The View From the Top

I've mentioned that I'm doing the Beachbody workout program Insanity, that it's boring and repetitive and I hate it, and that I'm going to finish it. To keep myself from burning out on it even more than I already have, sometimes I'll replace an Insanity workout with something that's equally challenging but less stupid. So yesterday, when I saw "MAX INTERVAL CIRCUIT" on the schedule, I thought of my I-don't-have-to-work-out-today-because excuses for like five minutes (as I do almost every day) and just went running, instead. Up a mountain.

Well, not exactly a mountain. There doesn't seem to be an official size definition of what makes a mountain, but it used to be 1,000 feet, or 304.8 meters. The land mass half a mile from our apartment building, "Hill 303," is 303 meters. So...almost.

So I jogged over there, set my timer, and started going as fast as I could. I saw one American couple, and quite a few older Koreans. The Koreans were mostly dressed in long pants and winter coats and, along with the normal encouraging thumbs-ups and words that I had no idea what they meant, I was asked a few times if I was cold in my shorts and tank top. It was about 60 degrees out there, and I was being super active, so I wasn't. But the only time I don't get asked that is when it's like 100 degrees.

It took me 19 minutes and 50 seconds to get to the war memorial at the top of 303. I felt like I was asphyxiating. I hung out up there until I could breathe again, took a couple phone pics, and started back down.

20 minutes plus the short, easy jog from our apartment to the hill-mountain wasn't much of a workout compared to the 55 minutes of stupidity I would otherwise have had to endure, so I decided to run up to the helipad, too. Then do pushups (even though there were people up there so it was awkward.) I did three sets of 20. I was really impressed with myself; four months ago, I ended a two-minute pushup challenge with a score of 14 pushups.

See? You can see the H on the helipad from space.

THE END!