Friday, July 20, 2007

The Crazy ***updated****

Today, I am starting The Crazy. What is The Crazy? And why am I doing it?

In two weeks, I will board a plane for Peru (with Larry and about 15 other people) to hike the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu.









The journey will take four days on foot, and we will be camping for three nights - that's right, four days sweating our faces off with no showers, no electricity, no HVAC. Just us a few llamas and some Peruvian porters to help carry our tents.

I take an ill-advised journey such as this one two times a year. The last one was spring 2007 to Morocco to hike the dunes in the Sahara desert. And before that, I hiked Thorsmork in Iceland.*

Before all such trips, I do what Lola calls The Crazy. The Crazy is a fourteen day "get your ass back in shape - IMMEDIATELY" program that um, gets my ass back in shape immediately. It involves a two hour workout in the morning, a one hour work out in the afternoon, gallons of water and the a severely restricted diet that includes insane amounts of arugula. Thank heavens I like... arugula.

You might be wondering why I would bother to do this, seeing as I measure appropriately every day. Most my friends are better hikers (and also better climbers) than I am. If I don't do the crazy, I can't keep up with them. Simple as that. And so for the next fourteen days, I will be doing The Crazy and reporting (in somewhat truncated fashion, I admit) my progress here, at the close of each post. If you don't care (good Lord, I don't even care THAT much) you can skip it.

All set then?

Day One: I drank black coffee (ie, no milk in it, gahhh) to get myself in the spirit of things. Other than that, I have done nothing to achieve The Crazy. HOWEVER. The day isn't over yet. I will post again when all modules are complete.

UPDATE: I am failing. I did really quite well up until the point I realized that my balance ball will not inflate properly. And I need the ball to complete the second workout. That pissed me off so bad that I had to have a drink. So as you can see, it's going rather poorly. More tomorrow.

*You are correct: I cannot afford these trips. I teach extra classes to pay for them. Yet another reason I never work on my dissertation...

4 comments:

Woodrow said...

I am so jealous. That's on my list.

Unknown said...

Sounds like a wonderful trip - have a great time!

nicole antoinette said...

Um, I need The Crazy SO BADLY RIGHT NOW.

Anonymous said...

You have a lot more willpower than I do.