(G): Burpee!
Excuse me.
But there is no excuse for the latest idiocy in our world. Just before the start of December I was on Facebook (already you can see how this could go awry) and I stumbled up on a Burpee Challenge for December. Each day you do the same number of burpees as the date.
As you can imagine it started off pretty easily. It took me about 10 seconds to do one on the first and I felt great.
It’s still going rather OK but the other day I was relaying a story to Lowi that I was sitting on the sofa eating ice cream and realized I hadn’t done my burpees for the day. I got up, did 4 burpees and promptly went back to eating ice cream.
I am not sure that’s the kind of behavior that this challenge was intended to encourage, BUT I did get them done. I haven’t missed a day but we’re also only 13 days in so there’s still plenty of room of hijinks and hiatus.

On a brighter note, I am starting to feel the motivation and the excitement to train coming back. I think I can partially thank Swaggy J. He’s been putting the final touches on some of our race movies for the year and watching the highlights of our adventures makes me remember why we put so much time into the training. The races are really a lot of fun.

OK, yeah, sometimes there’s some suffering, fatigue and F-bomb dropping but outside of that really just a lot of fun.

I have stayed solid on the strength training, rebounding and getting in 4-5 miles a few days a week.

I was even reminded how much running and exercise are my mental health weapon. After I took more than a few days off I realize exercise is how I manage life.

I also read a book called “Ready to Run” by Dr. Kelly Starrett. He’s kind of blowing my mind in his thoughts about maintaining the machine that is your body. He’s a believer that getting back to natural movement, spending time barefoot (which I was already a proponent of), and taking responsibility for your own body are key.

I am using this downtime to start experimenting with his techniques and we’ll see how it works and how dedicated I can be to the regimen. One thing that’s tough about reading his books is that he cautions one to beware of the chair. I believe in that too but every time I sit down to read I feel a strange guilt that I am sitting. I stood at my kitchen counter reading one day to resolve that nagging obligation to stand up.

As you can see, the stage for more ridiculous antics is being set now for 2017.