Not What the Tree Was Designed For

My office recently moved locations. Part of adjusting to this has meant that, over the first few week, I’ve been trying out new methods of bike commuting, exploring the running routes and walking paths around the new building and looking for ways that I can incorporate exercise into my workday.  One of the first things I was looking for was a good location to put up gymnastics rings.  I’ve written previously about what a quick, cheap and effective tool these things are for lunch hour workouts.  I was fortunate enough that my former office had a park right across the street, home to both a swing set and several trees with branches that were the right height and roughly horizontal. My new building has no such convenient swing set but, after a little bit of looking around, I was finally able to locate a suitable tree that was large and sturdy enough and had an accessible branch around which it’d be possible to loop my rings.

One day the other week, I decided to bring the rings and give it a try.  Everything went fine – I put the rings up, headphones on, hammered out an initial set of muscle-ups and then took a break before the next set.  While I was waiting, a guy walking down a nearby (maybe 15-20 yards) staircase was trying to catch my eye so I took off the headphones.  Turned out he wanted to know where I got the rings and we got into a brief conversation about using them and different exercises they could be used for, etc.  All in all, nice guy, good chat – he left and I turned back around with the intent of doing my second set when all of a sudden I see a security guard walking toward be on the sidewalk below (the tree was on a little hill, maybe 20 yards from a sidewalk and parking lot).

“Excuse me sir but do you have authorization to use that tree?”  The question was so ridiculous that it took me a bit off guard.  I work in a massive government department so I’m used to absurd bureaucracy, but I wasn’t quite sure how to respond.  Was it the tree, whose authorization I required?  The Prime Minister? The Queen perhaps, as our formal head of state?  I responded, perhaps a bit dickishly, that no, I hadn’t submitted a formal briefing note asking for authorization to use a tree branch at lunchtime to exercise.  He didn’t get the joke and proceeded to tell me that I wasn’t allowed to use the tree in “that way” (sounds perverse, I know).  I tried to show him my security pass in an attempt to assure him that I did indeed work in the building and wasn’t just someone off the street.  It didn’t help however and we ended up getting into a lengthy argument on the subject.  I probably said a few things that I shouldn’t have, although I did manage to refrain from saying what was really on my mind (namely that, if he’d give exercise a try sometime, perhaps he wouldn’t be so morbidly obese).  Unfortunately, after arguing for a few minutes it became clear that, even if there weren’t going to be any great repercussions (I had suggested he call the police), I realized that he wasn’t going to leave and my workout was basically shot.  The chance of finishing my remaining sets with any sort of intensity with this guy just standing there staring at me was about as likely as (quoting Bill Maher) trying to maintain an erection while the cat walks across the keyboard.

So I took down the rings, packed up my bag and told the guy that I wanted to talk to his boss and see something in writing (some sort of policy) that prohibited the use of tree branches for exercise.  As I was packing up, one nearby onlooker, out for a smoke break on a balcony above, gave me a sympathetic nod and shouted how ridiculous it was and how he hoped I’d be victorious in my appeal.  It made me feel a bit better.  At least not everyone’s a tool.  We went to the security office, where I spoke to someone else who wasn’t able to give me any better information, other than a definitive “well, you just can’t do that”.  Ultimately I managed to get them to call someone from the building property management office.  Not to name names, but the complex in which I work may or may not be managed by a certain Montreal-based company with alleged ties to a North African dictatorial regime.  Perhaps that predisposed the conversation which followed...

It took another 10 minutes of waiting before two people came down to see me.  By this point, I had already more than exhausted my lunch break, but I figured that I may as well keep going out of principle (even though I had decided that, in the future, I’d just walk a few minutes down the road to the parkland along the riverbank and find a tree there).  The building property manager that I spoke to was a mindless automaton.  He parroted his response to me without any regard for the specific situation or any willingness to think outside the box.  There were concerns that I could damage the tree (ridiculous, as the tree was thick and probably 75 feet tall – it didn’t even register my presence!).  Apparently there were liability concerns.  I could hurt myself.  I tried to argue that I could just as easily hurt myself walking down a stairwell or slipping on a wet floor in the foyer.  On the rings I was perhaps a mere foot or two off the ground (soft, spongy woodchips even!).  Surely as a worker here, I was covered by standard workplace insurance?  What about the fitness club in the building?  Why were people allowed to exercise in there and not on a tree?  His response was comical.  “The machines in there are designed for that purpose – the tree was not designed for that.”

WTF!!!!  For what exactly was the tree ‘designed’?  Was this actually an invitation for a religio-philosophical discussion on the teleology of a tree?!  Did he really want to discuss the theological underpinnings of man’s dominion over nature?  Perhaps the evolution of our species as largely frugivore primates with opposable thumbs, ideally suited to tree-climbing?  Perhaps even the crazy hypothesis that trees evolved scalable branching structures to encourage species such as ours to seek shelter and sustenance, thus providing a vector for the transmission of their seeds (via fruit and nuts) to other locations.  This all would have been interesting fodder for conversation, had I been speaking to a reasonable and flexibly-minded human being.  But of course I was not. Trees were apparently not ‘designed’ for exercise – not like the plethora of ill-conceived, bulky and useless machines that populate the building’s (fee for service, of course) fitness centre.   Employees are not prohibited from, and are actually encouraged to subject themselves to Smith machines, leg presses, stability balls and countless other damaging and ineffective exercise paraphernalia in that context….but god forbid a tree!  I’m guessing all that fitness centre members need is a signed waiver saying that they’re medically ‘fit’ to attempt physical exercise.  No one is showing them how to exercise properly.  They’re turned loose on a gym full of questionable equipment and assumed to be safe.  The chances of someone doing short or long term damage to themselves there is exponentially greater than the chances of me hurting myself on a tree.  I even suggested to the property manager that I could sign a waiver, absolving them of any responsibility should I hurt myself.  It of course fell upon deaf ears.  

Having wasted enough time, I concluded the conversation by simply asking where the property line officially ends, ensuring that next time I find a tree just beyond it.  Of course, if I’m feeling in the mood for a little civil disobedience, maybe I’ll try another tree on the premises and see how long it takes ‘the man’ to get me again.  Or maybe just a set of push-ups in my cubicle, or the sidewalk out front....yeah that’d be safer...oh, except that’s obviously not what the ground was designed for.....

Pacing - Hiking with kids

Having the day off work, I took both of my kids hiking last Monday.  My daughter has been obsessed with waterfalls lately, so we drove about 40 minutes out of the city to the Eardley escarpment of Gatineau Park, to do one of my favourite local hikes at Luskville Falls.  I love the scenery out there – for some reason it always reminds me of the mountains in South Korea and brings back a lot of good memories of hiking around the forests there.  

The last time I had done the trail was in the Fall and I had been able to get away and do it alone, without the kids.  I had taken them before, but they had been young enough to ride in those backpack kid-carrier devices.  This was the first time that I figured they were both mobile enough to hike on their own.  There are some pretty steep sections and I had pretty low expectations about how far we would get.

Was I ever pleasantly surprised!  We managed to hike probably 2-3 kilometres up and back, with much of that steep enough that the kids had to scamper over rocks on all fours.  I don’t think I heard a complaint the entire time.  We usually go for hikes on trails that are much flatter and easier for little feet to navigate, but still I’m usually well prepared for a chorus of “My legs are tired”, etc.  It didn’t happen this time.  I don’t know exactly what it was but they really rose to the challenge.  No complaints at all.  My only guess is that beforehand I had talked it up to them as a bit of a challenge and that it was okay if we didn’t get very far because it was a pretty steep climb – I think that element of a challenge really made them want to do it even more.  Goal-setting starts by age 3 apparently!

Of course, we kept a pretty slow pace, but it turned out to be a nice change.  Like I said, the last time I did the trail I had done so alone and I recall it was in the Fall and I had stopped in just before dusk on a road trip up to the Ottawa Valley.  I had set a pretty quick pace that time because I had wanted to get up and back before the mountain got really dark and I’d end up tripping and falling on the way down.  While that was great too, this time the slow pace set by the kids really forced me to relax and appreciate the beautiful day, the scenery, the smells and the small details.

Once the first acorn was found, the hike turned into a roving quest to find others.  We’d take 10 steps, scamper over a few rocks and then find another.  Each one had to be carefully examined for quality and either kept or discarded.  Despite my reassurances that only white oak acorns were usually palatable enough to eat, after boiling away the bitter tannins, we collected pocketfuls of the things, with my assurances that we’d try boiling these ones when we got home…just to see.

We took frequent breaks.  In addition to giving little legs a chance to rest, these opened my eyes to a few things I might have otherwise missed.  As the kids sipped their water bottles on one rocky outcropping, I caught the scent of sweetfern and noticed some clumps growing nearby.  I picked a bit, mentioning to my daughter that it made good tea.  To which she responded, “Is there anything on this mountain that we can just eat without cooking it first?”  I told her, a bit optimistically, that we might find some berries, but I’m not sure she was convinced.

Lo and behold, another 10-15 minutes up the trail, there was a little narrow, overgrown side-trail that led down to the stream atop the waterfall.  In August, it wasn’t much more than a trickle but the kids wanted to go see it.  Initially I said no, as I was a little worried about them making it down the steep footing, but I reconsidered and, holding my youngest really closely, we made our way slowly down to the water.  There was a little pool of water where they could take off their shoes and cool their feet.  We saw a little frog perched on the moss and watched him for a while.  And then, as they were splashing around a bit, I spotted a few small blueberry bushes along the water’s edge.  There were only about 10 small berries on the bushes but it was enough to mean I hadn’t been a liar earlier on.  I divided them (equally of course or it would have been tragic!) between both kids.  I thought to myself that, had I pushed on as I initially wanted to (and most certainly would have if I had been solo), I would never have gone down this little trail and would have never found the blueberries.  It was the slow, meandering pace, set by my kids that had led us to them.

We went a little bit further and then I made an executive decision to start heading back.  Again, it was me, thinking about the steep descent, that spurred this, not any complaints from the kids. They wanted to keep going.  We had a few minor slips on the way down, but overall they were very sturdy and cautious and we got back down with minimal scrapes and injury.  I couldn’t think of a better way to spend the day if I tried.  And a big part of that was because I had to slow down and adapt to a child’s pace.  There’s a broader lesson in there somewhere…assuming I can remember to apply it.

Spartan Beast

I spent five and a half hours last Sunday running up and down ski hills and through swamps, climbing under and over all sorts of obstacles, and generally getting beat up – all in the name of completing my first Spartan Beast race.  And what’s more, I actually paid someone about $80 for the privilege of doing all of that shit!  So what gives?  Why would a cheap bastard like me pay money for an organized form of exercise (torture) like this?  And actually be planning on doing it again?  Well, since you’re reading this anyway, I’m going to tell you.

For someone who’s always trying to find cheap or no-cost ways to stay in shape, paying money for an event like this seems a bit antithetical.  But for me, even though I aim to do most of my exercise regimen at little or no cost, there are times when a person needs a sort of goal or benchmark to evaluate one’s progress.  This race was one of those benchmarks for me.  I’m not an endurance guy really.  I don’t log countless miles of running each week.  I don’t run marathons.  For the most part I subscribe to the less is more, short but intense school of thought surrounding exercise.  Practically, that means a lot of weightlifting, sprinting, met-cons, tabatas, explosive movement-oriented sports – that sort of stuff, with a few middle distance runs and swims thrown in for good measure. 

This race, pardon the pun, was a different beast altogether.  24 kilometers long (most of those at significant elevation).  Not at all like my regular training.  But I’m an advocate of well-roundedness (or at least I’d like to think so) in fitness as well as life in general.  Excessive specialization in any field has never really appealed to me (perhaps a little bit of ADD…).  So this was a new challenge.  At the end of the day, I really just wanted to see if I could do it, in the absence of any real distance training.  Prior to Sunday, the last time I’ve run any distance much greater than about 7 or 8kms was at least 5 years ago (prior to my daughter being born).

In the lead up to Sunday, I have to say I was pretty nervous, which is unusual because I’m quite calm by nature.  Like I said, I hadn’t done any long runs leading up to the event.  Hell, I hadn’t even run a 5k in about 3 weeks.  My last workout beforehand was on Tuesday and consisted of a few sets of muscle-ups on rings.  After that, I figured a few days off would be good in order to come into Sunday totally fresh.  I was genuinely scared of failing at this thing, especially since I had mentioned it to a few people and would have been pretty embarrassed if I wasn’t able to complete it.

