Today's Pike Workout

About a week ago I whined about being in a rut, and I received some nice supportive messages in response. The first one was from Dusty Rhodes, and suggested (among other things) doing a few workouts with a training partner. I figured I'd take his advice today, without letting my complete and utter lack of a training partner stop me. So I piggy-backed on today's Pike Workout (click through for exercise descriptions in the comments):

This was a challenge. The idea is to do it as quickly as you can:

Get a Deck of Cards.

Shuffle them.

Spades: Burpees
Clubs: Mahlers
Hearts: Pushups
Diamonds: Squats

2-9 = Face Value
10-K = 10
A = 15

Go through as quickly as you can and keep time. My time was 28:09.

So that gave me something to shoot for, but I fell short, finishing in 30:09, and I took advantage of the optional Mahler substitution (two-count Mountain Climbers), which has gotta be miles easier (or at least tons faster). Dang. Overshooting 30:00 by a mere nine seconds particularly rankles. Surely I could have gutted out another ten seconds somewhere in there?! Still, the training partner who had no idea he was my training partner certainly helped me push myself. With about a quarter of the deck to go I really wanted to quit, but since I swore to myself I'd post the results I couldn't bear the thought of reporting "failed to finish."