Ab Crunch Challenge & Baseball Opening Day

For those of you who seem to think we are bitter, frigid, and nasty women, part of this blog will cover our good deeds from last weekend, even though it has nothing to do with baseball. We like to think of it like this: baseball players are involved in charities and so are we. There. Baseball related. On March 28th, we participated in the Ab Crunch Challenge for St. Jude's Children's Hospital at Ladies of America Fitness gym in West Hempstead. At 11:00, a room full of women and one young boy did crunches for a full hour in order to raise money for St. Jude's.


Lisa was Serena's official super counter. This is no joke. It's hard work to click out the number of crunches for a full hour. To prevent injury, Lisa spent the months of February and March preparing for this event through many different thumb exercises. Lisa didn't want to suffer from carpal tunnel of the thumb like she did last year when she ended up on the 15-day DL with Carl Pavano. Unlike Carl, however, Lisa finally left the DL. Opposable thumbs are what separates us from the animals after all.

We dressed in matching army camo in order to instill intimidation amongst our competition. You may not think it's possible to turn an event that is meant for good into a contest, but believe us. You can. Just ask the cheaters that participated that day. We won't go into too much detail on that subject because this event was for a good cause and those cheaters know what they've done. They're the ones who have to go to sleep at night with their cheater thoughts and memories.

Serena was the dynamic duo's official "cruncher." To prepare for this hour long stint, she spent the months preceding the event doing crunches while watching the World Baseball Classic, Supernatural, a fine, intelligent show that is televised Thursday nights on the WB, sitting in traffic on the Cross Bronx en route to New Jersey, and while practicing the art of yoga. You may not think that crunches belong in yoga, but they do.

In one hour, we listened to the finest 80's dance music remixed to techno and crunched our lives away. We tried to ignore the random announcments of other people's crunch totals that were clearly preposterous. One woman claimed to have completed 3,000 crunches a mere 6o seconds into the event. Was this woman a descendant of Superman or Edward Cullen (this one's for you, Steph)? Lisa struggled to concentrate on tracking Serena's correctly performed crunches because in her direct line of sight, a woman convulsed on the floor. Initially, Lisa had concern for this woman. Was she having a seizure? If so, why wasn't anyone helping her? Then she realized that her convulsions were actually this woman's version of a crunch. This could explain how her final crunch total equaled to 9,000.

Our final tally at 12:00 equaled 5, 591 legitimate crunches and we raised close to $600! We broke our record from last year's event, which was 4, 100 and raised $500. After the event was over, we enjoyed sampling free food, including a wonderful cheese platter and punch bowl filled with mimosa. Serena's abs were tight and Lisa's thumb muscles were bulging. We felt like we were Ralph Macchio in the Karate Kid. All we needed was Peter Cetera's Glory of Love to blast over the loudspeakers and the image would've been complete.

Now onto baseball related items. Sunday is Opening Day for the regular season. We can barely contain our excitement as the day approaches. To celebrate this momentous occasion, we and a small entourage (including our friend, Linda's son), will watch the Braves take on the World Champion Phillies at the best sports bar on Long Island. We cannot divulge the location at this time because we do not want stalkers and they haven't paid us for advertising, but as the season progresses, we hope to squeeze out of the ownership at least free beers and then we will share the name of the bar with you. Tune into ESPN2 at 8:00 to watch Derek Lowe take on Brett Myers at Citizens Bank Park. Or if you're a Mets fan, we suggest you check in at 8:30 or so after the World Series trophy ceremony takes place.

Europe said it best when they announced, "it's the final countdown."