The Warrior Challenge Awaits

Summer is officially here and it's time for a new challenge. I've been having way too much fun outside to spend a lot of time in the gym lately, so I'm taking on a new challenge - The Warrior Challenge is coming to a beach near me on July 16 and I signed up.

The Warrior Challenge is a 1-mile deep sand run while carrying a 40-lb sandbag, followed by pull-ups 'til exhaustion, followed by 2 minutes of as many Burpees as you can do, followed by a "mystery challenge."

This is a competition I would NEVER have considered a year ago...first of all, running on the beach is hard enough, but to do it with a 40-lb bag of sand on my shoulder is just insanity. And they don't give the 115 lb girls a lighter bag than the 200-lb men and special ops guys who I will be running against. I'll be running with more than 1/3 of my weight. That's like a 200-lb man running with 70 lbs on his shoulder. Somehow not totally fair. I think they should do it as a percentage of body weight, but apparently this is some sort of special forces test so the ladies just have to be tougher - as usual.

Then there's a pullup station - from deadhang, straight-up pullups. Since I couldn't even do 1 last year, I would have laughed at the thought of doing them 'til exhaustion. Not sure how many I can do now b/c I always do them weighted, but I'm going to find out!

The Burpees are the least of my concern. They'll be tough, but after I train on the beach with the sandbag, they should be fine. And the mystery challenge will most likely involve swimming, but who knows that they'll come up with.

In all, the competition sounds fun and has given me new motivation to train hard again - even if it's in a different way. For the next three weeks I'll be the lunatic running across my beach with a sandbag on her shoulder. would be great if I did the run then clamped the sandbag between my thighs and cranked out a bunch of pullups that way, but that'll have to wait for next year. I'm only up to 20 extra lbs on pullups as of right now.

I will keep you posted on my training which starts tonight with pullups and burpees and, maybe, a bodyweight run on the beach. Wish me luck!