1/4 Mile Walking Lunges

You know, Valentine's Day seems like a good day for a 1/4 mile of walking lunges. Yes this thought crossed my mind and yes, I feel the prick of regret thinking of it now. It all started several months ago when I was perusing the Crossfit website and noticed the WOD (workout of the day for those who prefer to read words over abbreviations) was a 1/4 mile of walking lunges. "1/4 mile Walking Lunges" was pasted there in all its simplicity and gawking awkwardly at me. The WOD had no further description and was completely devoid of any instruction, I was mildly intimidated. From my experience with Crossfit, they are ferocious opponents of less than full range of motion during exercise, and everyone knows I hate to disappoint anonymous website proprietors. Each lunge must have a gentle grazing of the trailing knee on the ground. Get low!

Fast forward 6 months. Travis, one of our facility's personal trainers and fitness aficionado declared he was going to attempt the foreboding and now aptly named, "1/4 mile March of Death". I, being the competition hungry fool that I am, intelligently piped up that I would also lunge the long and, what turned out to be loathsome, 1/4 mile. A 1/4 mile: once around a high school track or once down the length of a drag strip, or half of half of a mile. I like the last one, sounds short.

Saturday, February 14 2009, Valentine's Day. I was committed to my brick workout that morning, so off I went; 20 miles on the wheels and 2 on the Asics express. A little less than three hours later, I traded in my newly adorned flip flops for my Keyano's. The first 50 lunges were comfortable, not easy, but not exigent. The 51st lunge started the rapid downward spiral, by 100 I had to take a break, my legs were on fire. This little break allowed the lactic acid build up to decrease just enough to continue my procession of eternal lunges. Taking a split second break on each half century and century mark proved to be an effective method of mitigating the risk of Rhabdo. Even though I was past the 25% mark, my mind knew that this was only the beginning and my trembling legs unappreciatively concurred.

I finally reached the half-way mark having suffered through 175 lunges. You would think that 50% would represent both a literal and figurative turning point for me. Sadly, this was not the case. As the beads of sweat accumulated on my brow and the sun relentlessly beat down on my increasingly thinning mop, I proceeded. Lunge after lunge the proverbial 'burn' increased. Breaks every 50 turned into breaks every 40, and then breaks every 30 until I finally had to take a split second break every 10 lunges. I rounded the final corner, 300 hundred lunges down, 50 freakin' lunges remaining. I strengthened my resolve, I was going to finish this WOD with honor, non stop, the way a true Crossfitter should. That lasted 10 seconds. 40 lunges to go. With each step time slowed down until it looked like the climax of a summer blockbuster, minus the explosions & fast cars. Although the last 40 lunges took 4hrs and 14 minutes to complete, I made it. 350 lunges. Just like that.

Total time: 11 minutes 20 seconds. Total Lunges: 350. The delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS for those who prefer capitalized abbreviations) was not so much 'delayed' as it was 'early'. No worries though, it lasts 2 days at the most, and I workout all the time, so I can expect soreness for maybe a day. Unfortunately, I felt the muscles soreness creep up on me before dinner that night, not a good sign, and this was only the beginning. I woke the next morning to lead filled legs and a brain that has lost functional control over those appendages. For the next 4 days, yes 4, I attempted to walk with a degree of normalcy, but to no avail. Daily activities I take for granted now became a labor intensive experience. Aside from the embarrassment I felt walking like a newborn fawn in pain, and the weird looks from random bystanders, I was, and still am, silently proud. My new found disability comes with a badge of honor. One that can only be understood by similarly mentally defunct individuals.

That's right, I'm defunct.