7/31/2017 5.43 miles(?)
Another run with Rene. He really kept me on my toes. When you take out all the time we had to stop to cross streets, the average pace drops down to about 9:05-9:15 (I never pause my watch at stops, but when my data syncs to Strava it tends to deduct that time) (and this is also depending on whose Garmin data you believe. He clocked 5.28 if I recall correctly. But my GPS track doesn’t look TOO off).
We took a northerly route to take his picture in front of a billboard he had helped pay for (by contributing to a gofundme from Bulls fans fed up with current management).
Then we decided to go southish and run around UIC.
Family taekwondo after work. But it was actually later! Instead of rush-rush-rushing to get to the 5:20 class, we decided to go to the 6:20 class since we’re all “higher” belts. Master Lee was pretty relentless with his pushups*, planks**, crunches***, and jumping jacks.
Then some light drill work.
Then sparring.
I first faced off against Jun-Song (the black belt visiting from Korea for the summer) and that wore me out. We had a “no contact” rule and the penalty for making contact was 20 pushups. I made contact with Jun-Song’s rear and voluntarily did my 20.
Then I had to go against my wife. It seemed she kept timing her kicks to intercept my kicks so we were making a bit of contact. We weren’t really enforcing the pushups rule, but then she made a little less light contact with my hand and so I tapped my hand where she hit it - I was trying to convey “watch it” but the message she received was “do 20 pushups” so she did. Then we made pretty hard contact between her knee and my shin. I had to stop for a bit as the pain was intense - I haven’t been training for muay thai :)
Then I had to go against my son. I think I intimidated him a bit - he kept backing away and then just standing there so of COURSE I made contact (SUPER light), but sure as shooting he made me do 40 total pushups :)
I’m hoping my kids continue to be OK with the later class, it’s so much nicer to not have to rush around. And as a bonus, there’s less traffic on the way home from the later class so we don’t have to take detours around the big traffic jams.
* He has us do our pushups by spreading our legs wide, bending over, and pushing up. This removes a lot of the weight from the move and makes them ‘easier’. It acts more as a stretch for me (in my legs) than a weight bearing exercise.
** Everybody assumes the plank position, and one by one we do a slow count of ten. Then Master Lee counts to 10. S L O W L Y. This is when we collectively hope for a smaller class :)
*** Again, each student counts out ten, one by one.
