Choose Your Own Adventure: Prologue

[Mighty_Mouse]

Greetings everybody! After a couple of days of poking around the website and devouring a bunch of the articles, I'm hoping to join this amazing community of supportive nerdfolk (possibly the Scouts?) in our group quest to make ourselves better. A little about myself:

 

I'm a 5'3" stage manager a year out of college. Because of the crazy hours I keep working in theatre as a freelancer, my diet has started to suffer, and in the battle of exercise vs. bed, bed always wins. I've always struggled to keep to an exercise plan in the past because I enjoy things that engage my mental faculties as well--I used to dance, I love wall climbing, etc.--but if I'm working somewhere where those types of things aren't available (or insanely expensive), I just don't make the effort.

 

Recently I've found that more and more of my friends and peers are runners, and something about that just appeals to me. Not the type of running that means spending hours a week on a treadmill staring at the same wall, but planning a trip from point A to point B, navigating the route, and enjoying the scenery along the way. After doing a little research, I figured out that the adventure/obstacle racing stuff is something that I'd really like to participate in.

 

So what are my goals? By this time next year--and someone tell me if this is implausible--I want to complete the Run For Your Lives Zombie 5K. As a racer and a zombie. My end game material, as it were, is to finish the Spartan Race or one of the Ironman races.

 

But I'm pretty far away from there. So hopefully being active in the NerdFitness community and doing the challenges and everything will help get me off my ass and keep me honest.

[Egret]

Hi Mighty_Mouse!  I don't think a 5k by this time next year is at all implausible.  See if you like running first and then dig in!

[Mighty_Mouse]

Thanks Egret! So far I'm liking all the beginner stuff, now I just need to stick with it!

[Jake1989]

Hi, Mighty_Mouse!

 

I thought I'd throw in my two sense regarding obstacle course racing. I'm a natural runner, so it's always come pretty easy to me, but I HATE running. I find it incredibly boring, hard on the joints, and lonely even. That said, I found the solution to that to be obstacle course racing, specifically, the Spartan Race. I don't think it's at all impossible for you to complete a sprint course (5K) with 3-4 months of training, depending on where you're at right now.

 

Good luck!