I used to live in Manhattan Beach a little better than 10 years ago and a mile away from home was this interesting little park, an anomaly in a residential neighborhood called Sand Dune Park. I visited it once and tried to run up it but did not get too far. I have been wanting to go back and today was the day. The morning was a cool 57 degrees, but things heated up quickly.

The idea, of course, was to fashion a workout for The Dune. Initially, I thought I would run up it 5 times and do 15 burpees at the top and 15 push-ups at the bottom while wearing a 20 lb weighted vest. Once I got there, I walked up the hill without the vest to assess the situation. What I came up with was skip the run-not possible, skip the burpees-I would probably hurl, but keep the vest and do 5 laps with 20 push-ups at the top and 20 at the bottom. Written out, it looked like this:

5 rounds, with weighted vest,
20 push-ups
Walk hill with recovery on downhill
20 push-ups.

Nothing quite like walking up a steep grade where your feet have no firm traction. The first round went well but by the third through the fifth, I was taking 25 steps at a time and taking a short rest. Eventually I got to the top where I was looking forward to the push-ups! The iPod came in handy today. This is what the splits looked like:

5:17/6:58/7:19/8:28/8:17/ Total time was 36:19 with an avg. HR of 168 and a max of 167.

There were quite a few people here and I was surprised by the mix. There were some MMA guys, an active Marine, some runners, some obese people, an elderly woman, and surprisingly, a lot of high school age kids doing workouts including walking the hill, short running sprints and one guy was doing lunges but I don’t how far he got. One of the runners, a petite woman had just finished 15 laps and looked no worse for the wear. A number of people I spoke with do this once a week. For those who do not wish to take on the hill, there are steps to the top as well. I will definitely do this again, but will leave the weighted vest at home and may also mix in some stairs and yeah, Burpees!

I have some more pictures posted here.

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