Burpee Challenge

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For the past 62 or 63 days Yariv and I have been participating in a Burpee Challenge.

The rules are simple - you start with 1 burpee on Day 1 and add another burpee to the previous day's total until you get to Day 100 which, of course, means 100 burpees on that last day. All told, it means something like 6,345 burpees over 100 days. I'd do the math but I'm too tired.

I was at a Crossfit workout one afternoon when Nate was doing a bunch of burpees outside of our regular workout. When I asked what was up he said he was doing the Burpee Challenge through another CF affiliate. Of course I thought this sounded awesome! It seemed like a good balance of activity, perserverance, suffering and with a high WTF quotient. Like when Andrea and her students do 100 days of yoga in a row. Or when I hiked 50 miles in 1 day with Seth.

So Saul started a new Burpee Challenge with Peninsula Crossfit. In the beginning he was kind enough to include burpees in the workouts so we could hit our 10 or 11 and be done with it. There were maybe 20-30 names on the board participating. But then it crept into Days 21, 28, 35 and missing one day meant doubling up the next to crank out 50 or 60 burpees in order to stay on track. People started dropping out. Now it's Day 63. Miss one day and you've got 120 easy staring you in the face. I think there are maybe 6 of us still in it. You start to plan ahead, to plan your day around it. It can be a little obsessive.

I went for a run along Scenic Drive in Carmel this morning after a wedding the night before. The water was a vivid,opal-like blue and the beach whiter than I ever remember. A spectacular day with big, lazy waves rolling in for the surfers. My head was a bit cloudy from the night before but I had 110 burpees to do. I couldn't find a flat spot that wasn't sandy and I couldn't find my groove doing it on the beach so I made my way north to the peninsula where I parked along a stretch of grass I knew and did my burpees. And then I got a McDonald's hamburger. A burpee drive-by and a McDonald's drive-through. Nice.

I live to survive another day of the Challenge.

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