I had been pretty casual about the whole thing in the weeks prior.  A friend of mine, who was also planning to do the race (and who has a lot more experience with distance events), was really concerned about issues like food and water, talking to me about all manner of energy gels, camelback packs for water, electrolytes, etc.  In hindsight, I was a bit cocky and flippant about all of that stuff.  Food, I thought, ha!  I already fast for sometimes 20 hours each day.  What do I need food for in a 4-5 hour race!  Water, ha! I’ve heard there are some water stations throughout the course, and in the 7km Spartan Sprint earlier in June I had skipped past the only water station on the course without even stopping!  I didn’t like the idea of spending 50 bucks on a bulky camelback and getting it caught on the barbed wire and other obstacles.  My ego and my desire to be tough and minimalist was getting in the way.  In the end I acquiesced a bit and the day before the race I went out to Canadian Tire and spent 12 dollars on a little 1 litre leather wineskin thing.  I hung it from my belt with a climbing carabiner, with the thought that if it started to get in the way, I could simply ditch it somewhere and only be out $12.  I also stuck a handful of my kids’ dried Fruitsource bars and a granola bar in the cargo pockets of my shorts.

The day of the race was absolutely beautiful.  The week leading up to the race had seen humidex values in the 40 degree Celsius range, but Sunday was low twenties, sunny and breezy.  Absolutely perfect.  I had run a 5km Spartan Sprint 3 years previously in 30+ degree heat and it had been brutal.  Once I started, I realized that the wineskin flopping around at my waist wasn’t going to be a huge burden.  I had been worried that it’d interfere with my ‘speed’, but the first massively-steep ascent convinced me that that likely wouldn’t be a huge issue!  Some of the downhills saw it knocked around a bit but not a real problem.  On obstacles such as the barbed wire crawls and monkey bars, I just pitched it down to the other end and then picked it up later.  The fruit bars and granola bar came in handy too.

The first third (roughly of the race) posed no real problems.  I knew what to expect from the Sprint distances I had done before.  I was trying to be proactive with my water consumption to avoid cramping and dehydration and I wasn’t pushing myself to the max (hell, I knew I wasn’t winning this thing and I just wanted to finish and place somewhat respectably).  It wasn’t until I got to, I’m guessing, the 10km mark and we had to stop and do a set of 20 wheelbarrow-style deadlifts (really light weight) when I started to get some cramps in my inner quads.  I kind of pushed past them, scarfed down a fruit bar and few sips of water and kept on trucking.  But they didn’t get better.  For the whole remainder of the race my quads kept cramping – then it moved on to the calves and hamstrings.  It was a learning experience for me because I’ve never experienced this kind of muscle cramping in the past.  After briefly stopping a few times to stretch them out for a few seconds, I quickly realized that my best defence was to keep moving (and to massage them a little bit when possible to get the knots out).  Strangely the worst cramps came at sections of the race that were really upper body dominant, such as having to stop and do chin-ups.  That was when the legs cramped up the most and I ended up doing chin-ups in an L-sit position because it seemed to help with the leg cramps.  Strange!

The other, somewhat unexpected (although shouldn’t have been) thing that got me were the blisters.  At about the halfway point, I could really feel a huge one forming on the inside of my right foot.  I put up with it for a while but then decided to take a short break on the side of the trail during one of the forested sections.  I had stashed a few band-aids in a ziplock bag, so I quickly covered it up and kept going.  In hindsight, it was a total waste of time, since it only provided a bit of relief, and pretty soon I had one on the same spot on my left foot anyway.  Your feet get so wet during these races, running through streams, mud, etc. – this one even had an open water swimming portion – that it’s impossible to do much once the blisters start.  Next time, I know where I’m susceptible to getting them, so I’ll try preventatively wrapping those parts of my feet in moleskin or tape.  For this race, it just got to a point where you just had to try and ignore them.  My attitude was basically to just deal with the discomfort and worry about it later.  It certainly did slow me down in parts, because it’s hard to resist being more tentative when something hurts.  Oh well, next time I’ll have to try the whole  “ounce of prevention…” strategy.

Aside from the cramps and blisters, I was pretty pleasantly surprised that cardio wasn’t a limiting factor.  I had thought that I might have a problem with such a long distance, never having trained much for longer runs.  For most of the second half of the race, I could have pushed harder, if it hadn’t been for the leg cramps and blisters.  Live and learn I suppose – and good info to have for next year.

