Training for adventure races turned out to be quite a grueling, inspirational and fun experience. To train for the Adventure Races, I picked up the pace on my already hectic schedule. I had always kept a pretty active schedule, usually playing ice hockey several times a week, mountain climbing once a week, biking or running during the week, as well as my usual weekend warrior trips. To train for the race in March, these are some of my activities that I had done:
Running - I tried to make runs of at least 2 miles several times a week.
Hockey - I was skating two or three times a week.
Stairs - My team had gotten together at the Renaissance Center and run stairs. We usually run for several hours and do more than 64,000 stairs.
Night Hiking - On top of several small night hikes, some of us gathered for 18 mile hikes of the Potowatami trail; which is a popular Michigan mountain biking trail. The one of the hikes was pretty interesting, as it was around zero degrees outside and our water bladders froze.
Night Biking - Many trips were made to practice single track at night. Although, many mountain biking components of Adventure Racing are on dirt road or similar, and really just consists of long uphills to test endurance rather than technical single track.
Mountain Climbing - I met with team members to climb indoors twice a week.
Cross Training - I had many weekend trips to add variety to my training. Some of these have included vertical caving, dog sledding, ice climbing and more. Depending on your preference, it may be good to mix things up. For me, I crave variety; so this was necessary for my training. I'm not one of the people that can run the same route, day after day.
As you can guess, there weren't many free nights left...
Although I have always been in good physical condition, able to kayak more than 14 hours, run over 10 miles, and so on; I usually haven't really been fit and trim. I made a goal to lose some weight and get into shape by my first race, and to be in total shape by summer. By total shape, I mean where I am completely satisfied with my looks in the mirror, by the old definition, a "hardbody." Here are the pictures of my progress up to February. The first one was taken at Lake Tahoe in August (love that chest sunburn ;), but I didn't really commit and start training until the end of October. The second shot shows the progress and was taken at the beginning of February. Definitely a good start.
To achieve this level of results, I had to completely change my routine. The biggest impacts came not only from the extra activity, but from nutrition. I was a carbo-junkie, and changed my eating habits. Nutrition and physical training is something that I have researched and know quite a bit about, but just hadn't been completely applying it. I had also done this before. I have a very slow metabolism and grew up heavy. At my worst, I was 15 years old, 4 foot 10 inches tall, and weighed 195 pounds. I lost the weight and vowed never to let myself get like that again. If you are interested in getting in shape yourself, feel free to e-mail me and I will try to help. I would also be glad to take on some side personal training projects.