As of today, I am one week into prepping for this event. My first week of training actually went really well. I am doing Tony Horton's P90X (again) and a combination of running/swimming. Basically, running when I am at home and swimming when I travel. I did have a bit of a training hiccup this weekend when an unexpected partay sprung up on Saturday night on Sunburst Lane. Amazing how good neighbors, a good bottle of scotch, and a couple of cornhole boards throw you off track. I do know this: Tony Horton is the anti-Christ and Yoga X sucks. Tell it, Romie:
He nailed it. I cannot express how hard fricking Yoga X is. Its the longest workout, and Rome is right by saying that 90 minutes feels like 8 hours.
Regardless, week one produced a 4 pound weight loss to 226 and what appears to be a pretty good fat loss from around my waist. Maybe at the one month period, I'll post some before and after pictures....maybe. I'm traveling again this week so that usually makes it harder for me to eat right--we'll see how the weight loss goes this week.
Tough Mudder ran their race in Colorado this week. Looks like everyone had a great time--when the post the official video from it, I'll link it. Also, look for posts about the obstacles soon. Some of these are crazy nuts.
My last post dealt with my personal motivation for doing this: basically, lose weight and get back into shape. Truth is, there's a much deeper reason that I want to do this...
One out of five veterans returning from Iraq/Afghanistan suffer from PTSD or major depression.
There are more than 40,000 service members that have been injured in current conflicts.
I've always felt a strong pull towards veterans, especially those that are wounded. On the fortunate occasion that I meet one somewhere, I'm that guy that shakes their hand and thanks them for their service. I remember when I was a cop in Athens, I met this guy that was a Vietnam vet working security at the UGA HPER building. When I shook his hand and told him thanks, he started crying and said that no one thanked him much for doing what he did. When I walked away from him, he never knew I started crying myself.
The Wounded Warrior Project is an amazing charity that was founded in 2003 by a group of veterans and friends that felt strongly about this generation's veterans. One of their visions is to have the most prepared group of veterans to re-enter society upon returning from their duty stations. Imagine if we'd had something this organized after the Vietnam conflict. Our nation might be a little different right now, but I can guarantee that the security guard that I mentioned above would be a different man.
Previously, I mentioned that I was on the fence about doing Tough Mudder until I found out about their support of the WWP. To date, participants in Tough Mudder have donated over $1 million to the WWP. I'm not usually the kind of person that asks for donations or support for anything, but I think this is a pretty good reason to donate. Sometime over the next few days (ok, when I figure out how to write the code *UPDATE LINK IS FUNCTIONAL!*), I'm going to have a link here to donate to the WWP. If you're able, please donate a couple of bucks to the cause. They're pretty proud of the fact that 82 cents of every dollar that's donated to their cause goes directly to a Wounded Warrior. I'm just proud that most of my entry fee for the event goes to the cause.
PS: I promise this will be the only depressing post on the blog :)
By now, most everyone I know is aware that I'm doing this. So far, people's responses can be grouped into one of two categories:
1) Dude, that looks awesome--where do I sign up and how much does it cost? or,
2) What in the (insert random cuss word here) are you thinking? Why would you ever want to go 12 miles and go over 20something obstacles?
In this and the next couple of posts, I'll try to explain my motivation for doing this.
First, but not most importantly, there's the selfish reason. When I was in high school, my nickname was Slim. If you are reading this and you've only known me the last few years, you're laughing your ass off right now. When I graduated high school, I *maybe* weighed 160 pounds. My weight when graduating from the police academy was somewhere around 170. My weight as of about 6 months ago was 265. I won't go into detail about how I got there, but I did. I was in constant pain through my knees and hips. Through some semi-dedication, I've managed to drop about 30 pounds in the last few months, but I'm still not where I need to be. I believe that through training for this 'run' and completing it, it will force me to put my weight back into the 180-190 range. Not only will it end the physical pain, but I'm sure that it'll let me stay on the planet a few more years....and be a Daddy to the best little girl in the world that much longer. For purposes of tracking my weight, I'm officially at 230 as of this morning. Let's see where it ends up.
I plan on posting more about motivation in my next post, and more about my work out plan later, but I will say that I started training today by completing P90X Chest and Back and swimming in my hotel pool. It was rough, but not as rough as what our wounded vets have been through. I will continue to draw my inspiration from them...
In addition to starting a training regimen in a few days, I've also decided that I'm going to do a couple of training runs to prep me for the 12 miler. I'm planning on doing the Rebel Run here in Indy in August and the Warrior Dash in September. Those are about 3 miles apiece. I figure I should get a read for how the 12 miler will be from the training events. I just hope I dont hurt myself in the meantime. I mean, it'd be great if I could get a tib/fib break in August, right?
I'm just going to go ahead and call this the Axis of Evil. Just sub the race names for the country names.
Today when I logged into LinkedIn to see if I had any random job offers, someone in the Indiana network had posted a notice that something called 'Tough Mudder' was coming to Indiana. I of course had to click on it to see what it was. I proceeded to the website and was amazed at what I saw. I was perusing the site, thinking how cool it would be to try this, and then I saw the tidbit that made me decide to throw my hat in the ring: This race (company, corporation, whatever) donates X amount of its profits to the Wounded Warrior Foundation, a cause that is very dear to me.
So, I've decided that I am going to partake. I've set up this blog to track my training, donations, and random idiotness about this. I'm pumped, though...
