61st birthday burpee challenge

This middle-aged man has a history of starting birthday-theme fitness challenges of some type beginning with a new calendar year. 

He did so about a decade ago when he trained to self-administer the Marine Physical Fitness Test to himself on his birthday with a goal of scoring 250 points (300 points is a perfect score).   It took me three birthday attempts over three years to finally get my 250 points and that was the last time I took this test; wouldn’t even try now.

Then seven years ago I came up with another beginning-of-the-year birthday-related fitness challenge of completing 54 burpees each Monday through Friday at the end of my workouts.  This was a demanding challenge yet I stepped up to the plate and delivered a perfect attendance score.  In the chase, I improved my cardiovascular conditioning and that was nice.

Now it’s time for another beginning-of-the-year birthday-related fitness challenge and this one will again be a burpee challenge.  I’ll perform 100 burpees each Monday through Friday from January 1^st until my 61^st birthday about six-weeks from now. 

I’ll take off the day before my birthday to be fresh on my birthday when I’ll perform the 100 burpees as fast as possible in a timed test.  That will give me 35 days of work or 3,500 total burpees for this new little birthday-related fitness challenge.

To make it interesting and extra challenging, I’ll incorporate these 100 burpees with kettlebell work on some days.  I’ll also be smart with pace and intensities so as to not burn myself out.  That’s something very easy to do with burpees.

Do I have any particular goal time in mind?  Having thought about it really hard, I’ve decided no I don’t other than to improve my benchmark time and that is the time it took me last Friday – January 1^st – to complete 100 burpees.

Oh, I guess I do have one other goal in this pursuit and that is to have "perfect attendance".

That early morning workout consisted of 100 burpees that I completed in 10 rounds of 10 burpees each round.  My plan was to start a new round every 1:30 and I pretty much kept that pace with some rounds being a little faster and some rounds a little slower.

My time to complete the 100 burpees was 14:34.  All burpees were of the variety including a flopping pushup and a jump with both hands overhead reaching for the stars.

This should be fitness fun of the bittersweet variety. 

The bitter will be that completing 100 burpees each Monday through Friday is a demanding chore that will challenge me both mentally and physically.

The sweet will be that if I complete this challenge as prescribed, I’ll walk away with a nice uptick in my cardiovascular conditioning.  That’s a nice birthday gift to give myself.

Come along for the ride and cheer my on as I tackle my 61^st birthday burpee challenge.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum