VIDEO: GUY DROPS 130 LBS, RUNS TOUGH MUDDER

I signed up yesterday to run Tough Mudder - The Great Northeast in August up in Maine. It got me thinking about last year running Tough Mudder Boston at Gunstock, New Hampshire (the Boston of the North?). What made that run really special was that I did it with a friend who had lost 130 pounds within the last year and just, out of the blue, signed up to run Tough Mudder. I thought he was crazy to just jump into it without having run a smaller race first. But he crushed it, and it was pretty inspirational. Check out the video below.

      

CHANGING UP IS HARD TO DO

Originally posted on another blog of mine a few years ago.

Leave it to women's aerobics to leave me humbled.

Recently, my TRX instructor Rebekah suggested I try a circuit crosstraining class at the gym. Always up for something new, I decided to give it a shot this morning.

The circuit crosstraining class is apparently different each time, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Of course, what I did expect was to breeze through it. After all, over the past year my workouts have included regular intense CrossFit routines, tons of running followed by weights often followed by more cardio on the Jacobs Ladder, and just recently I started repeatedly running up and down the ski area near my house with a backpack filled with bricks. I've been expecting my Certificate of Bad-Assery to arrive in the mail any day now.

Your Friend Fear

Ask people what their motivation is for exercising and eating right, and you'll get a lot of different answers: wanting to be healthy, live longer, be stronger, fit into a bathing suit, make an ex jealous, etc.

Motivation is a personal ingredient to fitness. And whatever works for you is great. But when it comes to motivation, one motivator rises far above the rest: Fear.

I'm not talking about fear of abstract possibilities, as in if you are unhealthy and overweight you may eventually suffer from high blood pressure, diabetes, and an early death. These are certainly motivating factors to consider. But that's a fear of something that sometime, someday, mayhappen if I continue to live a certain way. That's the kind of abstract fear that looms in an uncertain future, one that is easy to ignore and put off.

The kind of fear that is the best motivator is a very real fear, a looming clear and present danger. Something with a hard date, that is approaching, is unavoidable, and will make you suffer unless you prepare.