Rain and Shine

The weather doesn't seem to know what it wants to do. Today we had down pours and cloud bursts, punctuated by bits of blue sky and rainbows. And then, 10 minutes before we were supposed to be at the Foothill College track and field, there were flashes of lightning. I wondered whether we would still have our workout.

Undaunted, we arrived on time, parked the car and attempted to get our parking pass. None of the machines were taking any more $1 bills, so we saved $2 tonight. Yeah!

Despite the miserable weather, there was quite a group of hikers this evening. Our workout was not cancelled. I did the entire workout with my backpack, which had some water, G2, gloves, and other stuff in it to give it some weight. I didn't put the poles and matt in my backpack tonight because it was so wet.

Tonight we broke out our rain ponchos for the first time. We've been lucky so far at squeezing in hikes and workouts in the hours between showers, but tonight was not our night. Because I was cold, I also wore two pairs of pants, two shirts, and a rain jacket underneath. I was pleased that the poncho wasn't flapping all over the place. It was less cumbersome than I expected and I was pleasantly surprised.

Tonight's workout consisted of several laps around the track at varying speeds, stretching exercises, as well as going up and down the bleacher stairs 12 times. We still haven't had dry enough weather to do the core exercises on the mats. Going down the bleachers is more difficult for me than going up. I take smaller steps going down the stairs, which are quite wide, so I sometimes do two steps per stair. I am, however, getting better at some of the other exercises. There is one exercise that we do called a "funny walk". You place your feet on either side of a line and then walk, but putting each foot on the other side of the line. (Think of a really bad model going down a catwalk hips swinging wide). Everyone looks really silly doing this, but it strengthens muscles that aren't often used. This was difficult for me to do at first, but I noticed that tonight it was a lot easier. I could do the walk without feeling like I was going to fall down any moment.

At last it was 8:00 pm. Another workout completed. I was a little tired and very wet, but happy!