Outdoor Fitness

I am signed up with Outdoor Fitness for 6 weeks of sessions and seeing what it will do for me. I did my first session on Monday evening, and aside from being a slightly confused 'newbie' I think I did okay. The fact that I had to take things easy because of my ongoing hip / back (sacroiliac joint) problems meant that I didn't reach falling down tired. Although that said the sweat was literally pouring off me a couple of times.

Lime Avenue (Pontcanna Field, Cardiff) - photo by Peter Cox
(borrowed from a BBC local page http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southeast/sites/streetsofcardiff/pages/yourphotos_pontcanna.shtml)

On Tuesday I did it all over again, a different instructor, a mostly different group of people (though I can't say I gave over much time to memorising faces when I spent so of it staring at either the ground or the sky doing press-up, squat thrusts, sit-ups, burpees, etc.), and the weather was lovely again. The workout is deceptive, it builds through out and the changing locations with changing routines don't allow you a great deal of time to think "oh, this is another exercise hitting my quads" and so forth. We did a fair bit in pairs which meant a poor guy had to piggy back me along at a 3 stone disadvantage, I like to think he appreciated the challenge (!).

The final session of the week (thanks to a busy family weekend) was last night. In the glorious sunny weather the session turned out to be mostly baseball / rounders with an exercise twist - every time your team lost out i.e. lost a run or lost a batter the whole team did a 5 burpee or some such exercise penalty. I haven't played in I don't know how long so it was awesome fun, even with the 'penalties'. It is not that I am saying this because I scored two runs, oh no, it was a genuinely fun, energetic giggle. The guy I'd met earlier in the week confessed he'd been coming a year and never had this kind of session. So true to their word the outdoor experience is absolutely mixed, varied and puts a lot of fun into exercise.

On reflection my week of running around a huge open park with about twenty people and a mad keen instructor was actually much, much more fun than I had perhaps anticipated, certainly the time flew by. The hour long session felt like much less because primarily of the variety and pace of everything. As part of my fitness 'mix' this certainly seems to be an interesting addition, I'm so interested to find out how I'll feel at the end of the sessions block I am involved with.