Embiggening Myself With A Noble Spirit

Two months from now, I will be dead.

In December, I signed up for the Warrior Dash to be held in Logan, OH on June 4th. After a couple months of "letting myself go" I felt 6 months was ample time to prepare for a 3 mile stroll through the woods that included 14 different obstacles. I've run a few 5k races in the past, so this is really not much different except that I get 14 "breaks" from running!

Flash forward 4 months

Oh my God I am soooo not ready for this! Sunday morning I took a hike with the family. In an attempt to catch up with my daughter, I began to "run". I put "run" in quotes because most people are able to pass old ladies with walkers when they run. My bowl-full-of-jelly physique is not exactly designed for speeds exceeding 2.8 mph. About 20 seconds into this less than graceful gallop along the gravel path I found myself winded and favoring my bad knee*. I decided it was time for a well deserved rest and resumed walking. And just in time too, as the path was about to reach slopes only imaginable on a city handicap ramp.
*although I understand that 9 out of 10 people have a "bad knee", I try to not let it be an excuse for me. I tend to practice tough love on injuries to the point that one day I will be nothing but a groaning frankenstein with locked up joints.

A month prior to signing up for the Warrior Dash, I attempted a 24-hr rogaine. For those who are not familiar, the sport of rogaining involves long distance cross-country navigation where teams of two to five people visit as many checkpoints as they can in the allotted time. A neighbor and I set out on a beautiful November morning in the rough and rugged Shawnee Forest. After 9 hours of 500 foot altitude changes and a missed water checkpoint, we decided (or should I say our bodies decided) it was time to throw in the towel. Proud of what we had accomplished for our first attempt, we headed back to the "hash house" and devoured bowl after bowl of chili.

I guess I must have rested on those laurels a bit much. For now, the thought of doing anything for 9 hours aside from playing Lego Star Wars on the Wii with my son is enough to make my legs cramp up in horror. So slowly I have started back on the treadmill and scaled back the Wendy's double cheeseburger and large fries at lunch for a, uuuuuuuugggghhhhh, salad. And I'd like to report that as of last night, I did not need to set up a base camp on the 8th step upstairs to my bedroom.

Mentally, I feel like I'm prepared for this race. In fact, if the race were held today in my head, I'm confident that I would get first place, followed closely in second by Chewbacca with Abraham Lincoln bringing up third place. And on the subject of hairy Wookies, there is one area in which I have been training for since last August: the warrior beard competition. I guess my thought process has been that beards require large amount of calories and should not be agitated by exercise. It seems to be working.

I have 53 days in which to transform this body of mine into a machine that can not only "run" 3.1 miles of trails, but also resist gale force winds, navigate through hundreds of tires, leap over junked cars, trudge through waist-deep water, crawl through dark tunnels, sprint up steep hills, balance across wooden planks, climb over walls, navigate over mountains of straw bales, dash down a river bed, rappel down a steep ravine, maneuver over cargo nets, leap over flames, and scramble through the mud under barbed wire.

Funeral services will be held the following Monday at Tim Horton's.