I think most people who want to become active find it pretty boring to go walking or running on the streets. While in Miami we don’t have many areas to go hiking (let’s ignore the Everglades where you can either get eaten by an alligator, a snake or mosquitos) like probably people in North Florida do, we do have some nice parks available. Still, walking could be considered a boring activity. Imagine driving 30 or 40 minutes to one of these parks just to walk for an hour and then drive back home. Well, the good news is, you could always get yourself a mountain bike and visit the trails like the one in Virginia Key.

I must admit that, while I didn’t have the courage to throw myself down from some of the obstacles, I did enjoy the whole trail and found it pretty challenging at times, which is great if you want to burn some good calories. For instance, it took me 1:30 hour to ride 2.06 miles (breaks included) and I burned a total of 1,240 calories. For me, that is definitely a good burn.

My goals now are to visit the Amelia Park next weekend, then the Oleta River Park trail and eventually the Marco Island trail. Somehow I have the feeling I will become kind of addicted to mountain biking and I will be planning a ride each weekend, unless I end up getting a kayak and I start enjoying the ocean as well.

In any case, I highly recommend anyone living in Miami or South Florida to get yourself a mountain bike and start enjoying the trails we have available, since we don’t have mountains to explorer.

Left home at 4am to drive up to Tampa, with enough time to get ready for the race, including setting up my GoPro camera. Temperature was around 42º by the time my race was about to start, which is not a big deal, but when you’re about to run and most probably jump in cold water, it becomes one of those “oh crap, this is going to be fun…. not” moments.

Overall, I thought the race was tougher than my Super race from last year, but I think two main factors that got me to this realization has to do with to very specific issues. The first one, right at the beginning of the race, during the second obstacle, while helping a lady jump over the wooden obstacle, the force she applied in order to reach the top wasn’t downwards but find of forward, literally throwing me to the floor and hitting my knee and wrist against the concrete floor. Although my knee hurt just at that moment, my wrist was the one with more damage, which became worse as I had to keep using my hand throughout the race. The pain became excruciating and there was nothing I could do about it… because I wasn’t going to quit and I wasn’t going to do 30 burpees just to skip each obstacle. The second issue was the amount of stairs we had to climb during 75 to 80 percent of the race. I’ve never in my life climbed so many stairs before in a single day.

I’ll be honest, while I enjoy helping others to overcome obstacles, that initial injury that cost me having to deal with so much pain and ending up not being able to use my hand for a week after the race, taught me that not always I can sacrifice myself for those around me, especially during a race. The worse that can happen during a Spartan race is, that if you can’t complete an obstacle, you’ll have to do 30 burpees, and even then you’re getting something physically positive out of it.

My goal now is to prepare and focus for next year’s Beast race, which most probably will be in Atlanta, and for once I will try to focus on timing other than recording videos with my GoPro. This along with a Tough Mudder race and smaller obstacle races will keep me busy for a while when it comes about outdoors physical activities.

I bet somewhere along those lines would be the first thing to pop up in people’s minds when reading 3000 burpees. I mean, who would even consider doing such a ridiculous amount of burpees and claim they’re sane anyway?

Well, here’s the thing, people constantly talk about how they want to get stronger, how they want better conditioning, how they don’t have time to go to the gym and still want to get in shape, but when it comes about hard work and do exercises that will have a big impact in your body, most people change their minds and decide they are not ready. The truth is, we have been ready since we decided to change our lives and get in shape, whether because you don’t like how we look, we don’t have energy, we want to improve our health, or whatever reason you have. You need to realize the biggest obstacle to get things done is our own mind and how it will try to talk us into quitting our plans to feel better about ourselves by constantly asking us which would be prefer, to lay down on a couch watching your favorite show while eating your favorite comfort food or be doing a crazy ass exercise called burpees which suck tremendously?

The reality is, our minds need as much training as our bodies do. We need to train our minds to be and stay focus on our goals, and to change the mindset of comparing what got us sick, overweight or in the current state we are today to that mindset of how worth it and happy we will be when we reach our goals.

Hard Work Pays Off! This is a true statement. While any form of exercises, including walking, is beneficial to our health and bodies, the harder you work, the more results you will see, the faster they will happen, and the stronger you will get.

So 100 burpees daily for 30 days will probably suck depending on how many you do at once, but even if you can’t do more than 5 before running out of breath, that is perfectly fine. Do sets of 5 throughout the day until you complete the 100. Each time just try to do one extra rep on random sets. Look for ways to push your body little by little, always keeping in mind everything you do today will have a bigger effect tomorrow.

The time to start is today, not next week, not next month, but today! Make the decision, stick to it, and in 30 days look back and see how much you’ve accomplished and how much you’ve improved just because you decided to join this craziness and committed to the challenge.