These races should be everything I hate

T-minus one week til Winter Death Race. And I feel like I'm missing something. It's this weird nagging feeling, that something isn't exactly right.

So as I've been fighting that, I've realized that it's a theme that I've come back to time and time again: preparation.

Confession: I'm about as Type-A as they come.

Adventures in Urban Training: Wood Chopping

The Winter Death Race is three weeks away.

I have never swung an axe.

Now would be about the time to panic, no? There is one thing, and only one thing, that you know you will be doing going into the Death Race or Winter Death Race: chopping wood. For a race where virtually EVERYTHING is unknown, you would think it would behoove me to train for the one thing that is. Yet I have fully neglected this critical skill, mostly because I live in the middle of freakin' downtown Chicago where carrying an axe and chopping down the park trees is, I imagine, some type of crime.

Cashews, Leadership, and Lessons Learned

[Fair warning: this post may be full of typos and grammatical errors. I'm tired. I'm freakin' tired. 15+ hour work days, pre- and post-S.E.R.E., have left me running on empty. So bear with me.]

RP1

When I arrived this past Friday in D.C. to for the inaugural S.E.R.E Challenge, I really had no idea what to expect. And I was excited by that. As the members of Class 001B gathered at our RP next to the Washington Monument at 10pm (or 2200, if I want to go all military on you), I was ready for unknown. But what I didn't realize was that, before all was said and done, the most important thing that I would take away from S.E.R.E. were the lessons that I would learn--about myself, about others, and about life in general.

But because I hate being too serious, I'll give you the "fun" lessons first: