2011 boot camp challenge

this past saturday i made the trek down to marine corps recruit depot in san diego to participate in the boot camp challenge. originally vim & i were going to do this together, but as of a few weeks ago it wasn't in the cards schedule-wise. we decided to skip it and do the xterra point mugu trail run on october 16 instead. much to my surprise, our race numbers for the boot camp challenge arrived in the mail on the wednesday prior to the race, so i was like WTF. i guess he forgot that he signed us up! haha

after some hemming and hawing, i said what the hell and decided to go for it despite not training for it one iota. it's a 3-mile race with 45 obstacles - including hay bales, logs to jump over/under, cargo nets, push up stations, etc. - so stamina was going to be crucial. i wasn't so concerned with the obstacle portion, but keeping a steady running pace would be difficult to maintain without doing some ACTUAL RUNNING.

liftoff for the male individuals was at 9:05am and we were off. the first mile included maybe 3-4 obstacles, so the rest of them were backloaded and left many participants gasping for air - me included. i finished somewhere north of 23 minutes, which wasn't great considering the first person crossed in 18. but it definitely showed me where my deficiencies are and can only serve as impetus to get my @$$ in gear.

needless to say, sunday morning i was right back at it... running up paseo miramar to parker mesa overlook and back down in 57 minutes, which is a personal best. hopefully i can keep it up over the next few weeks so as not to embarrass myself on october 16.