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:

Mission: Unknown

If you looked up the definition of "creature of habit," I would be highly surprised if there wasn't a picture of me sitting there. My alarm goes off at 4:22 a.m. every morning, I hit the gym, I go to work, I come home, I eat, I sleep.

Repeat ad infinitum. 

If you asked my parents how I handled change or the unknown growing up, they would answer: "Simple. She doesn't." I admit--you threw me off my routine, and I would kick and scream. But at some point, during some strange event of maturation, I began to crave the unknown. I began to want to take risks. Perhaps years of routine have finally pushed me over the edge...

Volenti non fit injuria

To the consenting [willing], no injury is done. In the law, the Latin  maxim of "volenti non fit injuria" is typically used as a defense in a tort action--voluntary assumption of the risk.  To most of us, it's what we so lovingly know as the Death Waiver.

Lately, however, I've realized that this maxim applies with equal weight to the abuse I inflict upon my body: when I injure myself doing stupid things, I have no one to blame but myself. I have only become painfully aware of this in the last year, and especially in the few months leading up to, and post, World's Toughest Mudder.

Let's take inventory:

On Girl Crushes and the Interwebs

A tangential conversation that took place between my girlfriend and I a few weeks before WTM:

GF: "So how are you getting out there?"
Me: "We're driving. 12 hours or so."
GF: "We? Who are you driving with?
Me: "Two guys also racing."
GF: "Have you met this guys?"
Me: "um, I met one at TM Wisconsin." (lie. I haven't met either.)
GF: "So you are driving to New Jersey with two strange men? Please don't tell me you met them on Facebook. Where are you staying?"
Me: "In a house on the Jersey shore with like 15 other racers."
GF: "Have you met this people?"
Me: "Some" (also a lie)
GF: "You are going to end up raped and murdered in a ditch."

(Little did she know that I carried a switchblade in my bra the entire way there. Smart girls always come prepared.)

Adventures in Urban Training: Hills

I do love my view

I live in the middle of a concrete jungle. Picture downtown Chicago, and insert me right there. I live on the 15th floor of a 24-story condo building, and I walk a mile to work to my office on the 32nd floor of a 46-story building.

I am, by definition, a city girl.

Which totally and utterly sucks for training for these types of races.