The Glowing Edge

Tag: exercise

  • How to Cheat on Your Diet (and do it well)

    How to Cheat on Your Diet (and do it well)

    1. Don’t try to be Polly Pure.

    It won’t work. Try for “sustainable” instead. Unless you are in training for a very specific period of time for a major goal (a marathon or a big fight), your diet should look and feel like something you can continue to do for the rest of your life.

    2. Don’t go hungry, but if you do, snack better.

    The number one secret (and it isn’t a secret, really) to eating right is to not starve yourself. This means you have to eat the kinds of foods in portion sizes that help you maintain better insulin levels all day long. This takes some planning.

    One of the best ways to manage when you don’t have time to prepare a meal or can’t get to a place where you can, is to have good snacks on hand. I keep Zone bars and a bag of almonds in my desk, gym bag, and glove compartment. This curbs the impulse to swing through McDonald’s for a quick fix.

    3. Change “cheat” to “treat”

    I don’t actually think of my forays into the universe of junk food as cheating, as if I were trying to hide something. Instead, I know ahead of time that I’m not going to be Polly Pure, and I work it into the way I eat in as healthy a way as I possibly can. See below.

    4. Treat yourself regularly.

    I have a treat pretty much every day, and I exercise control with portions and frequency more than specific food items. Rather than eating a whole bag of M&M’s, I limit myself to 10. And I only do that maybe once a day, and that’s my treat for the day. I also love Cheetos, omg I LOVE Cheetos! So I limit the number I eat, and I only buy them about twice a month. Lucky for me I live in a house with four other Cheeto hounds, so the bag will be gone pretty soon anyway.

    5. Your diet should include room for real splurges.

    REAL splurges. A splurge isn’t something you do every single day. Think of it like a vacation. You don’t have a vacation every day, do you? But you do have them, and they’re part of what makes life lovely.

    A splurge for me is a giant basket of onion rings, and you can bet your boots I’ll be having some at the State Fair this year. (Note: when you have a pretty clean diet, some splurges will make you feel a bit ill afterwards, which will cause you to limit it next time. Or not! I’ll have an o-ring hangover, but won’t care.)

    6. Achieve balance with exercise.

    Nobody’s diet is going to be in balance without exercise. When you splurge, add an extra two miles of sprints to your regular workout, or do 500 stairs. Just don’t try to make up a huge junk food orgy in a single workout, it isn’t sustainable. See above.

    7. Prepare yourself for friendly (and not so friendly) commentary

    Balancing your diet and including regular exercise in your life is such a difficult task that most people will never try it at all. Or they will, and they’ll abandon their efforts because they’ve tried something that isn’t working for them or it is just too hard. There is SO much bad advice out there, it’s no wonder people get discouraged. Plus it’s work, and we all have a ton of work in our lives already. So when people see you having treats, they’ll sometimes say, “Hey, wait a minute, aren’t you supposed to be Ms Healthy?” This gives you the opportunity to

    a) Enjoy it, play the “food porn” game, and brag a little: “Mm-hm, and tomorrow I’m going to eat baaaaacon! Cause my marathon is next week.”
    b) Challenge them to match you in your extra exercise. “I hereby swear to an extra 15 minutes of jump rope sprints. Wanna join me?”
    c) Ignore it and let your body speak for itself. If you’re looking great and feeling energetic and fit, it will show!

    8. Recovering from a major screw-up or holiday season.

    For this, you have to take the long view. You’re probably going to see a weight change and you may feel crappy, both mentally and physically. But honestly, big screw-ups happen, and the best thing to do is start with one good meal, one good workout, and one good day. Then add another and another. Set up your goals again and tape them to your computer. And know that in a couple of weeks (depending on the size and duration of your lapse), you’ll be back where you want to be.

    Image credit: atomicjeep on Flickr
  • Training Hell, Training Heaven

    Training Hell, Training Heaven

    Last night our trainer rolled out a new circuit for the boxing team, one which we all relished and despised. It was one of those kinds of nights where you are working so hard that the sweat is rolling off you, you can barely breathe, and you wonder periodically how bad you are going to hurt the next day because you sure hurt now. It was awesome and we ate it up. There’s something wrong with us.

    I know where the coach got these ideas. I went over to her Facebook page and found this video of MMA champion Cris Cyborg Santos training, and I watched it about ten times. It’s incredibly compelling and damned if our trainer didn’t have us running some of the exact same drills.

    Here were our stations, all out on the loading dock behind the gym in the August heat:

    1. Sledgehammer: We had our choice of the “light” or “heavy” sledgehammer. Hah. We whaled the crap out of our giant tractor tire. But it’s still there, gloating and undefeated.
    2. Incline push-ups: Off the splintery edge of the loading dock. We considered this the “restful” station.
    3. Stairs: The cement set leading up the loading dock. The second most “restful” station.
    4. Slam Ball: A ball of solid, heavy rubber attached to a thick rope. You stand with your back to the wall and slam it up against the cinderblocks on one side, then the other. Looks like this:


    MMA Conditioning for KO Power Doing Rope Ball Exercises

    5. Rings. These are two independent rings hung from a metal bar to a height just a foot or so off the ground. You balance yourself in a push-up position and hold. And hold. You try to get your breath back from the slam ball. Your muscles shake, but you hold.
    6. Harness: This one is yet to come. You can see Cyborg doing it in the video, and our trainer said she has one on order, lucky us!

    We did each station hard for 30 seconds, and on the whistle hustled to the next station and began again. I lost track of the number of circuits we did, but since they were interspersed with wind sprints (I HATE wind sprints) inside the gym I had my choice of throwing up outdoors or in a nice clean restroom. Thankfully I had not eaten anything prior to team training.

    The best moment of the evening was after our SOLID HOUR of circuits (okay, a little bit of that was a warm-up) was finished, we gloved up for four all-out rounds on the heavy bags.

    Thought.  I.  Would.  Die.

    But I didn’t. I did it all and said “Thanks, Coach,” because it was the best, worst, kickin’-est training I could possibly have received, and besides I WANT biceps (triceps, lats, etc.) like Cyborg’s.

    Hell, yeah.

    Image credit: WilsonB on Flickr.
  • Box Jumps

    Box Jumps

    If you are looking for a new exercise to increase your explosiveness, your vertical, and your stamina, box jumps may be a good part of your lower-body mix. They are a pretty intense exercise, and I wouldn’t recommend them for anyone who is just starting a workout routine. I’m fit and these bad girls kicked my butt pretty quickly.

    The first time I tried them, I simply jumped with both feet onto the aerobics platform (about 10 inches high) at the fitness gym. Rather than stand all the way up on the platform, I kept my knees flexed and jumped gently back down. They looked pretty much like this. I did three sets of 30 seconds each, getting in about 30 jumps on each set. I moved carefully and kept a sharp focus on each movement, so that I didn’t twist or bust something. (That’s all I need!)

    Then I did a little bit of research online and talked to some friends who suggested a slightly different approach. I used a higher box — the LifeTime Fitness near me has a set of boxes for this very purpose — and worked only on the jump, not on high repetitions.

    My box was about 17 inches high, coming up just below my knees. The height was a little intimidating at first, but I didn’t have any trouble actually reaching it. The trick is that you’re not hopping up with your legs hanging straight down, you are actually raising your knees in order to gain some height.

    So you stand with both feet solid in front of your box, squat down, then jump up. I bring my hands up to help with my momentum, and make an effort to land with the entire length of my feet on the box. You may have to experiment a little with how near or far away from the box you need to be to get the arc right.

    The object is to land softly, without a loud “WHOMP” that turns all the heads in the gym to where you are laboring really hard to do something that looks really simple. In order to get a nice soft landing I’d need about three yards of cotton batting on top of my box, but I’m working on it. It’s also important to stand straight up once you land on top of the box, like you would in a squat exercise. Then, rather than jumping off the box like I did with my low, quick jumps from the first day, I simply stepped down. I did three sets of 10 careful reps each.

    Here’s another page with a simple explanation and good pictures of the box jumps.

    I was careful to NOT do these on a day before any of my boxing-specific workouts, just in case they were hard on my hips or knees, but I haven’t had any difficulty with that. I plan to continue working on the 17″ box, and have my eye on the next higher one. The competitive gene Does Not Ever Die.

    Here is my favorite video of all the box jumpers I saw on my surf. Wouldn’t you love to be able to hit that 50″ jump?

    Box Jumps from Patrick Cummings on Vimeo.

    Image credit: Rodrigo Basaure on Flickr.
  • 8 Reasons Women Should Take Up Boxing

    8 Reasons Women Should Take Up Boxing

    You will burn calories like a buzzsaw.
    I am not kidding. You may think you’ve done serious workouts before but you haven’t touched the level of output it takes to go hard for three minutes in a boxing ring. This is anaerobic activity; your muscles literally don’t operate the same way under this kind of test as they do when you’re swimming, running, or cycling. Sprinters have a sense of what this takes, but even they are primarily working lower body only.

    You will feel like Superwoman.
    Three times I had natural childbirth at home and it doesn’t compare. I am still terrified every single time I step into the ring, and every time I come out I feel like a rock star. Boxing is the most physically and mentally demanding sport I’ve ever taken up, and the high demands also produce a tremendous positive charge: “I survived! I kick ass!”

    You won’t have to take care of anyone else.
    The ring is the only place I can think of where this is true, and it takes some work for most women — society’s caregivers — to get used to the idea. When I first started landing serious punches on my opponents, my tendency was cringe, inquire after them, or (worst of all) apologize. Everyone knows what they are getting into when they climb between the ropes, and you can rely on your trainer or a ref to stop the match if it gets dangerous for either boxer. And once you can begin to relax into it, it’s a phenomenal rush for a woman to be in a space, even for a very short time, where we aren’t responsible for someone else’s welfare.

    You will take better care of yourself.
    This follows naturally from the tenet above. In the ring, you are responsible for yourself. You have a support network, but you aren’t looking to pass to a shooter or hand off the baton to the next runner, or get the ball down the court to your team. Not only are you dealing out violence, you’re evading it as well. You look to your own safety, and you start training harder to insure yourself. You eat better. You plan things so that you don’t miss ring time. You ice sore shoulders, and immediately address minor injuries that might get worse with inattention. When I look back at how little or poorly I took care of myself before boxing I am amazed at how culturally ingrained it is for women to continually sacrifice their own benefit for someone else’s.

    Your kids will think you are the coolest mom evar.
    They won’t be embarrassed to friend you on MySpace. They will look for excuses to tell their friends that their mom is a boxer. They’ll casually show off moves that they’ve learned, or tell how many pull ups you can do. My husband plays in a rock band and as cool as my sons think that is, I still get more props. Forget bringing home the bacon and frying it up in a pan, mom boxers rate.

    The rituals are relaxing.
    There are several rituals connected with boxing, but for me there is nothing so soothing as wrapping your hands in preparation for boxing. Wraps are strips of elasticized cotton about 180″ long, and they protect the hands from sprains, strains, and fractures to the metacarpus (the bones connecting your fingers to your wrist). Every boxer wraps their hands differently, and there are as many schools of thought on it as there are trainers and boxers. But once you settle on a method, you tend to stick to it with an almost superstitious ferocity, and you guard your hand-wrapping time jealously. Most boxers don’t like to chit-chat while they’re wrapping up; they find a quiet spot and attend to their hands like priests silently preparing the altar for a high holy day. It gets even more serious if you are wrapping for a competition; in that case you sit quietly while your trainer or corner wraps your hands with yards and yards of delicate gauze as if you were a bride being prepared for her wedding. It beats Calgon all to hell.

    More women should be in the spotlight.
    Stepping into the ring is like stepping onto a stage. There may only be a handful of people watching, but there’s no denying who’s getting the attention. Sometimes I think we fail to turn the spotlight on women in our society; we just take them for granted so long as the wheels of the universe that women work so hard to turn keep moving. I like the idea of more women being seen in the ring as the tough, proud, hard-working women we are.

    Feminine muscle is just damn sexy.
    My arms are even more toned and cut than Michelle Obama’s, and that’s saying something. I love the way women’s bodies start to look after they’ve been working out for a while; we lose the soft, squishy look and begin to look sturdier and sharper. Collarbones appear and quads pop out; we have curves, but also angles and energy. And even though we could rip the door off it’s hinges, we still get to enjoy having the guys open it for us instead.

  • Sample Workout

    Sample Workout

    A nice workout for a non-boxing day; fits pretty closely into a lunch hour (but you’ll have to book through it):

    Elliptical: 15 minutes, half at/near max heart rate (180)
    Bicep curlbar: 45 lbs, 3 sets of 10 reps
    Deltoid flys: 7.5 lb dumbells, 3 sets of 12 reps
    Barbell shoulder pull-ups: 35 lbs, 3 sets of 10 reps
    Skull crushers (overhead triceps with barbell): 35 lbs, 3 sets of 12 reps
    Forearm curls: 35 lbs, 3 sets of 12 reps
    Bosu ball ab crunches: 100 to front with 5 lb dumbells each hand (punch each crunch), 50 to each side
    Machine ab crunches: 65 lbs, 2 sets of 25 reps
    20 minutes of jump rope, no rests, periodic sprints
    Treadmill intervals (start with heart rate high from jump rope):
    3 minutes at 6.5 mph, 1 minute recovery at 4 mph
    3 minutes at 7 mph, 1 minute recovery at 4 mph
    3 minutes at 7 mph, 1 minute recovery at 4 mph

