I’m someone who likes finding some new challenges for myself every now and again. I like new stimuli since I can otherwise stagnate, so when my friend, Jason, let me know he was putting together an obstacle trail race to benefit The Wounded Warrior Project, I was 100% game on. OK, maybe more like 99% game on. I was there in attitude for sure… but I suppose actually doing a whole bunch of running BEFORE the race probably would have been a good idea and a finer example of 100% game on.
But I was able to recruit my brother (the gentleman with his eyes closed below) and our friend Tom (who ran a half marathon the day before this) to venture forth for 5 miles and 15 obstacles worth of mayhem-filled fun a few weeks ago.
And I even learned a few things along the way. What, pray tell? So glad you (and by you, I mean me) asked!
1) Keep your head down.
I’m not great at endurance style exercise. This is a combination of not really training that way and not being terribly well-built for it. Both of these things can be overcome (the first by different training and the second through not letting this become an excuse). So when I was in the midst of this race, there were a lot of moments that were difficult for me. If there was one pretty useful trick I used to keep myself moving, it was to keep my head down. This is actually a big part of why I wore my baseball hat and pulled that sucker nice and low.
If my head was down, I was only focusing on what I could control at that very moment: my next few steps. Looking ahead to see how much was left to run did me absolutely no good. Heck, it would have probably discouraged me if I thought about it all that long. But those next few steps? I could do those and I could do those every single time until I was done with the 5 miles.
This happens in life all the time. If you have a daunting task in front of you… especially one that could take quite some time to address… it will never help you to look too far ahead because the only thing you have some semblance of control over is the here and now. So crush the here and now and move onto the next step. Keep… your head… DOWN.
2) Stronger teammates = stronger you.
Unless you are some kind of Shaolin monk with keenly-honed powers of self-mastery, the environment around us has a big a effect, both for good and ill. If you work in an office full of people who are horribly negative and whose chief hobby is complaining about anything and everything… I have a hard time believing you will be all that productive (at least not without listening to your iPod all day long to drown them out). If you lifts weights consistently with people a lot stronger than you are… lo and behold, you will get a lot stronger too. I would contend you will also get a lot stronger than you ever would have on your own.
On our team of 3, Tom was the strongest on the endurance front BY FAR. It wasn’t even close. He could have left my brother and I in the dust multiple times, except many obstacles required a team effort to complete. That being said, Tom was still at the lead of our little pack at all times… and he ran a freaking half-marathon the day before. I kid you not.
The big positive is that Tom always being there pushed me and Chris to keep running just a little bit more and pressing just a little bit harder. If Tom could keep running, so could we, damn it. And ran we did… for 5 miles and for a total of 1 hour, 11 minutes. I have never run that far or long in my life and if Tom wasn’t there, I cannot really say I would have done all of that.
3) It takes all kinds.
I cannot imagine why anyone would have run this in purple short-shorts… shirtless… and with double pierced nipples. I kept imagining the potential to be hurling yourself through an obstacle in the woods and there being that one branch sticking out juuuuust the right way. *shudder* But hey, he was probably through that course in half the time I was, so who am I to judge?
4) I want more.
It’s sometimes the things you least expect that can interest you the most. I finished this race, felt like my legs had been beaten severely by a gang of Muay Thai fighters… and yet I wanted to do another one. As I noted above, I am in no way well-suited (at least not currently) for this kind of activity… but if there is one thing I know about myself, it’s that I need challenges to bring out my best. This was something new… something hard… yet something ultimately fun that I can do with a team (and I like team stuff quite a bit). I am already looking up 2012 events for things like Tough Mudder, Spartan Race, Warrior Dash and so on. I know I will need to rearrange how I train, but I enjoy the chance to do so. Sometimes a little forced evolution is good for the soul anyway.
In the end, the entire event reproved something I’ve long known to be true: competitive sporting events are never just a moment of physical activity, but are often very pure opportunities for learning a lot more about yourself. I would definitely encourage you to give it a try. You don’t need to be a hyper-competitive monster to enjoy these kinds of things, but until you’ve pushed yourself past a moment after moment where you wanted so badly to quit, I don’t think you will truly know yourself.
Keep your head down.