Though afterwards, when Sal was walking away, I told Steve he was a Cheesehead. Steve appropriately grimaced at the thought.
One of the staffers at the fitness challenge this year, was talking to me about my score and said “the top score is only in the 500s, so you’re not that far off.” Yeah. And the top score was put in by a Hall of Famer. Who’s turning 50 this year. Years of working out have given him some pretty good endurance I guess. Though I heard there was some controversy around his burpees – though since he has bum wrists, he just fists the push up section. You should keep that in mind if you have bum wrists.
400 was an internal goal. Turns out internal goals, take explicit effort to achieve. That’s the lesson for this year. And next year. I dropped two points this year, which was bad, but still good enough to:
- beat Chuck by 1 point
- cover my bet with Sonny +60 points.
- cover my bet with Klaus straight up on the B level.
- LOSE my bet with my sister straight up on the B level by 9.
So things were close – the betting lines were pretty decent. Strategy has a lot to do with the scoring here. As well as starting position. I didn’t get to start on rowing like I had earned in our random draw, and that hurt my rowing score a bit. But you gotta play the cards you’re dealt. And this year, I really need to improve my push press cards. Really. I think my sister did more per round than I did for the entire thing. And jumps. Jumps are a good way to get some fast points. Should focus on that more. Didn’t push hard enough on those this year. Doing 10 more jumps is a lot more doable than doing 5 burpees for me. Especially the order that they are in.
I think next year’s competition will be even better cause things were so closely packed.
The event and the 30 minutes afterwards are miserable, but the rest of it – the prep beforehand, the talking, the lack of true exercise, the lunch, the look of misery in each other’s eyes right afterwards, the soreness that sets in a few hours later, the feeling that you’ve earned a big fat mexican dinner, matching everyone’s donations because your sister beat you – all that makes the whole experience overall a ton of fun.