Humble Beginnings
Hello…..
Coming from a consumer of other people’s adventures and blogs, this feels a bit awkward and unnatural to write a blog about by adventure into finishing out the last part of my military career.
I’ve always felt like an NPC in other people’s lives, being able to stay in the background or shadow while also experiencing life. It was important to me to know and learn everything I can before attempting to experience something. A good example is Airborne school. The military does… little to really prepare you for what you are really going to do when you yeet yourself out of the side of a C-130 plane. Sure there’s been a robust and repeated methodology of preparing soldiers on the technical requirements behind the concept of Airborne operations. On paper it’s simple; learn and be comfortable with operating a T-10D parachute while you land at, near, or behind enemy lines, and then take objectives. However during the 3 weeks you spend at Airborne school, there is little emphasis on knowing how the parachute works, but rather the steps you reproduce during the initial 30 seconds to several minutes (depending on how fast you descend). For me, this was a stress-inducing process, because I want to know how it works. I want to practice steps in the background. But the pressure of an 18 year old not failing Airborne school because he’s slightly afraid of heights and also afraid of doing something wrong and either getting in trouble, or in the case of this school, practically dying….
Why do I mention this story? Well it is related to my ambitious goals of completing some of my dreams. We all have dreams, but the reality is that majority of us will never see them come to fruition, mostly due to circumstances out of our control. But what is in our control is also wrapped up within fear of failure or rejection. In my case, I definitely fear failure. Most of my life, I have rarely failed, but that’s only because my absolute fear of it led me to prepare, understand, and have redundancies in place to make sure I cannot fail. But I am also human, and make mistakes, slack off, and sometimes do not hold myself accountable.
This is my way of holding myself accountable. I figure if I am forced to write about my adventures into doing the walk of the world at Njimegen, it will hold me accountable to actually prepare myself for it. The walk will be no joke, it won’t be like a simple 5k Spartan Race where I can wing it….speaking of which….
The weekend of love… for Spartan Races
This weekend (Feb 14th-15th) I signed up for back-to-back Spartan Races. Now, this isn’t out of nowhere, I do have a history of doing Mud/OCR Races, just never documented them beyond the org itself tracking for me.
I’m pretty sure I’ve done more than 22, but it may just be a discrepancy on other races from what I am remembering….
A big push for these spartan races is to complete a Trifecta: A Sprint, Super and Beast (5k, 10k, 21k respectively) all in one race year. Each race is a feat all on it’s own; having to go from a 5k, to a 10k, then eventually a 21k (essentially half a marathon) with obstacles is a step up. Didn’t even mention the Ultra (50k), or the Hurricane Heats, City races, or Stadion Races. I’ll have a separate Tab talking about my spartan races in the future.
I’ll be doing both the Super (14th) and the Sprint (15th). I did not fully prep for this, but feel good enough to complete. It will be a good refresh into endurance capacity (back to back races).
So that walk of the world…..
Essentially, the US branch of participating has their own website to manage registration (since we are so big and a high volume of entries), I was directed in registering with them here: https://www.usnijmegenmarch.com/
From what I gathered, the US is granted ~500 tickets for participation, and it’s first-come, first-served, previous walkers preferenced-type of selection. Myself and a few others were able to register back on the 9th, so here’s to hoping in getting selected as a first time walker!
Next Blog post will be a discussion on my preparation and start of conditioning for the walk (after the spartan races!).
