"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."
Earlier this spring I ran the US Half Marathon in San Francisco, CA. When I told My Girl that I ran over the Golden Gate Bridge, she was so jealous she insisted we sign up for the fall version of the race.
US Half Marathon is now owned by Competitor Group, and although it doesn’t change it’s name to Rock n Roll San Francisco until next year, the mere presence of Competitor Group is not a good influence on this race.
But had anything changed from the April 2012 race?
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.
Tough Mudder. For those who aren’t aware, the Tough Mudder series of events are about teamwork, tough obstacles, running, getting wet, and generally doing things that scare you to death.
There is a reason they call it a Tough Mudder. In fact, they even make fun of Warrior Dash, taunting the entrants with a sign near the beginning saying, “If this was Warrior Dash, you’d be done by now.”
Every year I’ve done a different obstacle course. My first year was Warrior Dash, last year was a Spartan Race, and this year… Tough Mudder Las Vegas.
So how do the events compare?
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.