Sheer Terror on Ice At Breakneck Speeds

This blog title is the same as an article I read in the New York Times about the Adirondack Luge Club. It was an interesting article and I was surprised with the broad range of people who try that sport. Luckily for me skeleton racing isn't as popular so I don't have competition like Anne (Grandma Luge) Abernathy. She qualified for the Turin Games...at age 52.

Skeleton-thank the lord-requires great athleticism for the push start so I don't have many people outside of my generation competing against me. I know that this training has a purpose and that no Average Joe could do well in this sport. Well, at least I keep telling myself that. Otherwise there wouldn't be a point to the ferocious workouts I do.

And this week, they have absolutely been ferocious. Wednesday was an entertaining day with a Pilates workout with Kristen at 11 and then a sprinting workout with Eric at 1. Pilates has definitely been harder than I expected. Kristen has me running through these really weird exercises where I basically look like a beached whale trying to get back to the ocean. I'm sorry I can't better describe the moves she has me do but they are really like nothing I've ever done or seen. I'll humor you by attempting to describe this one exercise I did for this workout.

Kristen had me stand on a padded box and put one of my legs back onto a padded bar at the back of the box. This bar was attached to springs underneath the top of the box. Keeping my back leg straight she then had me do a one-legged squat where my back leg pushed the spring-loaded bar down but I had to stay completely upright and couldn't lean to one side or the other. My bent knee couldn't go in front of my ankle so a lot of the weight was put back in to the back leg. Then I had to return to the starting position without bouncing. This doesn't sound bad but with the body positiong she puts me in to it's really awkward. I'm pretty sure at some point I'll actually look like I've got some sense of body control and I'll do the exercises well. However, that point won't come for a long time.

After my workout with Kristen I then grabbed a quick snack and headed over to Parisi to work with Eric. I was supposed to be training with this guy from Maryland who is trying to get drafted by the MLB this year but he's been sick in all our previous workouts. Thankfully he is better and I now have a training partner to help push me. Eric says that we have to remember this isn't a competition and to not compete against each other. Yeah, right. Maybe Mr. Third Basemen can forget his competitiveness but I can't. If I'm asked to do a thirty yard sprint next to someone else, I don't care who they are I'll push myself to beat them. Bottom line though, he's a nice guy and I was happy he was there. Eric ran us through 60 minutes of sprints, sprints, and more sprints. And abs. I was really sore from the combination of the Pilates and Parisi ab routines but it just goes to show that the workouts are doing their job.

Thursday was a relatively easy day with lifting and some cardio. I did a leg workout for the first time in awhile and was really pleased with the results. I stopped working out my legs when I started the Parisi training just so my body could have ample amount of time to recover in the beginning. I wanted to do an easy lifting session for my legs but found that I had an easy time lifting the same weight despite not lifting for a couple of weeks. I'm expecting that since I'm now combining weightlifting for my legs along with the speed training I should see some better results. After my leg workout I pushed myself on my arm workout lifting for both the biceps and triceps. I cut my hand right before the workout so it was a little weird lifting with a bandage but I quickly got used to it. After the lifting session I did a couple of miles on the elliptical and called it a day.

Today I had a workout at Parisi and was supposed to have a basketball game out at Swarthmore College. Unfortunately I had to cancel on basketball with the cut on my hand but it turned out that would be a smart decision. Eric told us Wednesday that today we would be working on quick, explosive steps with a speed ladder. For those of you that don't know, a speed ladder is two nylon straps that are a foot apart that have plastic strips connecting them every foot. When you lay it down on the ground it looks like a ladder, hence the name. I've had some experience doing different exercises with these things so I wasn't afraid. Once you get your foot movement down (which is hard with some of the variations) it's not that bad. Boy, was I wrong. Eric had my partner and I doing reps over and over and over again. Here's one variation, do it six times as fast as you can. Here's another variation, do it another six times as fast as you can. We basically had that for an hour. We looked like we were playing a weird version of Dance Dance Revolution while simultaneously mainlining crack. Even though the ladders are only 10 yards long, doing that many repetitions that will quickly give anyone a workout. My partner lasted through the speed ladder workout but ended up puking right before the abs routine. I didn't. Great Success! We then had to do 30 sprinter sit-ups every five yards for 25 yards. For those scoring at home, that's 180 sprinter sit-ups including the start line with about a 5 second break in between each set of 30. Earlier in the day I made the mistake of telling Eric how my abs had been sore the day before. Seeing my pain after the second set he completely sympathized and showed me a different variation that I could do that was easier. I wasn't there for sympathy so in a proverbial "Screw You" I completed the rest of my sit-ups in the proper sprinter sit-up form. While I now don't have the ability to bring my back off the ground or bed if I'm lying down, it was well worth it to show him how much I wanted it*.






*And by "it" I mean horrible abdominal and calf pain that makes it look like I'm walking around on eggshells. Man, I really showed him!


I should be doing a light weightlifting routine later tonight to work on my back and tomorrow I have Pilates with Kristen at 11:30 and then basketball at 2:00. Let's hope I can move by then!