For those of you who do not know, I'm planning to run The Warrior Dash in just under 12 weeks. I am 41, very overweight, bad back, and haven't walked more than a half mile in a stretch in over a year. I don't get winded going up the stairs in my house, but if I don't turn things around, that's not far off.

The Warrior Dash is basically a 5k run combined with an obstacle course. I'm going to skip some of the obstacles, like wading through a bog and crawling under barbed wire, but I'm hoping to complete the 3.15 mile course and at least 7 out of the 11 obstacles in an hour or less.

I just did my first training session, a simple 3/4 mile walk with some mild up and downhill components. I finished it in the target time of under 20 minutes without huffing and puffing too much. But my lower back was screaming.

A combo of gaining back the weight I lost last year plus being really lax on core strength exercises since then put the pressure on my lower back, and turned on the pain signals in the last quarter mile. I'd planned to incorporate a little bit of core-strength into the training routine, but I think I'm going to have to be more aggressive with it. If I don't get the abs toned up and taking more of the strain off my back, I'm not going to be able to make it, because my back will fail me before my lungs or legs do.

This isn't about weight loss, though the added activity may prompt some. I'm trying to go from total couch & computer potato to doing a 5k obstacle course in 12 weeks. The numbers I'm going to worry about during the next 12 weeks are not how much I weigh or how much I eat, but how far I can go and how fast I can do it.

Wish me luck.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 7:08 pm and is filed under Warrior Dash. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.