Muscle Beach
My wife is a great swimmer and started open ocean swimming a year ago. I am not a great swimmer, but I do enjoy spending time on the beach. But when she told me that she had plans to meet a friend for a swim session yesterday at Brighton Beach, I was skeptical because of the weather forecast. Several weather apps and various websites assured me that rain and cloudy skies were a sure thing. We had just come out of a heat wave, so the temperature was (only) in the seventies. It didn’t seem like an optimal beach day, but both myself and the weatherpersons were proven wrong!
When we left the house around ten in the morning the sky was still very gray. There was not a lot of traffic for a Saturday morning. I had a feeling the beach would be fairly empty, which is ideal for me because I make a concerted effort to avoid crowds. Lo and behold, there were maybe around thirty people spread out along a wide strip of sand. The foggy atmosphere and sparse number of beach goers led me to imagine a very cinematic scene. I feel like I’ve seen similar imagery of Coney Island draped in fog in one or two films.
Brighton Beach is an amazing neighborhood. It’s predominantly a Russian and former Eastern Bloc community, with a really fast growing Central Asian population (it’s a great destination for Uzbek food and culture). There’s also a longstanding Jewish population, representing the diversity of the diaspora.
Having a nearly empty stretch of beach really motivated me to get in a quick run. It was still fairly early for me on a weekend, and I needed a nice way to get the blood flowing and pumping. I wanted to take a dip, but the current conditions weren’t inspiring me to get in the water, so I figured a run would help. I started at Grimaldo's Chair, a landmark among open water swimmers, and ran to the end of the beach (towards the adjacent Manhattan Beach) and back. It’s a mile altogether. My pace of seven and a half minutes running a mile on sand is great for me. All the while, I was thinking about Faith Kipyegon’s recent attempt at breaking the four-minute mile. I’ll never get to her elite level, but there was a time in my life when the thought and reality of a sub-ten minute mile was absurd and off-putting.
I’ve come really far in my fitness journey, and at that moment, I was almost ready to enjoy the salty sea. Even more tempting was the fact that the grayness transitioned into a clear blue sky with bright sunshine. But before that, I had three sets of ten chest to sand burpees followed by twenty rocket (i.e Mike Tyson) push ups to do along the surf.
Doing burpees and push ups in the sand and surf is an extra challenge. Sand is less stable than other surfaces, your hands and feet sink into it, adding a whole other layer of resistance and requiring an added amount of effort. It also resulted in some really interesting marks in the sand. I’d call them painterly. I also performed two sets of twenty jump squats in the shallow water. I quickly realized that it’s a lot harder to do a dynamic movement like squat jumps when you have the weight of the water and the force of waves breaking into your body; and I did get knocked down once or twice!
Unfortunately, I didn’t get any footage of myself working out (or the resulting marks my body made in the sand), but I did take a selfie next to the water, as well as a candid shot of some lifeguard training, which was fun to watch.
They were situated along a jetty, doing plank holds, then mountain climbers for thrity seconds followed by several reps of push ups and finally some squats. Then they’d run to the next jetty and repeat the whole sequence.
Today’s a lot warmer and sunnier here in New York City (88 degrees at the time of posting this). But wherever you are, I hope you’re in the midst of a beautiful day. Perhaps you’re even reading this on the beach. If so, give my little workout a try and let me know how you get on!
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