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Socialising can mean a lot of things to different people – but the main thing is getting together and doing something fun.
I, too, like to socialise. In my case, the room setting of my kind of socialising would have loud music (of course), some kettlebells, dumbbells, a skipping rope and other exercise items. That is why I took up the invites for, first, some gruesome fun (as per invite) with the launch of the Reebok Nano9 and, second, the Adidas/Parley Run For The Oceans activation campaign.
1. Challenge of note with Reebok’s Workout of the Day
Reebok invited fitness influencers and media people to test its newly launched Nano9 sneakers. The setup for the evening workout was the Northlands Deco Park in North Riding, in the CrossFit 152 Biogen.
This place is a gym within an office park. But it didn’t look like any office park I’m used to.
Different businesses in this office park look like huge factories. The chosen gym was an ideal venue as the sneakers that were being launched are said to be made for crossfit workouts.
“The whole reason for a crossfit shoe is that we needed something you can do weight lifting in, run in and still skip in and have all these different elements of a crossfit workout,” said Kendall Franks, the brand’s technical representative.
I, however, didn’t do the workout in the Nano9 but instead in the Memory Tech Flexagon Force.
Their size five Nano9 felt too big and there wasn’t a size four.
I liked the colour of the Memory Tech, so I didn’t throw out my toys but got into gear. The sneaker was practical, comfy and superflexible.
The workout put together was a nice challenge for me. It included three cycles of a 200m treadmill run, 10 burpee boxjump overs, 15 goblets kettlebell squats and 20 bar deadlifts. The 14 minutes and two seconds it took me to complete the workout was no easy feat but I attended this gathering knowing that I was in for some gruesome fun.
The evening went by really quickly and no time was wasted from start to finish. The whole event took less than an hour and a half.
Honestly, by the end of the workout all I wanted was to go home, get warm and sleep. I was beat!
2. Cleaning a clean park!
About 12 hours after my challenging first invite, my second social event turned out to be pretty chilled, but left me questioning some things.
Adidas, together with the Parley for the Oceans, have a great environmental campaign which aims to prevent plastic from entering the oceans. The initiative aims to transform the plastic into high performance sportswear. So a plogging event (a Swedish fitness trend that includes picking up litter during a jog) was set up in Joburg while a beach cleanup took place in Cape Town at the same time to coincide with World Oceans Day on June 8.
As with such events, a crew of fitness influencers and the media were invited to the Parley for the Oceans activation event.
The Joburg get-together was to clean a park. The park chosen for this was the Robyn Park in burbs of Douglasdale in Sandton.
The area looked beautiful and, honestly, very clean. It had me thinking; what a lost opportunity!
The story of plastic in our oceans needs to get to people who live in really dirty, poor neighbourhoods. We have plenty of those, like plenty in Satafrika.
Nevertheless, I braved the chilly morning with a chilled 1km warm-up jog and combined it with picking up litter.
Among the fitness influencers invited were Mapule “Queenfitnass” Ndlovhu and Nombulelo Mgabadeli. Television personality Rorisang Thandekiso also joined the cleanup.
The plastic campaign is a great initiative and more people need to know that we have to come up with solutions. Perhaps include a visit to a school in a poor area, walk and pick up trash with little people while sharing the story of how bad plastics are for our oceans.
