Setting Big Goals for 2018

Disclaimer: The Fandads were provided with the Tom Tom Adventurer by our friend Little Tech Girl in exchange for a review. All thoughts, opinions and bruised body parts are our own. 

You know that feeling when you accomplish something that most people say is impossible? You know, like running a marathon, watching your children while you are sick or building a HEMNES all by yourself and not having any parts left over? Yeah, that is such a great feeling!

For me, after I do something significant like that, I start getting a sense of withdrawal after it is over. I spend months or if I'm being real, days preparing for some races and within a few hours, it is all over.
There's just something about that feeling of pushing yourself to reach that next mile or having the energy to jump over fire to cross that finish line. It's such a huge rush and then it's gone. Last year I challenged myself and took on a Spartan Sprint and a Spartan Super. This year I saw on the Spartan website that they are bringing a Spartan Beast to our area and I want to do it!

For those of you that are unfamiliar with these races and are thinking to yourself "Beast? Super? What is he talking about?" Let me explain it to you. It's three races. Each one more challenging than the previous one and for each one you finish you get a medal and a third of a medal. If you finish all three, the three pieces of medals unite to form a bigger medal. Does that make sense?

Last year I decided to test myself and do the two races that were available in my area. I had been running a lot still, so I knew that I would be ok with the cardio section of the race. Some of the physical parts were another story. I tried doing small workouts at home, but they just weren't working for me. I decided to just go and see what happens and I survived both races which you can read about here.

You can see all of my battle scars in the pictures below and it felt kind of fun talking to people about my bruises. Unlike Fight Club where you don't talk about Fight Club, to me, it's kind of like a badge of honor to let people know how I got my bruises. The sad thing is once they start fading away you start to miss them. There is just something about pushing your body to finish a race that makes you want to do it again once it's finished.

So what am I going to do differently this year? Well, this year I am really going to train my butt off to be in better shape come this June. My goal this year is to complete all three races and then sleep for about a week. To get in somewhat peak shape I need to start running again. The last time I ran was for the Hot Chocolate 15K and that was in November.

I need to make myself accountable for my running because if I don't, it will hurt me in the long run, pun unintended. I used a running app to keep me focused the past few years, but this year I felt I needed something that would help me out more. On the Spartan Race telecasts, they always show commercials about the Tom Tom line of watches that some of the racers use and I felt like those would be great to get, but they were a little too pricey for me at the moment.

I started looking into other sports type wearable technology watches, but I started thinking to myself that maybe I could hold off on getting one of these watches for now and then something awesome happened. I posted a picture about my G-Shock watch that had recently died on me and asked for suggestions of a new watch to get and I then got a message from my friend Kris McDonald from the blog Little Tech Girl.

She told me that she had a watch that I think could be the thing I was looking for with the active lifestyle that I live. Yeah, I chuckled a little typing that. I mean, I am a little active, but I am not super active like I wish I was. We scheduled a day for the exchange to happen and I took the watch home and started setting it up. The Tom Tom Adventurer watch will not only tell me the time but will tell me my heartrate during any activities that I participate in. The watch also came with a pair of bluetooth headphones that I can listen to music that I store on my watch. Did I mention the app? The app lets me see all of my progress and helps me keep track of my sleep, steps, and calories burned. I will be writing about how this watch will help me keep track of my goals as I count down the months to the Spartan Races.

Hey, let's not get too nosey now! 

   

Now that I have a somewhat training plan and a watch that I can use to keep track of my progress, I also have another secret weapon that I made myself: a sandbag. 

In our neighborhood we have this thing called a freebox. Neighbors post items that they don't need anymore and want to hand off to their fellow neighbors. One of the items that one of my neighbors was giving away was three 40lb bags of sand. I claimed one of them and converted it into an exercise sandbag. Instead of going out and buying one between $30 - $40 dollars, I made my own with a free sandbag, paper bags, and duct tape. 

I started off by placing duct tape on all of the holes that the bag had. After I covered all of the holes I weighed the bag to check the weight and then taped up the bag into the shape of a ball. Once I did that I placed it on paper bags that I had cut flat and taped the bags around the sandbag. 

I kept wrapping the bags with duct tape until it felt nice and sealed. I used red and blue duct tape because that is the color scheme of my two favorite Marvel characters: Spider-Man and Captain America. 

I will use this bag to take short runs around the neighborhood and do some basic sandbag workouts at home. One of the obstacles in the Spartan Race is to run about 50 yards with a 60lb sandbag. I know this bag isn't that heavy, but it will get my body ready to start running with a heavy bag.

I know I write about this every year, but like M.C. Shan said, "You like to hear the story again and again...".  I will keep you up to date on my progress or lack of progress as we approach June and hopefully this year I can get some of our readers to join me on one of the shorter ones. 

Until next months my friends and thanks for reading.