Find New Fitness Challenges: If not now? When?

  One of my main fitness goals has been to find new fitness challenges.

After having a prevailing foot injury, I thought I was going to end up finding an activity that would not put pressure on the feet.

To my relief, the worst of my injuries are gone and now it is just effort to find my form.  So I came up with a few options for new fitness challenges

Bike

After getting my bike sorted.  I thought a good idea was to have a look at bike races.  I have slowly been building up my distances and considered getting into a shorter distance road race.

Run

After completing a few short runs, I thought about getting back to running 5k and 10k distances, with the intention that each race I would aim to improve my time and hopefully get back to my July 2014 form.

Both

To protect my foot I was switching between run-bike-run.  I have fancied doing a triathlon for years, but never made swimming a priority.  Therefore, for the moment I was thinking a duathlon would be ideal.

Obstacle racing

My obstacle racing had died off.  It is quite an expensive hobby and my main training partner, Tom had moved to the Lake District to start a new business, so I didn’t really want to do any races.

I did the Avalanche Run in Market Harborough and despite it being only the second time I ran 5k this year I was quite please with how I did – it made me eager to find new races.

So what is my fitness challenge for this year?

With goals normally you have to make the effort to get want you want and sometimes, although rarely, they just present themselves.

This was one of those moments.

I had a message on my phone from Tom

“Whiskey (he actually calls me that), I’ve registered for the Spartan Sprint and Super in Manchester…..  and I have entered the Spartan Beast down south.”

And so my fate has been sealed.

I wanted to take this year a bit easier, but I have wanted to do the Spartan triple for a couple of years now.  My doubts make me think my injury could come back or that I could not handle the distance.

But then I thought

“If not now, when?”

With how my life is going, I honestly cannot see having time, money or a crazy friend to run it with.

I have not dismissed the other options – I intend to litter my spring and summer with 5 and 10k runs and I also want to fit a duathlon somewhere in the middle (August?).

But I am actually doing it, I am going to go for the Spartan Triple.

Oh happy days…

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Manifesto of Perfection – Goal Setting Month