  • I {heart} skull crushers

    I {heart} skull crushers

    Maybe it’s just the name I heart. No, it’s the glow of danger. Who wouldn’t love dropping this offhandedly into a conversation: “Yeah, it was a pretty good workout; got some solid skull crushers in.” Sign me up, baby.

    I found it in my Ultimate Guide to Weight Training for Boxing book as I was trolling for something to hit my triceps harder. You lie on a bench with your head just over the edge. Hold a barbell or curlbar (I use 35 pounds) directly above your head with your arms fully extended. Lock your elbows in place and lower the bar toward your forehead. Keep your elbows in and don’t move your shoulders. Return the bar to the full extension position.

    It feels awesome. The second time I tried it in the gym two other guys watched me sidewise and immediately after grabbed barbells and did their own. I’m telling you, the glow of danger, it’s like the beach and a postage stamp bikini. Guys dig it.

    Consider it mine.

  • The Shame Line is Open


    Three months ago I picked up a jump rope for the first time since I was eight years old. Watching me try to manage a few hops was probably like watching a drunk steer stagger around a corral, except with cursing. I couldn’t believe something so simple, so universal, so obvious could be so impossible. Elementary age girls all over the world do this!

    But that’s how it was, and there was no getting around the fact that if you are a boxer, you also will jump rope. There’s a good reason for this correlation. Jumping rope incinerates calories (up to 1000 an hour); improves your posture, timing, and coordination; powers up your heart even better than running does with less impact on your knees; and costs nearly nothing fifty dollars.

    I should say more about that I guess.

    After three or four humiliating sessions of attempting to jump rope, I did what any middle-class American woman would do. I tried to purchase my way out. I watched my trainer and several other team mates effortlessly skip their way — without misses — through round after round of jump rope drills. Their ropes had shiny silver handles and whistling clear tubes for the “rope”. I could tell something was helping the rope swivel without twisting. I decided that if I had one of those jump ropes, I would be graceful and skilled, too. Har.

    So like many others before me, I got sent to the Buddy Lee Jump Rope website, and I paid my (cough) fifty dollars, and my path to success arrived in the mail about a week later. During the intervening time I did my best to convince my husband that fifty dollars was a reasonable price to pay for a glorified string with handles. It didn’t go well.

    And I learned what everyone learns. Jumping rope skills take time and practice to build, no matter how awesome and ridiculously expensive your jump rope is.

    Eventually my drunken, cursing steer act evolved into a mildly irritated and slightly graceless steer act. Then, in the space of a week or so, I left behind the bovine analogy all together. I am now a pretty good jump roper.

    In fact, I can jump rope for half an hour straight with a few misses, throwing in the occasional twist-the-rope-in-front trick, a running sprint, and the standard pogo. I’m not yet as graceful on the “boxer shuffle” but I’m gaining ground daily.

    So. When I’m not at the boxing gym I go to a regular fitness center, and for two months or so I’ve been taking my diamond-and-ruby-encrusted jump rope with me and doing my thing.

    Until I started jumping rope at that gym, I NEVER ONCE saw anyone jumping rope. After a couple of weeks I noticed I had set off a trend of guys (and guys only) who suddenly decided to do so. And now there’s an interesting pattern that I bear witness to nearly every single time I go.

    It goes like this.

    I get to the gym and post, in ink that only guys can read, a sign that only guys can see, on the front of the huge glass-walled aerobics room where I typically jump. The sign says: “The Shame Line is Open.” This draws them in, one at a time, for a whuppin. During the 30 minutes or so that I’m calmly jumping rope and making it look easy, they come in, pick out one of the barely-used jump ropes hanging on the rack, flex their muscles a bit (neck rolls are a favorite, I’ve noticed), then proceed to whip it for about eight jumps.

    Whereupon they invariably miss, glance over to where I’m serenely running my routine, and start again. They NEVER try to Just Jump Rope. They have to throw a trick, or sprint, or double jump, and they fail. This is frustrating to them because they remember in high school how they could do this, at least a little bit. And they were cool, yes they were. And darn it, they still are.

