Deck of Cards and Hubway

Today we met by the giant Arthur Fiedler head on the Esplanade in Boston for a 20 minute deck of cards workout.  Deck of cards workouts are when you assign a specific exercise to suits of a deck of cards and the number on the card is how many you do.

This was a first for many things today for me.  First I had to get to Boston and I can't take my bike on the T, so I spent a bit of time thinking things through.  First I realized that if I got off at Copley, I could grab a Hubway rental bike and ride over to the Esplanade and park there and grab another one back to the T.

Having never done a deck of cards work out, I wasn't sure what to expect there either.  They kept it easy for us in that it was red cards were sit ups and black cards were push ups (or was it the other way around?)  Our group made it half way through the deck in the 20 minutes.  Some of us took turns holding members' feet so they could do the sit ups and some of us switched off to  push ups on our knees to be able to do the full amount with good form.

The guys announced that part of the work out was how we got there.  It was a chance to run some miles or whatever it was we needed to do to add to that 20 minute core workout.  With that in mind, I decided to ride the Hubway bike all the way up Comm Ave from Arlington Street to Kenmore Square.

Here's the thing, the City of Boston has marked bike lanes (a new experiences for me), but it's on the left hand side of Comm Ave until you get to Charles Gate East where the Back Bay turns into the Fenway neighborhood.  Then the lane goes across all the traffic to the right hand side where cars are turning onto/coming off of Storrow Drive.  Fortunately, at 7 in the morning, traffic was light but I could see this being a nightmare during commuter hours.

I followed the bike lane around the outskirts of Kenmore and decided to go as far as the Landmark Center by the Fenway T stop.  Along the way I passed various other folks from the November Project heading out.  They had gone for a run towards home or the T and passed by in a couple of different spots along the route.  My early morning ride felt good and I parked the bike easily at Landmark Center and grabbed the T back to my car and home.

It was a good workout this morning, a couple of easy bike rides, a solid core workout and a lot of new experiences to get me going for the day and for the week.  I'm already checking commuter rail and bus schedules to see if I can take my bike into town for the morning and then find a pleasant ride home before school starts up and my mornings are booked with getting out the door to work.  Until then, I'll take full advantage of my 3 a week August workouts.