of fun!!!!)

This total grip failure in the wet has put a serious question mark over the use of my 850 NB's for the race.

The early morning training after hell night is always a laugh. With the body still aching in the legs, we move onto upper body and abdominal work on the Jungle Gym at Zoo Lake. These circuits today were a killer. My arms felt like lead afterwards. Awesome! :-)

Onwards and upwards! I'm looking forward to seeing how the rainy season affects our sessions as we move into summer. (as I can get the chance to test my other shoes in the wet..)

The bar has been raised!

Structured training with the group is paying off, as we saw last night during Hell Night plus again at this morning's session. (The Westcliff stairs saw one change, and that was the addition of a long cardio run to move us from the top of the stairs to the start line at the bottom. All other exercises remained the same, and I felt great afterwards. I can definitely feel an improvement in recovery times and strength.)

It's amazing how motivating yourself to begin something is one thing, but then actually going through the motions is quite another. There are many phases to getting anything done, and I feel it particularly when doing physical training where it's out of my comfort zone. Group sessions really work for me.

• You psych yourself up to the point where you are ready to make a plan and hit a goal
• Friends get involved and it's all a bit easier, as the vision (and nerves) are shared
• First training session is planned and a date is set
• You arrive excited and amped to go
• You begin strong ... 
• Then mere moments later you begin to regret your decision to even think about starting
• Your friends feel the same and the blame game begins. "Who's stupid idea was this in the first place?" (all in jest of course)
• But that thought exists only for seconds, as nobody else is giving up just yet.
• You carry on in silence for a while as each person finds a way to muster up more courage in their own way
• You pick up energy in the knowledge that you are not alone, and the talking begins again
• Finally on completion of that first dreaded full SET, which felt like death half way through, you feel energised, immortal and ready to go
• By the end, it's all a blur and you wonder how you got through all of those SETS
• But you feel great, and the smiles all around afterwards pick you up even more
• We meet again tomorrow, and the cycle begins again!

Parkour Circuits (of death!)

Yesterday's Urbanathlon training session at Wits felt very gruelling! The plan was to do interval training, but we ended mixing it up by doing a number of small intense parkour-style training circuits.

Plank x8 repetitions
It started off with a simple jog up an embankment, arm jump to a wall, shimmy along the wall, drop and roll, turn around and wall run up that same wall, climb over it's railing on the top, jump down and tag your buddy who's been waiting in the plank position all this time.

Sprint x8 repetitions
Hard sprints up the embankment, then recovery jog back down.

Crawl x16 repetitions
Cat crawl on a ledge around a pond for half way, plank crawl a quarter of the way on the ground then recovery jog the last quarter before beginning again on the ledge in cat crawl.

This was modified as we went along. The plank crawl on the ground was eating up our forearms, so we increased the recover jog for half the circuit, and included side steps, crossover steps, backward runs, etc.

The first quarter of the cat crawl up was uphill, and the second quarter was downhill, so we changed the uphill to be similar to straight back legged bear crawls.

Quadrupedal until failure
This involved crawling on all fours down 15 stairs, then crawling backwards back up the same stairs. 5 pull ups on a tree, then repeat.

One modification was to do this with a buddy. You both crawl down at the same speed, just with opposite hands to each other on the same step. the free hand (meaning the one not holding your body up off the step), now "High Fives" (more like a "Side Five"), your buddy next to you for every step. Down AND up. (This was a killer!!)

Stairs until failure (which didn't take long after the previous quadrupedal crawl)
We found some stairs which we could climb up the back of, by pulling ourselves up onto each one just with hands. Up and down 6 stairs, then tag your buddy who's been waiting in a triceps dip position.

Needless to say, my muscles are feeling it his morning. :-)

Wits University 5km Parkour Circuit

For today's Urbanathlon "cardio" circuit workout, we headed off to Wits University and created a 5km parkour run.

To even BEGIN jotting down all the exercises and events we have included will take up way too much time and space .... and you'll be bored to death just trying to read it, not to mention the lack of understanding behind what exactly the exercises are.

Suffice to say, it included locations such as the Death Beam, Bridge Pods, Man Vag Jump(Thank Rob!), Transporter-looking-machine-thingy-ma-bob, Dusty Loo, Pillar Precision, and a ton more. (Non of which are the conventional names for any of the regular spots, plus many many more new locations which we are quite excited about! Especially the progression wall run!!!)

The circuit is just under 6km, and it took us a very easy 1:45min to complete, including warm up and cool down.

A great first time, and I cannot wait to really push it through it's paces next time around.

ps, we had a few followers trying to keep up from the start, but they had to dash of pretty early and we were left with only Germano following us doing what he could, but mostly just walking around the obstacles. At least he got to complete the 5km run. Nice one!

Mens Health Urbanathlon 2010 - Sandton

What better way to start my blogs again after a long silence (I know, I know), than to start blogging my journey to the Mens Health Urbanathlon 2010, which is to be held in Sandton on Sunday November 28th.

Today we officially kicked off the team training sessions and upped our own regular training just a notch!

Tonight's session saw us running up and down the famous Westcliff Stairs in Parktown. All 210 stairs. And not in a rhythmic-equal-distance-bounce either. The unemployed miners who built them back in 1933/4 saw it fit to have a group of 2 here, 3 there, 4 that side, 5 this side... EXCELLENT for anyone wanting to test their fitness.

Oh, and when I say "run" ... we did a bit more than just that. It went a little something like this:

1) Long-stride bounding up the stairs to the first corner
2) 10 press-ups
3) Run up to the next long'ish flat level
4) 10 partner assisted dips on the railing
5) Explosive step-ups all the way to the top
6) Sprint to the corner
7) Lunge to the next step
8) Recovery jog over the road to the next steps
9) Precision jump to each first step until failure
10) Tuck jump between each set of stairs the rest of the way
11) Take no more than a 2-breath rest
12) Quadrupedal walk down all stairs to the road
13) Recovery jog to the next stairs (as quiet as possible)
14) Turn Vaults over the hand railing (in both directions)
15) Buddy does press-ups while waiting for you to finish, then swap
16) Continue jogging back down to the first level
17) 10 Press-ups (in the same place as we did them on the way up)
18) Jog down to the road
19) Stay in plank position till the last person arrives
20) Then hold the plank for a further minute
21) Repeat steps 1 - 21

The kilometre or so run to the stairs and back were a great warm up and cool down, then winding down with a relaxing stretch session before heading home.

Tonight was an easy run where we only did 4 sets up and down the stairs as it was our first group session, and I must say .. it's looking good!!