Fitness: You get what you expect!

A couple of athletes here locally have been training for The Death Race, and I've been following their training thanks to the video updates of their workouts uploaded by their gym, Boot Camps to Go.  The Death Race is held each year in Vermont and is so named because it's supposed to be insanely hard not just physically but mentally as well.  It's an adventure race with obstacles like navigating a barbed-wire forest in the dark, assembling your own transportation after searching for the individual components in a murky pond, carrying a portion of your body weight up a mountain only to be faced with logic puzzles to complete at the top, and memorizing facts, figures, and objects so you can recreate them at a later time. It requires participants to be prepared for and willing to try just about anything and is proud of its 10% average completion rate. I usually roll my eyes at the "we're so tough" mentality of some endurance athletes (usually the ones I am trying to convince myself I am not jealous of) but I have to admit, I can't wait to hear how they do and what they encounter. They've been working very hard and I admire them! Go Megan and Ricky!

I love to tough it out with something that is trying to beat me; the sense of accomplishment after achieving something really brutal is beyond euphoric. It reminds me that difficulty is relative, and we can all do more than we think.

Every single time - every single time - I have set out to accomplish something new in health or fitness I have been met with the reality that I can do way more than I thought. We all can, including you.  It's just a matter of what you decide will happen.

My Daily Dose today was about how success favors the prepared mind. If Megan and Ricky hadn't prepared themselves for the Death Race, their chance of completion would be dismal. The same type of focus can be applied to the things we do every day to prepare ourselves for even the most minimal health success.

Here's what I'm saying: expect fitness to be impossible and it will be. Expect eating healthy to be a chore and it will feel like one. Expect your life to be adverse to a healthier routine and guess what?  You will never get your act together.

The reverse is true as well!  But you already knew that.

A whole world of amazing is waiting for you, and the golden ticket gets placed in your hand as soon as you start assuming you can achieve it. It's not always easy, but it's a lot easier when you expect the best. I'm on pins and needles to hear how the Death Race goes, and I expect to be thoroughly motivated to get out there and kick some fitness butt when I do! 

Get out there and get healthy...and start expecting it to be awesome!