    They never last an entire minute. And honestly, I never lasted at the beginning either. But jumping rope is absolutely nothing like riding a bike; it’s a skill you have to develop and maintain.

    I feel some sympathy, in an amused 43-year-old woman kind of way. But I’m not closing down shop or anything. Somebody’s gotta run the Shame Line. Might as well be me.

  • Does Boxing Hurt?

    Does Boxing Hurt?

    It’s funny how many people ask me this about boxing.

    Short answer: yes. If that’s all you need to hear, that’s cool, but it’s one of those simple questions (like “Is there really a Santa Claus?” and “What does Paris Hilton do?”) that perhaps calls for a more complex answer. Lucky you! I’m here to elaborate.

    Beginning with the obvious, it hurts to get punched in the face. Ditto ribs, gut, and ears. Even with big, puffy 16oz boxing gloves and headgear on, it hurts. One’s nose, particularly, stings quite a bit when you get popped there. Teary eyes and bloody noses are not uncommon.

    But here’s the cool thing: when you learn that you can actually take a punch, that’s pretty awesome. And when you learn you can last an entire round, that’s even more incredible.

    But the simplest fact of the matter is that in boxing, you don’t spend most of your time being punched in the face (ribs, gut, ears). You spend most of your time training and conditioning. And that’s the biggest part of what hurts in boxing.

    To really bring this home for you, let me give you the list of the top five tortures a boxing trainer inflicts upon her willing (yea, even eager) pupils.

    1. Neck snaps. Heh. An accurate name if there ever was one. Lay on your back in the ring with your shoulders and head suspended over the edge. On the trainers count, snap your head quickly to the right three times like so: One, two, three, ONE. One, two, three, TWO. And so on to ten. You should be completing the ten snaps in about fifteen seconds total. Then you do ten to the left. Double time, now, and keep your eyes open. Now that your neck is starting to seize up, do ten to the front, really lifting your head as high and a quickly as you can. When your trainer finishes that set and starts everyone over again from the beginning, you may feel as if you are going to pass out or die. You should be so lucky; this is only the second set, and there’s still one more to go.

    2. Ring slides. These sound and look innocuous, but they’re deadly. A group of five gets in the boxing ring and forms a circle, facing in. Aaaaaall you have to do is glide sideways, as fast as you can, in that circle with your teammates, for as long as the trainer says. She who holds the stopwatch is your master, and you are the slave. Now move it. At first it’s okay, but after about 2.5 minutes the bottoms of your feet start to burn. Periodically the coach will shout, “Switch!” and you change directions, but it doesn’t help. After several three-minute rounds of this, you will sob with relief when the trainer calls time. The next day you will have massive, slidey blisters on the bottoms of your feet. You will moan a lot and annoy all the people around you. You will avoid the gym like the Black Death.

    3. Arm circles. When the trainer tells you to purchase a couple of two- or three-pound weights, do so immediately. Because if you fail to show with your little weights, they will punish you by making you use the five-pound or heavier weights, and you will experience serious agony in short order. Stick your thus-laden hands straight out in front of you and begin to make little tiny circles. Again, the count is One, two, three, ONE, and you’ll do 25 in the front, then without dropping your arms do 25 straight up above your head, then 25 behind your back (you gotta hunch over for those), then 25 with your arms extended out to your sides. Whatever you do, don’t drop your arms or the whole team will suffer for it. For the cherry on top, extend your arms out to the front again and Just. Hold. It gets worse. Because that’s only the first set.

    4. Mountain climbers. Push-up position. Pull your feet, one at a time, up to your chest, as if the floor were a vertical wall and you were Spiderman climbing it. Pretend Dr. Octopus is chasing you and you have to go really fast. Do ten million repetitions, and keep your butt down. This is why it sucks to be a superhero.

    5. Duck walks. Squat all the way — I said ALL the way down, until your behind is hanging an inch or two from the floor. Now walk. Quickly. While carrying a 12-pound medicine ball at the back of your neck, lifting it straight up in the air, then returning it as you duck walk. Do laps. This is the only exercise I simply can not do (although all my in-their-20’s teammates can). I’m guessing it’s the over-40 factor, along with the rice krispies I have in my knees.

    There are more tortures, but I think you get the idea. Strangely, my boxing team meets twice each week for a two-hour session of this sort of thing, and generally speaking those of us who are on the team also commit to three other gym sessions on our own every week as well. Go figure.

