May 17, 2012

Weekend Recap: Workout in the Park and Scavenger Hunt

Now that I’m finally all caught up on my race reports, let’s do a little weekend catch up, shall we?

Since I was going to be out of town for the next two weeks due to RRCA certification, the Colfax Marathon, and the Vermont City Marathon, a big part of my weekend plans revolved around getting to see friends and the guy I’ve been seeing. Lately the work travel has really been wearing on me for the simple reason that I don’t get enough time in NYC to see everyone! While in the past, I’ve taken many trips around the country/world to see different places and explore on weekends or for vacation, this morning I actually canceled my trip to Puerto Rico in August, and also spoke to my boss about picking a good week this summer for me to take vacation days just to stay in NYC – a “staycation.” That would honestly be a lot more refreshing and rejuvenating for me than going anywhere!

Another problem lately for me has been lack of sleep, so I intended for Friday night to be low-key. Well, it was low-key as far as not doing anything crazy went (I went to one of my favorite beer bars, Valhalla, which was not inherently crazy); however, it was not a low-key night in terms of how late I stayed out and also how much I drank. Lately I’ve been drinking on an empty stomach (for no particular reason – I usually plan to eat and then for whatever reason it just doesn’t happen), and as a result, midnight found me swaying with exhaustion as I swore that this was it and I was going to get a good night’s sleep. Quote from the next day: “What time did I go to bed? Around midnight?” “Um… try 3am.” Oops.

Despite my continued lack of sleep, Saturday found me up bright and early as I prepared to go to Workout in the Park with Melissa and Leticia, who had won my ticket giveaway earlier in the week. We had an absolute blast at the event, even getting some super-special VIP access that allowed us to be the absolute first people in the event (SO. COOL.) and also gave us our own private area to follow along with the workouts (have to say, it was nice to be able to do the workouts without tripping over the thousands of other women crowd in there). That said, the thousands of women was exactly what made the workout so special to me – I kept commenting how amazing it was to see so many people (of all shapes and sizes) so committed to working out and getting fit. It was really exciting to look around and feel like we are all in this together! Sometimes it can be disheartening to realize just how much effort it takes day in and day out to stay reasonably in shape, and particularly since I work/spend most of my time with male coworkers who don’t really seem to have to do much at all, I feel like my workouts are Herculean and deserve a medal (and certainly a bit more weight loss than I’ve currently achieved). But our bodies are a constant work-in-progress, and it really gave me a sense of solidarity to work out with so many people and really feel that.

Another thing I felt? The workouts, which totally wore me out. We started with a special Crossfit Workout of the Day (WOD) that had us do five deep squats, five pushups, and five squat jumps, repeated for seven minutes of As Many Reps as Possible (AMRAP). I pushed myself as hard as I could and managed to achieve 14 rounds (plus 2/3 of the 15th round), which qualified me to win a Crossfit t-shirt. Woo hoo! My drawers are completely overflowing with t-shirts that I rarely wear (I almost never wear race t-shirts, mostly choosing fitted tanks and such instead), but I was so excited to meet the challenge that I kept the shirt. This is one I’ll be proud to wear!

The downside of going so hard first thing was that I got crazy super-sweaty and tired – which did not serve me well for the next three hours of working out. We had a lot of fun with the different classes, but I ended up calling it quits a little bit early due to both that and the sun, which was gorgeous but sucking the life out of me. Besides, I still had quite a bit of running ahead of me!

3pm was the start of my friend Ali and Jess’ fourth annual Scavenge for Life fundraiser, which goes along with Relay for Life to raise money for the American Cancer Society. Basically, you start at a bar and form teams of 4 (or come with your team already wearing matching outfits if you are hardcore like the eventual winners). At the stroke of 3pm, you’re given a sheet with about 100 items on it, all worth varying points. In addition to collecting items (20 cigarette butts in a plastic bag, a movie popcorn bucket) and taking photos (the entire team inside a bathbut, someone with a unibrow, four strangers spelling out the letters YMCA), teams are also asked to check in at specific bars for 20 minute periods, during which time they will receive 1 point per drink consumed, up to a maximum of 8 points per team. (I think you can guess that that last category of the hunt spelled trouble.)

Favorite moment of the hunt: me trying to flag a car down when I realized they had a license plate with “123” in it, failing when they thought I was crazy, and instead trying to snap the license plate as it drove away. Meanwhile, Celia took off at a sprint (now it should be clear why I picked runners for my team) and managed to catch the car, so we ended up with duplicate photos (but sadly no duplicate points).

Second favorite moment of the hunt, when asked to take a pic of someone on the team holding a dog in the Union Square Dog Park: me entering the dog park, realizing that I didn’t know which dog belonged to which owner, and not wanting to just pick up a stranger’s dog without permission. So when a very large animal jumped up on me and his owner came over to help, I immediately knew who that dog’s owner was – and jumped on the chance to ask for a picture. “It’s a scavenger hunt… TO SUPPORT CANCER RESEARCH!”

I did in fact get made fun of quite a bit for choosing to hold a large dog when there is a teacup poodle directly behind me in the pic. However, I will note that this dog LOVED me and was thrilled to be picked up, even chasing after me on the way out because he was sad that I was running off in search of other things (we never did find a live bunny, like Jocelyn’s team did). I pictured him finding my number and texting me with “Laura, come back and play!” (Why yes, I am utterly and completely obsessed with Text From Dog).

Unfortunately, our team did not win the hunt. However, we did win the coveted “Best Drinkers” award (which was noted on the certificate to be “one of the two challenges of the Scavenge for Life”), and the event raised over $1100 for the American Cancer Society. Success! And with that, I headed to dinner with Theodora and some other friends before finally calling it a night – and starting to try to catch up on all my missed sleep.

Next up, review of the Figure 4 class I hosted on Sunday! Stay tuned.

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2 thoughts on “Weekend Recap: Workout in the Park and Scavenger Hunt”

  1. That picture of you and the dog is amazing! Seriously, it made my night. The workout in the park sounded awesome, hopefully I will make it to next years. 🙂

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