Dirt in your skirt blog

Day 56… Ode to My Rock

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Margaret Schlachter
Study Essentials

So sometimes life works out and you can kill two proverbial birds with one throw, today it was homework and a blog post. Pretty sweet since I am in school all work and having to cram in workouts. Oh and my gallon size water bottle got a few looks today on the first day of class. Yes, I am the nut who needs to super hydrate! So today’s workout isn’t finished yet but I know exactly what I am going to do so here it is, simple, and old school. I’m away from home all week and have to adapt:

450 Workout
50 Push-ups
100 Sit-ups (full)
100 Crunches
100 Body Weight Squats
100 Pelvic Raises

And for you all here is my homework/post for you today…

Ode to My Rock

When given the assignment in class to write about an object in your life, I think it is important to write about the first thing that comes to your mind, for this truly is something that subconsciously means something to you. For me, sitting in class today it was, my rock. Yes, my pet rock. For those of you reading this as a blog post you will know exactly the relationship, my rock and I have. For those I am reading this to in class, you are probably asking yourself, a pet rock, like from the ‘70’s?
Where we first met
No, my pet rock was not bought in a store, its not a gimmick. It has become for me a part of who I am and who I hope to become. How did a rock come to mean so much to me? It’s best to start from the advent of our relationship. We met or I should say it spoke to me while running on Killington in June. I had just watched a YouTube video of Hobie Call, the famous Spartan Obstacle Racer. He was showing a workout he did in preparation for the 2011 Death Race. I decided I needed to try this rock workout, thus one day I found my rock. It wasn’t the first rock I found, that one didn’t make it more than a quarter of a mile before it started to fall apart. This rock well we have bonded.
100 – 200 pick ups
You might be wondering, how big this rock is and what I do with it. Well it weighs about 23lbs and is fairly rectangular. If we go on a run I am either carrying or throwing and chasing after it repeatedly. These runs last anywhere from 2-4 or more miles. I have also done workouts where I continually pick it up and put it down for about 100-200 times, a nod to this year’s Death Racers.
What the rock has become is a symbol of where I was (when I picked it up) and where I want to go in the future (2012 Death Race  and overcoming the unknown). As my rock lays basking in the sun on my porch in Killington, now probably staring up at the mountain, I realize I wish I had it with me just to get a quick session in before the sun goes down, while up near Burlington.
All you need is a rock
Lessons learned, the rock has already taught me some patience, try picking up a rock and throwing it repeatedly for 4 miles. It can be maddening! It has taught me commitment, like the time I lost it down a bank into a swamp of ferns. It took me over 10 minutes to find it even after watching it go down the bank. Leaving it behind was not an option! It has taught me to laugh at my actions, and not take life too seriously, when I got lost in the woods behind Hinesburg and emerged in the suburban neighborhood, sweaty, muddy, smelly, carrying the rock. At which point, I was humbled with the knowledge I needed help and had to call my brother-in-law for a ride back to their house, this is when he said, “You look like a crazy homeless person with a rock!”
We say the phrase, “solid as a rock” or refer to someone as “their rock” for me my rock, is well, just that a rock, it’s not flashy, it’s not designer, it’s just a rock sitting calmly in the sun on my porch, just waiting for me to get home and take it on it’s next adventure. 

Not sure what the reaction from class will be tomorrow, whether I am just a crazy person with a rock as my brother in law coined it or they see what is beyond the actual object and all that it can and has come to represent. Or I am again just a crazy person with a rock!