Conditions:  60s and beautiful.  Sadly, it’s dark at the start recently.  14 pax showed up to run and celebrate my birthday in the wee early hours of the morning.

WU: Motivators UP to 6 (this was a work in progress).  Inch worms  with 5 merkins and 5 squats.  Then one lap around a half mile loop from Eagles Landing, across Harvard to Harvey, down Harvey to Fillmore, then across Fillmore to Cuyler and up Cuyler to Harvard.  The last block of this we added some shuffles, high knees, butt kickers and backwards running.

MarioKart:

From a staggered start with faster runners up front, we ran continuous loops around the above half mile track.

Rules:

Corners: Each corner represents a banana peel for the first three racers.

• 1st place: 10 burpees
• 2nd place: 15lunges
• 3rd place: 20 mountain climbers

Passing: When passing another racer from behind you can (but you don’t have to) hit them with:

• Turtle shell: 20 merkins OR 20 squats
• Magic Mushroom: 1/2 block sprint

Immunity:

• You cannot get shelled or ‘shroomed while performing exercises
• You can opt for walking lunges as a delay tactic to avoid being shelled
• You can only be shelled by a given racer once per lap

Results:

MarioKart never disappoints.  Technically MeatLoaf won, but really we all won today.  We covered about 3-4 miles.  The banana peels and turtle shells kept our group relatively close together with everyone finishing more or less within sight of each other.  Excellent start to a random Friday or a birthday, whatever the case may be.

CoolDown:

Sun salutations with lizard and pigeon stretch

CoT:  I shared a little gratitude out loud to keep the demons at bay and the bitterness out of my heart.