Earlier this year, my friends at CC Military Surplus were looking to maybe put a team together for a “mud run” – an event for MS where they were going to be a sponsor. It was a 10K race in the mud, wearing boots, sort of military style. I was looking at doing it with them… I figured there was no way I’d run the whole way, but it was for charity, and looked kind of fun. well, they never got a team together, so that just didn’t work out.
Then later on Facebook I saw a promo for one that I thought I could handle… and looked even more fun. The Warrior Dash.
The Warrior Dash is about a 5k “race” combined with one heck of an obstacle course. Muddy hills, swamp, hills of hay bales, junked cars, wood walls, flaming logs and a barb-wire crawl. Yea, like I said.. even more fun!
The closest one was going to be Next September in Eastern WI. I had a few friends that talked about it as well… and sort of put it on the back-burner, waiting till we got closer to the first of the year before figuring out what I was going to do. Then, a couple weeks ago I heard they added one here in Minnesota… probably 20-minutes from where I live. Bonus!Only problem is… at this point, I had been out of work for about a month… and I couldn’t see sparing the $40 registration fee to get signed up. Not a huge deal, I mean, we’re still almost 8 months away, and more than a few months left in the registration. But I was kind of bummed, and it prompted a status posting on Facebook that read:
Dangit, I wanna register, but no $ for something like this right now. Unemployment sucks.
So the “crazy” part of this is that not only was I contemplating doing something like this to begin with, but here I was lamenting the fact that at the end of the day, I might not be able to. But then here’s the blessed part. It’s sort of two-fold.
First of all, I know I can do this. Will I be able to maintain a running pace? Dunno… but I KNOW I can do this, thanks to my WLS. Because of my gastric bypass, I have lost… and kept off… about 180 pounds for almost a year now. I am in better physical shape than I have been at any time in my adult life.
Secondly, I had no less than three different people step up and offer to pay my registration fee.
Yea.
Honestly, the impact of that is still hard to believe.
I… well, it’s … it was something I kind of sort of just dismissed initially. I mean, c’mon. It still seems kind of hard to grasp, and while I’m still not sure why that is, I am accepting it, much in the way I’ve been slowly becoming more accepting of compliments in general as I’ve gone through the transformation I have over the last couple years.
So to cut to the meat of the matter, Toni from BariatricTV was the first to offer, literally within minutes of me posting on Facebook, she replied with:
Because we just adore you, and you’ve done so much for BariatricTV, and the WLSFA, and today is pay it forward, would you consider letting myself on behalf BTV, pay for your registration?
Like I said, my initial reaction was to sort of dismiss it. There’s nothing special about me. I don’t do the things I do for personal gain (except for maybe the motivation it helps give me when I do these things), it sounds cliche, but for me it really is a form of “Pay It Forward”. And yea, it can also be a bit humbling to be in a position to need help with something like this.
Well, finally I swallowed my pride and decided to turn it around. I am accepting Toni’s offer… but it’s not stopping there. I’m going to use this as another “pay it forward” opportunity. I am going to find a way to turn this in to a fund raiser for the Weight Loss Surgery Foundation of America (wlsfa.org).
I’m not sure exactly how. Some sort of pledges based on each obstacle I tackle… straight up donations in the name of the Warrior Dash or…? I’m open to suggestions. But it all starts right here. We’ll get through the Holidays in to January, then I’ll work with Toni to get myself registered.
I don’t know if I’m going to “train” specifically for this, but I will put up some postings here and there through the spring and summer as I do prepare for this… and as I figure out how to handle the fund-raising aspects of it. I’ve also got it set up as an Event on Facebook, so if anyone in the MN/WI area wants to join me that day (I’ve got a couple friends looking to do so already), please do! You don’t have to be part of the fund-raising, it would just be great to some some of that company that they say misery loves!
I’m going to look in to getting a shirt with the WLSFA and BTV logos on it to wear the day of the race, and I have a “helmet-cam” I may have to find a way to wear for during the race as well as trying to get some friends around the course in some key spots to get some photos.
So look for more info on this in the coming months… and well, yea… I may be crazy, but I’m also pretty blessed, so they sort of balance each other out a bit. In the mean time, check out some of the videos I’ve found from other Warrior Dash events.
I just stumbled on your site from a post on the thinner times site. Very cool. I ran the Warrior Dash in Colorado last year and it was a hoot. I don’t live at altitude any more and that was the hardest part about the event. The obstacles are pretty easy to complete. Besides it is such a mad house of people that running kind of becomes optional to the people watching.
Have a good time with it in the fall!
jp