Try This at Home

After a slow day at work, I felt like kicking off the evening with a customarily balls to the wall workout. However, I wasn’t too keen on running as the ‘feels like’ temperature was a cruel -8°F/-22°C and I am of course not a member of a gym. Not a problem, as I devised a beast of a room workout. Why not try this at home?

Warm Up: Running home from the train station (it was too cold to walk). Dynamic stretching.

3 sets of the following circuit. No rest whatsoever, except for quick sips of water.

1. Push-up position with your bum in the air, then drive legs to chest in a kind of running motion. I know these have a name, what is it? – 50 reps (one leg going forwards = one rep)
2. Push-ups – 20 reps
3. Lunges – 8 reps on each leg
4. Lying flat on your back, legs straight and 6 inches above the ground, raising each leg alternatively, keeping them as straight as possible. I should probably give these a name. 15 raises of each leg.
5. Tricep dips – 25 reps¹
6. Squats – 15 reps²
7. Side plank – 1 minute each side
8. Single leg good mornings – 8 reps on each leg³
9. Sit-ups, punching once to each side when you are up – 30 reps (up, two punches, and back = one rep)
10. Triangle push-ups– 10 reps⁴

¹ A sofa can be used to dip from
² In place of a barbell, use a Swiffer, broom, or ideally (as I had, but I can understand if you don’t) – one of those cardboard cylinders that posters come in
³ Use your two heaviest books - one in each hand and lower them towards the ground – to help balance
⁴ On the third and final set, keep going until your arms give way, causing your chest to crash down to the floor in triumph

It was a cracking workout that exercised the whole body, with little equipment and conveniently located in my own apartment! To help push myself to the max, I blasted some raucous music (At the Drive-In, Motorhead) and imagined that I was being filmed for a training montage. To those brave enough to try my workout at home – good luck!

Early on a Sunday Morning

6.40AM. Sunday. The alarm clock was ringing. Crawled out of bed and hastily pulled on some clothes, trying not to disturb my sleeping girlfriend. Grabbed a banana and snuck out of the house at 6.50. Forty minutes to get there. Still dark outside. Cold too. Nobody around except an old man and his dog. Walked to the Diversey ‘L’ stop. Opened the door. Nobody there. Security guard comes out and tells me the Brown Line doesn’t stop at that station until 7.45. Nevermind. Don’t need to get there until 7.30. Jogged up to Belmont where I was told the train would be stopping. Should of worn running shoes. 7.07AM. Daylight starting to infiltrate the dark. No brown line trains coming. Waited seven minutes and boarded a Red Line train heading north. Everyone in the carriage looked half-asleep or half-dead or both. Alighted at Sheridan.  7.18AM. Twelve minutes to go. Taking the Red Line meant I was now over a mile too far East. Going to be touch and go. Started running. Definitely should have worn running shoes. Maybe a bus will come. Do the buses run at this time on a Sunday? No buses coming. 7.25AM. Not far to go now. Got to keep moving. Crossed Ashland Ave at 7.27. I was going to make it. At 7.28AM I opened the door and walked inside. The players were walking onto the pitch. I took off my layers and sunk a glass of water. The whistle blew and the game was underway! I was at The Globe Pub to watch Manchester United v Liverpool followed by Arsenal v Manchester City. What a morning it was going to be! I had made it for kickoff! At 7:31AM I ordered a beer.

It was remarkable how many people were in the pub at 7.30AM on a Sunday morning. Outside it was dark, quiet, and the streets empty. Inside it was the opposite – packed, loud, and the screens and red jerseys brightly coloring the room. There were no seats going in either of the first two rooms and by the time the second game was underway the front room was completely rammed. It was a very fun morning and my sausage, bacon, and egg sandwich was wonderful. I certainly napped well that afternoon. 

Bowling?

For the past who knows how many months, whenever we are approaching a weekend night with no plans, my suggestion has always been “bowling?” Last night, when an investment banker’s absurd job dedication laid bare our plans for the night, we finally went bowling.

Our pin-toppling venue was the Diversey River Bowl in Bucktown. I had driven past this large shed on several occasions and had always wanted to pay a visit. The old fashioned neon signage evoked that sort of old ‘Americana’ feel I had only seen on movies, and once inside my suspicions that this was the kind of place that Tom Petty might have met a girl named Maria were immediately confirmed.

The retro feel stemmed from many sources. Most obvious were the music that spanned seven decades and the accompanying videos that moved around the front wall they were substandardly projected onto. More subtlety, a scrolling LED news ticker displayed news from January 2010, momentarily tricking me into thinking that Justine Henin was making another comeback. As for the drinks, Jello shots were available for $2 per ‘syringe’ (we didn’t try these) and the 100oz beer tubes were perfect for the lane side tables. Refreshingly, the staff weren’t robots obeying meticulous guidelines drafted in a corporate office and battered into them in training – when we weren’t ready for our lane, I feared that we would be forced to start our game or be relegated to the back of the order, but the man simply told us to come back when we had all our players and we could start then. Finally, there was a certain dinginess about the place, punctuated my brightly colored moving spotlights.

Step back in time at the Diversey River Bowl

All things considered, the Diversey River Bowl was awesome and the highlight was the music. It was an eclectic mix that both surprised and delight. There were old classics – that quintessential eighties anthem ‘Take on Me”, a cracking jam from The Clash, and a wonderful song from the fifties that prompted dance moves to become incorporated into bowling techniques, resulting in gutterballs across the room. There were timeless sing-along tunes like Lit’s “My Own Worst Enemy” and The Darkness’ “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”. There were awesome songs I simply never expected to hear by Sleigh Bells, Cold War Kids, and the Bouncing Souls. However, the song whose surprising transmission pleased me most was “One Armed Scissor” by At The Drive-In, an exhilarating rocker from the year 2000 that had my roommate and I screaming along.

 The less said about my bowling the better, so let’s just say that I failed to bowl a strike all night and my average speed was around 7mph.

My bowling wasn’t the only worrying site last night. There were a number of children present who were up and about staggeringly late. When we left at around 1am, we were followed out by two carfulls of kids, some who can’t have been older than five.