JenFrau: Falling Off the Fitness Wagon

Ok so you may have been wondering where I have been lately. Well, to be honest, so have I.

I was enjoying my ”time off” from training a lot. Like, A LOT. Too much perhaps. And despite my best intentions of exercising everyday, that old voice was back in my head louder than ever. You know the one – the one that’s so good at coming up with excuses NOT to run or exercise that you can’t help but abide it. So at first, when I was contemplating going for a run after the marathon I found the voice telling me, "you really deserve a rest". Not so long after it would say, "you should really have a burger and beer, you’ve earned it". And before I knew it, 3 months after running the Jungfrau Marathon the voice was somehow convincing me that I deserved extra calories, beer, and loads of recovery time. That’s what the voice will do to ya!

Truth be told my friends, I had well and truly fallen off the fitness wagon.

So it took a while of gradually convincing myself that I was still a runner and, despite an extra couple of kilos, cold weather and increased levels of laziness, I could still do "it". "It" meant a number of things: go for a run at lunch, do some burpees in the morning, or get back into yoga. Regardless of what "it" was, I knew I had to get back into "it" and fast.

That’s when my old friends at Hillskeeker Crossfit reached out to me. I guess they realised I had been off the radar for a while and wondered what I had been up to. The truth was, I had done a whole lot of eating and resting and not much else. So they invited me to take part in the Warrior Challenge: a 5-hour series of outdoor activities featuring both physical and mental challenges. Was I interested? Hell yes!

The Warrior Challenge took place in what I can only describe as a blizzard. There were activities that challenged every aspect of the athlete: physical, endurance and mental.

Carrying heavy stuff far - and this was only the beginning...

We were wet, cold and tired, but something kept us going.

Bear crawl up the hill, log roll down the hill. And repeat.

After having been in the snow, wet and cold for 4 hours we were being shown the last, and toughest, bit of the challenge: an obstacle course that we had to complete, in teams of 4, carrying logs and people on stretchers.

It was at this point I really wanted to give up. I had had enough. I was wet, cold, hungry, and exhausted both physically and mentally. I was actually thinking to myself, "how do I get out of this? Do I say I have a train to catch? Or would it require something even more dramatic – like a twisted ankle, perhaps?". Not because I didn’t want to do it, but because I felt I simply couldn’t do it. The fear of holding my team back and letting everyone down was what scared me more than anything. I convinced myself I was giving up for them, not for me. I let the fear grip me for about 10 minutes.

Then got a hold of myself, told myself to MAN UP and get on with it. And I did.

Carrying a log through an obstacle course.

We weren’t first, but we weren’t last. I was muddy, frozen solid, exhausted beyond anything I thought possible, and victorious. It was awesome.

Carrying heavy logs makes me pull attractive faces like this.

Once again I had pushed through the barrier to see that the only person stopping me was myself. No, I wasn’t the fastest. No, I wasn’t the strongest. But I didn’t give up. I refused to let that voice in my head that was telling me to just go home, get warm, put my feet up and eat some cheese, defeat me.

I was back on the fitness wagon my friends.

JenFrau is back.