Helpful Hints for Allergy Sufferers

By Robin

Is the pollen killing you? Here are some ideas for relief:

Tip one: Try tak­ing your allergy med­i­cine of choice before you go to bed. It takes up to an hour for most to kick-in. If you take an extended release ver­sion before bed, it’ll be cir­cu­lat­ing in your sys­tem when your alarm goes off at O’Dark-thirty for boot camp. The pay­off? You won’t be snif­fling your way through your first three sets of sit-ups – or worse yet, hid­ing out at home when you could be work­ing out and hav­ing fun with us in Pied­mont Park! Sources con­flict on when peak pollen hours but at least one I found said pollen counts can be high­est in the morn­ings. Don’t use it as an excuse not to come out. Just pre­pare yourself.

I tried this tip of tak­ing meds before bed myself this week and it seems to be help­ing. Maybe it is just the placebo effect but I think it is worth the shot.

Warn­ing from per­sonal expe­ri­ence: don’t take the kind that are “non-drowsy” or you could be up all night. Pollen counts have reached record highs this spring in Atlanta. I imag­ine Pied­mont Park is ground zero with its beau­ti­ful green grass and bud­ding oaks, dog­woods, and aza­leas. Pro­tect your­self so you can be a work­out won­der and not an allergy zom­bie in the AM. For trusted med­ical info I always turn to WebMD.

For more tips and to learn more about aller­gies, check out these 5 Ways to Beat Spring Aller­gies or Allergy Tips: Your Out­door Exer­cise Check­list.

Could you be mak­ing one of these 6 Allergy Mis­takes Exer­cis­ers Make?

Do you have allergy tips for the rest of the BC4C fam­ily? Share them in the comments.

Source: WebMD

One Hour, $500

In just one hour, you could make $500 for your favorite charity.

Tomor­row is our Try Us Out Day — a free work­out to any­one inter­ested in try­ing boot camp. To make it inter­est­ing, we will be giv­ing $500 to the char­ity that brings out the most peo­ple to Try Us Out.

Atten­dees need to be there by 5:45a and the work­out will be over before 7:00a. We meet in the park­ing lot behind Willy’s at Pied­mont Park. You don’t need to sign up for the day, you just need to come ready to work out.

If there is a tie, the win­ning char­ity will be decided by who has the most votes in the poll.

Please help us get the word out and good luck! Remem­ber vot­ing closes at 5p ET 2/21.

Season of Magic

For those of us won­der­ing about horses in Pied­mont Park…

Pied­mont Park Conservancy’s 1st Annual Sea­son of Magic in Pied­mont Park kicks off on Sun­day, Novem­ber 20th and runs through New Year’s Day.

For the first time in the Park, cou­ples and fam­i­lies can enjoy daily horse-drawn car­riage rides, mak­ing Pied­mont Park the only Atlanta park with car­riage rides. Vis­i­tors will be car­ried through the his­toric and newly expanded areas of the Park, enjoy­ing beau­ti­ful hol­i­day lights under the scenic Atlanta sky­line. Rides are avail­able every ten min­utes from 5:00pm to 10:00pm daily. Each ride is approx­i­mately 20 min­utes in length. Infants ride free.

Other Sea­son of Magic events include weekly fam­ily friendly arts and crafts and a carousel with the Legacy Foun­tain light show in the back­ground. Atlantans are also wel­come to stroll through the Park to enjoy the fes­tive lights for free. The Con­ser­vancy will also offer cor­po­rate cock­tail party pack­ages through­out the sea­son, hosted in Mag­no­lia Hall.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find Out What it Means to Us… Now.

By Train­ers for the Day: Julie, Kate, Jeff

I think it’s fair to say that Jeff, Kate and I all had a healthy amount of respect for the train­ers prior to our expe­ri­ence as ‘Train­ers for the Day’ Fri­day, Nov. 11. It would be hard to come out to Pied­mont Park rain or shine, bit­ter cold or swel­ter­ing heat, in the pre-dawn hours, 4–5 days a week if this weren’t the case. All that said, I believe I can speak for the three of us (which I will in this entire post, because I vol­un­teered to write it) in say­ing THAT respect has sig­nif­i­cantly increased after our expe­ri­ence last week.

Even with respect for the train­ers, we each entered into this oppor­tu­nity with one sim­ple thing in mind: pay­back. We wanted revenge, pun­ish­ment, jus­tice — it all came down to hav­ing the win­ning bid so we could enjoy watch­ing the train­ers endure what­ever form of tor­ture we could come up with in our sick, wicked lit­tle minds. We wanted them to gasp in fear when they heard their fate, to fall to their knees as bro­ken human beings when they real­ized the just couldn’t go on, to beg us to make it stop and see in their eyes the mis­er­able mir­ror of our own worst day at boot camp. We envi­sioned stand­ing above the train­ers, as they hud­dled together in tears, and laugh with gusto as our fel­low boot campers car­ried us off into the sun­rise on their shoul­ders shout­ing, ‘Viva La Revolution!’

In the end, we openly admit there’s no doubt what the train­ers do is NOT easy. The time and effort needed to develop a work­out includ­ing a proper warm up and cool down to pre­vent injury, a pre­cisely timed and well orga­nized ‘main event’ to be sure to bring value to all who rose so early to join us, yet still be unique and fun (espe­cially for the train­ers). With full time jobs, fluc­tu­a­tion in our sched­ules mak­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion tough, busi­ness travel or per­sonal com­mit­ments that sapped the energy and focus we had as the week pro­gressed — it def­i­nitely came down to the wire to get it all done.

On behalf of Jeff, Kate and myself, I want to say thank you to all of the train­ers, but it hardly seems like enough. You do this for free, you do this for char­ity, you do this with fel­low train­ers you call friends, and you do this for 30+ strangers any given month with the kind of self­less­ness I, per­son­ally, have seen very few peo­ple exhibit so freely. For your unend­ing well of encour­age­ment, for the push we often need but don’t always appre­ci­ate, for your time and energy, the smiles, the laughs, and, if we’re lucky, the build­ing friend­ships based on a mutual desire for health and well­ness, thank you is hol­low but all I can find that even comes close.

Check out all the pho­tos from Friday’s workout! →

The Haka

BY TRACY

Although Rugby may not be very pop­u­lar in the US, it is one of the most pop­u­lar sports world­wide. If you have ever watched a game, it can be a lit­tle con­fus­ing at first (I call it American-football-on-crack), so be sure to watch it with some­one who knows the rules.

How­ever, to me the most enter­tain­ing aspect of rugby is not the game itself but the pre-game rit­ual. Take New Zealand for exam­ple, they are called the All Blacks and they per­form a dance called the Haka.

The Māori war style dance has been a part of the team’s pre-game rit­ual dat­ing back to 1884. Māori are the indige­nous Poly­ne­sian peo­ple of New Zealand. The most per­formed Haka at New Zealand rugby games is called the “Ka mate, Ka Mate.”

Check out this video to see the rit­ual in action. Think we can try this out at boot camp?