This has been a difficult year, a challenging year, a year full of changes, a year of unprecedented events, a year of building character and most importantly, a year that molded warriors. In the words of David Goggins “a warrior is a person that goes…I’m here again today, I’m here again tomorrow and the next day. It’s a person who puts no limit on what’s possible…”
To that, I dedicate this challenge to my band of warriors, my Sales Engineering team and to my wider team in Emerging Markets who are true warriors in every sense, and who persevered and thrived in extremely troubling times.
Those who know me, know that I enjoy a challenge, an activity which pushes the limits both mentally and physically, and I was looking for something to send off 2020 and welcome 2021 with a big warm embrace – something that I could engrave into my memory as a milestone of that new exciting year ahead full of hope. Thus, a few weeks ago, one of my teammates showed me an Instagram post by David Goggins (https://www.instagram.com/tv/CKR4hS5lpCl/) where he put forward his yearly challenge started a year ago.
Basically, what our dear friend put forward, was the following concept: 4x4x48, which basically means, 4miles (or 6.4kms) every 4 hours for 48 hours – Now side note – in the rules Goggins says that the activity of choice is running, but anyone can do anything for at least 40 minutes (i.e. Goggins in one of the cycles did 40 minutes of jumping jacks). Goggins, during one of his lives, explained how a 500 pound man, wanted to join the challenge but could not due to his weight, so what he did is he woke up every 4 hours and walked around in the house, and this year he actually ran/walked the challenge after he was able to shed 200 hundred pounds (the power of the mind is truly fascinating).
Now, a bit of background on me, I consider myself an athletic/fit person who usually works out 4-5 times a week (from strength to cycling to windsurfing), thus when I saw this challenge, I said hey this isn’t that bad, it truly seems doable, right?
As the next 48 hours revealed, this challenge puts you to the test both mentally and physically, as the miles or kilometers do add up (if you do the math it’s about 48 miles or 76.8 kilometers; almost two marathons), and if you put into play the sleep deprivation, your body starts to feel the compounding effects of the miles and the hours of missed sleep; it starts to say “hey dude what’s up?”.
Before we started this challenge, there was a certain amount of preparation work that needed to be done. I believe this is a crucial part of the equation that shouldn’t be missed, and that if done right will ensure that you complete the challenge. This includes cooking what you are going to eat, preparing your electrolytes beforehand, and even having your clothes selected for each run. We actually lined up all of our shorts/shirts/socks that we would be wearing on each run, thus leveraging a technique called habit stacking, whereby doing one thing prepares your mind for the activity that is going to come.
Having done all that cut down on the time needed for preparation in between each run to allow more time for rest and less time to think or even waste….every minute counts and after a couple of runs the only thing you care about is just laying on your bed and thinking to yourself “why oh why am I doing this?” or “I will need to have a talk with the person that recommended this to me!”. The funny thing about time as our dear friend Einstein once said, is that it is relative, and during this challenge, rest time flew by in the blink of an eye – Those two hours of pure rest that you could capitalize on, were abruptly ended by the sound of the alarm repeating the words “come on, get up, don’t curse at me, you chose to do this not me”.
Now, some may think, come on you have 4 hours in between every run and while that is true in concept, I’ll break it down to make it a bit easier so you can see how time was actually spent.
There are a total of 12 runs, and it’s important to create a schedule and keep track of all the runs and track them as well. This helps when sleep deprivation kicks in and messes with your memory and also motivates you as well.
Below you will find the schedule and also our own little tracker that we created.
I wanted to list the schedule above and some personal feelings and tips along the way. What we also did as a motivator is to put our schedule on the back of the door, so after each run, we crossed out the run. I think this helped the mind to register each time we had finished a run, that we had done it, and we had x runs to go. On our 5th run, we thought we were on run 6. Let’s just say we weren’t particularly happy to see we miscalculated – but our tracker kept us honest ☺
Below you can find the things that we prepped ahead of time in order to make things easier, and decrease any time needed away from lying down.
Some final thoughts are that you should not underestimate the distance nor the challenge. Definitely anyone can try it, but do what you can. Plan a rest day after the challenge to allow the body to rest and relax. Nutrition & hydration are key, as, in my opinion, planning the challenge out beforehand. Creating your support system is absolutely essential; I did this challenge with my wife, and we were able to keep each other motivated and on point, no matter what time of the day it was. We were in this together. In some runs, we had friends, neighbors, and people we knew who just wanted to join us and run with us.
Lastly, I am a geek for numbers, and I loooove collecting data. Thus I made it my mission to collect as much data I could about this run.
On an ending note, if you decide to do such a challenge either on your own or next year, don’t stress too much over it, just have fun with it, my wife and I sure did!