Our Team's First Workout

The alarm went off at 6:30 am this morning. Ugh. Neither of us really wanted to roll out of bed. I supposed that is to be expected on a Saturday morning when it is barely light outside. We got up anyway. Our first order of business was to eat a breakfast rich in carbohydrates, so I fixed us both a bowl of oatmeal with dried blueberries. Then a quick shower and dressing for our workout.

But what to wear? I own very few workout clothes because I've never really had an affinity for sweat. So I put on an old pair of red track pants. My white and black tee shirts happened to be in the wash; the only clean tee shirt I had was sky blue. Because it was raining, I wore the yellow nylon pants that I usually reserve for skiing over my track pants. I looked like a fluorescent Christmas tree ornament. I kept my red jacket zipped during the entire workout in order to keep from blinding my teammates. I can't wait for the upcoming gear clinic!

We grabbed our mats, water and a snack and headed out the door at about 7:15 am. The drive to Foothill College was puncuated by rain, but at least there was little traffic. We saw a rainbow on the drive, always a reminder for me of God's promise. We arrived at the track and field right on time at 7:45 am and, after feeding the parking meter, we walked on to a very wet track.

After a few more introductions, our first task was to walk twice around the track to warm up. After two leisurely laps, we split up into teams and then did stretching and conditioning exercises. We went up and down the bleacher stairs eight times. After doing 669 steps on Communications hill, this was a piece of cake. What was difficult about this was that we did half of them sideways. Have you ever walked up and down stairs sideways? It's not as easy as it appears, but it's very much like doing a grapevine step in country western or middle eastern dancing. Then we did a series of stretches: calf stretches, knee stretches, arm stretches. We twirled each ankle ten times in both directions. Then we skipped, did heel walks, "butt kicks" in which you walk kicking your legs backwards at the knee with each step. Fortunately, we got to skip the mat work because the ground was so wet.

Next we did an icebreaker. We split into teams. One team is doing the 3 day Grand Adventure hike at the Grand Canyon. Another team is doing the 1 day rim hike at the Grand Canyon. The rest of us are hiking Yosemite and hoping to make the cut for the Half Dome team. Our team is huge, so we split into two. Each team grabbed a backpack, using it as a baton as in a relay race. The goal was to walk around the track four times, picking up some necessary hiking item with each lap. First, an hydration pack, then some snacks, then some rain gear, and lastly some electrolytes. As we walked each lap, we had to pass the backpack down the line and learn each others names. That was a fun exercise.

The final exercise was to walk four laps around the track, timed. Since making the Half Dome cut depends on speed, Duane and I kept ourselves in the front of the pack. The last sixteenth mile saw a bit of competition with various participants breaking into a jog. We finished with a time of 15:35, and first in our team.

After the workout, many of us drove to Oregano's Wood-Fired Pizza in Los Altos. Lunch reservations had been made and Oregano's donated 15% of the proceeds back to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. We put all of our names into a hat to see who would get the donation check to be credited to one of our fundraising accounts and when the name was finally pulled out, it was Duane! We had a good time getting to know our team mates and enjoyed lunch with them.