Bioengineered for this

This morning's velocity had all of the characters from Monday with one switch, we swapped out Jennifer for a quick Asian dude I've seen at various classes. Oh, and I learned the name of the guy whose name I couldn't remember on Monday. It's Greg, not David. I have no idea where David came from. Maybe Pickett.

As we were all rolling away on the foam rollers or with the roller sticks, a beefy guy I'd never seen before came up in full Velocity gear. "Are you here to workout?" Sandie asked him. "No," he replied, "I'm here to watch." Huh?

Turns out, he was the sports something or other director, and at class today to watch Breanne. Presumably to watch us, too. When I know someone is around to watch, I know my behaviour alters. I tried to detect changes in Breanne's behavious, since this was the first time this director person was around to watch.

During the warm ups, Breanne asked me about my knees, how were they doing? They're good, no acute injuries there. The next run down, how was the achilles? Good there, too. A little while later, how about the hamstrings, are they okay, too? Yep, those are good. Didn't have the heart to tell her about my quad. Instead, I chuckled and said, "I just need to stay healthy for another two weeks. That's my goal, to attend the Speed Camp in two weeks. Body, get me there!

The Asian guy behind me laughed and said, "Yeah, my goal was to make it the whole year without another major surgery. I have four weeks left. I might make it!"

I laughed, but Darlynn on my other side exasperated, "I can't believe you are talking about it like this!"

Sister, I thought, when you've been perpetually injured for the last four years, joking about it isn't going to jinx you.

Warmups were fine. Though I intellectually didn't really want to race Darlynn, emotionally I did, because I raced her. I have to see if she'd be willing to head out to do a speed workout with me. I know she has kids, but she's nearly exactly my pace. I rarely beat her by more than maybe a step. I think we'd make good running partners. Well, sprinting partners.

Not that warmups are races. Not at all.

Today's workout was three rounds of

20 rotating ball slams
20 pass-throughs
20 sliding thrusts
6 50m runs

The rotating ball slams were done with a wide stance. Turning to one side, we slammed the D balls down, as we dropped into a lunge and tried to catch the ball on its short bounce. Not enough slam meant the D ball didn't bounce high enough to catch. The trick on these, aside from slamming hard enough, is to actually dip into a lunge with bent legs. Tipping over from the waist with straight legs pretty much defeated the purpose of this exercise.

The pass-throughs were brutal.

Two jump boxes were set about 16" apart. Placing a hand on either box, starting in plank position, we did a pushup. A deep pushup. A pushup so deep we glared into the depths of the box gap and dreamed of pushing hard enough to see the light of day again. When we reached the apex of the pushup, back into a plank position, we then thrust from our feet, keeping our hands on the boxes and picking our feet up, rotating from the shoulders until our feet were out in front of us.

Hey, look! Dip position! Do a dip. Lower. Looower. Looooooooowwwweeeeeeeeer. Now come back up.

From the sitting position, we then pushed off, jumped a little bit, thrust our feet back out behind us until we were back in the plank position. That counted as two. Do twenty.

The sliding thrusts were so much easier compared to everything else before it. With hands out, in a plank position with our feet on towels on the linoleum surface, we brought our knees to our chest, sliding our feet up so that we were curled into a ball. We then thrust our legs back out to return to a plank position. That's one. Do twenty.

The six lengths were easy. I had a good strong stride again. I think I'll go for a run tomorrow, see how long I can keep my knees up high enough for a good run.

We all finished early enough, though I was completely unable to do the pass throughs and ended up doing 20 pushups and 20 dips with the boxes instead, so Breanne continued with abs.

In particular, we had four rounds of:

40 sliding mountain climbers
n weighted V ups

The sliding mountain climbers were done with our feet on towels, sliding again on the linoleum, as quickly as we could. Meanwhile, our partner was doing as many V ups with a weighted ball as possible. I think Bill, my partner, managed 4. I managed 5 during his rounds.

The final round was 10 pike position slides while our partner did situps, followed by one legged pike position slides. Kris finished up and was next to me, heckling me while I did my pike position slides with little effort.

"First the bear crawls, now the pike position slides! Unfair! You're bioengineered for these exercises!"

If only engineering were involved, I could tweak for longer legs.