All in all it was a great event.  Tonnes of variation and some really spectacular mountaintop views of the lake country all around Mont Ste. Marie – the only bad part was that I was reluctant to stop even for a minute to savour those views for fear of cramping up worse.  The best tactic was to keep moving.  The final uphill section, following the swim, was so steep in parts that you were scrambling on all fours over fallen tree branches and rock faces just to get up, but it helped to just keep moving, however slowly, one foot in front of the other.

Many of the obstacles were similar to the Spartan Sprint races I’ve done in the past, just longer and more difficult, but there were some cool new ones.  My favorite was a progression of hanging boards, rings, chains and ropes, all at different levels, that you had to swing across like an orangutan.  Very reminiscent of some of the stuff on American Ninja Warrior!  I was pleased not to fall on that one.  Actually, I only had to do one set of 30 burpees (standard punishment for failing at an obstacle) the whole day – on the spear throw.  That’s been my nemesis for the Spartan Sprints.  I missed the spear throw in my first two Spartan Races.  I actually hit it for the first time this past June for the Ottawa Sprint, after taking the time to get it well balanced in my hand before the throw.  This time I did the same thing, took my time, and hit the target smack in the middle of the chest….but it didn’t stick.  The spear (well, shovel handle with a dull metal poker attached) hit and bounced right off.  Oh well, burpees it was for that one, but I felt pretty good about it still.  Most of the obstacles themselves are not really that difficult.  They don’t require a lot of brute strength.  But interspersed with the distance and the elevation, they take their toll.  I’m reminded of that great quote from Rocky, “it ain’t about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”  The last quarter of the race at least is purely mental.

I set out basically to finish the thing, but secretly I was kind of thinking that 5 hours would have been a good goal.  I finished in 5 hours 38 minutes, so lots of room for improvement.  I have no illusions that I’ll ever match the top guys, some of who run this thing in just over 3 hours! (WTF).  One friend of a friend flew through it in just over 4 hours, and apparently had scouted out the course for 2 straight days ahead of time and had his wife strategically placed to offer food at different sections throughout the course!  Another guy I talked to (who beat my time by about 10 minutes) had trained 6 days/week in preparation for it.  My preparations (or lack thereof) pale in comparison.  But still, I’m happy.  If you would have asked me in the half hour following the race, as I lay on the ground stuffing a cheeseburger David Hasslehoff-style into my face (lovingly provided by my wife), if I wanted to do another Spartan Beast, the answer might have been no.  But, once that initial fatigue subsided, I can definitely say I’ll try it again and hopefully learn from some of the mistakes I made this year.

My five-year-old daughter ran her first Spartan Kids race this year and loved it, and my three-year-old son is chomping at the bit, so I’m looking forward to many more years of obstacle racing ahead!

Free Enlightenment

After hearing about it late last summer and missing out, I’ve been attending several of the 2013 sessions of free yoga on Parliament Hill.  This event is organized every Wednesday (noon-1pm) in the summer by Lululemon.  Apparently this has been happening for the past 5 years or so, starting out with only a handful of people and growing to a maximum turnout last August of over 2,000.  My very rough estimate would be that there have been about 300 or so people there on the really nice days, but still at least 100 last week when the weather was grey and rainy.  The first time I went was an absolutely beautiful sunny day, probably about 22 degrees or so, and I have to say that it was one of those events that reaffirms a person’s faith in humanity.  Perhaps that sounds a bit hyperbolic, but it really felt that way.  It’s so easy to hear all the constant barrage of stats about how inactive we are as a society and how like 80% or people are obese (okay, so it’s probably not quite that bad…but it is some stupidly high number).  But to see hundreds of fit, healthy-looking people taking time out of there weekday schedules to enjoy some exercise in the middle of downtown Ottawa – just makes a person feel inspired.  

I would totally recommend anyone in the National Capital Region to try to check it out.  They seem to have a different instructor leading it each week.  Even if you only show up for a half hour, you just find some empty space on the lawn, toss down a mat and follow along.  They have speakers but sometimes it’s hard to hear.  It’s easy enough to follow those around you if you miss something.  I normally like a good strenuous workout at lunchtime, but this is a nice change of pace once a week.  It’s something I’m not really good at (I know, I know, yoga isn’t supposed to be competitive), but I think it helps with overall mood, stress levels and flexibility.  As I age, I notice that flexibility is the one fitness marker that atrophies the fastest, more so than strength, speed, endurance, etc.  Hopefully this helps in some small part.  And you can’t beat the price.