Clearly this weekend’s weather played havoc with the entire east coast, and I sincerely hope everyone is safe. My parents are still without power, it is hard to imagine what they will do aside from bored games, puzzles and reading books. After so many hours I am sure they like many other red blooded American families have gotten a little stir crazy. I know during the storm I certainly did. With that in mind here are a couple ways and things I did this weekend to keep from getting too lethargic.

It was easy to stay at home and watch movies, eat, and drink but I am one of the lucky ones, the Upper East Side of Manhattan remained relatively undamaged, sure there are some down trees but the power stayed on the entire time. The worst thing to really happen was the tree in front of my building fell towards the door and with the help of a neighbor we pushed the branches away from the front door so we could get outside to walk our dogs. I know that sounds crazy, but really wasn’t such a big deal, in fact I was so busy moving it I didn’t take a picture of it till afterwards.

To prepare for Frankenstorm Sandy, we filled every water bottle with water, apparently the 18+ water bottles I have accrued from triathlon finally paid off! With those all filled, I filled the trash cans with water in the shower in case the power went out the pumps for the pluming would be empty and the only way to flush would be to pour water directly into the tank and flush, simple enough. We also stocked up on supplies which was a real pain because every person was at the stores buying up whatever they could, people act so irrationally at times it makes me laugh (for more blogging about food supplies check out “The Journey not the Finish” blog post). For instance I saw one woman with literally five boxes of frozen hamburgers, was she hosting a Sandy-BBQ, not sure but what was she going to do with five boxes of bubbaburgers? (I wish I had a photo, but you can see here from the lines that the stores by me were a zoo). Finally, at home with the fridge stocked and freezer full, yes I had additional coolers on hand should we lose power to keep dairy items frozen. The only thing left to do was organize candles, flash lights, and my headlamp for running at night. Yeah it is amazing how quickly the tri-gear comes in doubly handy. My massive zoot waterproof transition bag was perfect for our emergency “to-go” bag. We packed this with some changes of clothing, dog food, sneakers, money, back up battery charger for phones, and set it aside.

Evil Pup!!! She is Hypnotizing me to get off the bike and take her for a walk.

Sandy arrived on the UES late Monday afternoon, with seriously strong winds, in fact my dog was acting very strange but I suppose most animals do during these events. When she did show up I finally broke out my Kinetic trainer and set up my bike and started pedaling while we watched a cheesy movie. So on Monday I road 1:38 to the horror movie Paranormal activity2 which wasn’t really all that scary but make me jump during one scene to which I nearly knocked myself over on the bike. I got in a solid 45miles roughly 18.36 avg speed, and was able to get some long interval efforts worked in. Also secretly every time I went to the bathroom that day I did pushups, descending from 20, 18, 16… you get the point. I kind of lost track but it helped give me another thing to do. I also did lunges when I went to the kitchen and calf press on the steps, I even found myself curling the garbage on the walk down to the trash collection room.

That’s my pup sleeping under me while I was spinning.

Tuesday with Sandy was a little harder to get motivated to get on the bike again, I don’t mind the trainer at all especially with a movie playing but I think the weather was getting the better of me and I just wanted to get outside. I road for a mere 40 mins and worked up a good sweat showered up and called it a day. All this time I had to work remotely from home, and while that doesn’t sound horrible my firm has about the worst leadership and communication around, seriously we had a phone tree put in place at 11:33pm on Monday night to relay the closure of the offices, note the date and time…guys you all dropped the ball, I just wasn’t in the mood to do anything work related and it really took the wind out of my sales. Wed morning, today, I woke up extra early put on running sneakers and filled my backpack with supplies and food for the day and started my commute to the midtown office. Sure this doesn’t sound horrible but I saw a bus (limited service today) and actually ran it down. well I should stipulate that by calling it, “my crippled version of running” the hip immediately flared up, and the pain was intense I was gritting my teeth for the five blocks I ran at full tilt to catch the bus. Thankfully yes I did get on the bus, and I thanked the MTA driver for working today as I got onboard. Slowly the bus lumbered along to my midtown stop and I was kicking myself for not riding my bike to work, it would have been so much easier and heading home would be a breeze.

How did you stay active during Hurricane Sandy? Share with us here: