"This is about limits. Reaching them, exploring them, exceeding what you thought yours were. Then coming to the conclusion that there aren't any limits."
Recently, I was contacted to contribute an article to FoundationEON, an organization dedicated to Ending Obesity Now. Amazingly, the founder is planning to walk – on a treadmill – a marathon every day for 100 days in 2013. So, okay, the founder might be insane – I want to kill myself after 5 minutes on the treadmill – but he did lose over 125lbs… walking. Now that is awesome. It’s a great cause to support as obesity is growing in the USA.
Lately, I’ve noticed that some of my G+ peeps have been either looking for motivation or struggling with it. Finding fitness motivation, and keeping it, can sometimes be tough. Personally, at the peak of my training, I find myself struggling also. So, these are the times that I look to the video world to keep me inspired.
Sometimes, you just need a little motivation. Sometimes, you need something to help get your arse out the front door. Every athlete has those things they draw upon when they are feeling low and when they need to get going. So I thought I would share some of my favorite motivational videos, and I’m sure I’ll be adding more as folks share with me. So far, here are some of my favorite videos.
Update Feb, 2013: Looks like instead of doing this stage race, I will be doing Seattle’s Quadzilla which is 4 marathons in 4 days. That training plan can be found here.
In 2012, I will have completed 2 Half Ironmans, 2 Marathons, 2 Half marathons, 1 Ultramarathon, 1 Ironman, and one 12k. Now what?
My dear friend Natasha, who is as crazy as her Russian background might make you believe, has suggested that we run a 3-Stage Ultramarathon in Portugal. The Euro Ultra, as it is called, will take place in September of 2013.
This same Natasha also finished second in a marathon in the Swiss Alps. There are two Russian twins who win the Comrades Marathon every year, also. So when Russian-Born Natasha suggests something like this as “Hey, this should be fun” (in her light Russian-accent), she always makes it sound like no big deal.
But here’s the real deal: This three stage race is a marathon (40km) on day one, an ultra-marathon on day two (66km), and a ½ marathon (21km) on day three. Marathon not tough enough for you? Let’s run a marathon, ultra-marathon, and a 1/2-marathon back to back to back (127km in 3 days).
As you might imagine, there aren’t a lot of people who do this, and those that do probably are too crazy to think about “training plans” because they are robots or something anyway, and automatically know what they are doing. Consequently, finding a “training plan” for something dubbed “Beyond the Ultimate [Tough]” isn’t exactly easy to do.
So I’ve decided to develop my own training plan. I also plan to make it available on Trainingpeaks.com if anyone else wants to be dumb enough to use it.
It’s time to start taking the training for the HITS Full Length (Iron-Distance) Triathlon in Palm Springs in December seriously. This is the HITS Championship race, and if I don’t want to completely embarrass myself, it’s time I start taking my training seriously. Fortunately, last week was somewhat on track, and this week is looking good, too:
Some of the “Runs” were actually “Hikes”, with some running mixed in. Thanks to the hill gradients and scrambling over rocks, even though my distance is short, my HR often stayed very nicely in the aerobic zone. So, I think they should count. In any case, this week is shaping up very well, also, and I’m hoping that the training (albeit still weak on the swim) is early enough to bring me success on December 1.
We all need different forms of motivation.
What’s yours?