    So yes, Virginia. Boxing hurts. But for some reason, we do it anyway.

  • I’m Learning to Box

    It sounded good at the time, anyway. This summer I decided to shift away from running as my main aerobic exercise since I felt like I was always complaining about how many miles I wasn’t able to do. My right knee has that distinctive Rice Krispies sound that tells me I may have to schedule a doctor’s visit in a few years and I probably won’t like what I hear when I do it. So, in classic avoidance technique I decided I should shift to boxing. Me smart.

    Me hurt now.

    After a month of anticipation, phone calls, and research (I watched Rocky and browsed fashionable boxing accessories), I had my first boxing class today.

    Apparently boxing is like church: no one arrives until after everything begins. But I was there, and after the instructor helped me wrap my hands, he tossed me a pair of gloves, put me front and center and we were off and running. People drifted in while he put us through a basic full-body callisthenic routine, and once we began punching combinations on the heavy bags the serious sweat began to flow.

    The words “speed rounds” may give me nightmares tonight. I kept my feet moving (boxing is more like running than I knew) and my hands up (mostly). Who knew two 14 oz. gloves could weigh as much as anvils? Or — and let me say this is the worst part of boxing so far, worse even than the pain I feel right now before the aspirin kicks in — stink so horribly?? Next order of business: get my own gloves. Which I’m sure will always emit the fragrance of fresh and dewy roses.

    Speaking of roses, I was the only woman in my class today. And it could be that I wasn’t dressed appropriately, but I won’t know that until I see what other women wear. The standard outfit I saw on the guys consisted of ginormous baggy shorts, skull motif tee shirts, and ragged sneakers. Scruffy is presumably the way to go, and my trim aerobics shorts and cheery sport tank were decidedly out of place. Also, today I noticed that I’m really tall. Everyone else is crouched down, hunched into their punching bags. I move less like Muhommad Ali and more like Gumby. Maybe later I’ll get the gist of that “float like a butterfly” thing.

    Overall, I kept up. I was in better aerobic shape than most of the guys there, although I’m sure my punches are about as hard as room temperature butter, and I just laughed and laid on the floor when the instructor called for (and snapped off) fifty push-ups during the “cool down.” Riiiight.

    My shoulders, upper back, and neck are all crying for a three-day vacation in Maui with complimentary Mai Tai’s now, but I’m mentally psyched, and I find myself saying “Yo, Adrian!” when I see someone in the hall. I’ll let you know how it goes.

  • Runner Lisa vs. Bad Lisa

    Runner Lisa: It’s a gorgeous morning for a run!
    Bad Lisa: We haven’t run for over a week. This is gonna hurt.
    RL: We’ll get back in the swing.
    BL: I need to pee.
    RL: You just went!
    BL: It’s freezing.
    RL: That’s what this nice jacket is for.
    BL: What if a neighbor sees us? We will be ashamed of how ridiculously slow we look.
    RL: If a neighbor sees us THEY will be ashamed that we’re out here running and they aren’t.

    RL: Okay, we’ll start with walking up the hill. At the top, we’ll move into a nice slow jog.
    BL: That first downhill is terrible on the knees.
    RL: So we’ll shorten stride.
    BL: I might need a tissue.
    RL: You’re sounding pretty weak.
    BL: I feel pretty puny.
    RL: Maybe you should shut up and run.

    BL: OMG, the Husband is coming up behind us. He’s gonna PASS us. Or dog our heels. This is terrible.
    RL: Hm, let’s see if we can do some intervals, move further ahead, then we can turn off the straightaway and get on a different route.
    BL: I may perish in the attempt.
    RL: I’ll come back for you later.

    BL: It’s not working. I can hear him schlepping along behind us again. Listen to that! Why does he scrape his feet like that? It can’t be aerodynamic.
    RL: He appears to have a higher pace than we can do, even with the schlepping.
    BL: We’re silent but slow.
    RL: At least we’re moving.
    BL: THAT man is moving. He’s on like a 9 minute mile pace. We’re on, like, a 30 minute mile pace.
    RL: Sometimes it feels that way.

    RL: Look at us! We’re past thirty minutes. We met our goal. Next run will be better.
    BL: What’s my reward? A donut?
    RL: Nice try. How about a walk around the block?
    BL: More exercise is not considered a reward.
    RL: Yes, I’d love to have you join me on a walk. It will be a pleasure.