A Bro’s Training Procrastination Timeline When Getting Ready for a Mud-Loaded Obstacle Course Race

No one is sure what erroneous logic led you to this. Conceivably, you could be the spineless type to cave to any amount of peer pressure. Perhaps you lost a bet on the Super Bowl. It’s even plausible you have an upcoming high school reunion and you’re in need of a rebuttal should anyone try to resurrect your old locker room nicknames of “Pepperoni Nips” and “Young Louie Anderson.” Whatever the reason, you’ve already hesitantly signed the Internet-death-waiver and paid your loot. Who knows, maybe this will be the kick in brown-eye you need to get back into the shape you were in when you were fifteen?

Bless your overly-hopeful, adorable heart if you believe that last bit. I’m sorry, but if you’re too optimistic you’re going to go through life being constantly disappointed. You’ll be the type who believed the war in Iraq was over when that statue came down ten years ago and you’ll be the type who doesn’t recognize that all people are pure narcissists at their core. Endearing how you think you’re going to train every day, get progressively stronger, and live a life where you’re not on the verge of an asthma attack every time you try to open a jar. Realistically, the only thing this “training” will do is teach you that you’re better at making up personal excuses than you ever thought.

Five+ Months Away: With it more than 150 days away, your event is going to be the furthest thing from your mind. Five months is a long time. By the time your event comes around you could potentially have been hit by a car, or a meteor, or have been brought to justice for that hit-and-run you committed when you were “only, like, six or seven deep, bro.” Spooky, and not in the racist grandfather sense, to think you’d potentially waste the last normal months of your life training, running, and being sweaty from things other than personal nacho fiestas for an event that you might not even make it to.

Two to Five Months Away: The event horizon is moving closer, but, as evident by your ample bedsores, you haven’t done much of any moving up to this point. You know it’s coming up, but it’s way easier to make excuses only you have to believe. Seriously, exercise sucks compared to deep frying another box of hot pockets, popping on another episode of Orange is the New Black, and validating your actions with an excuse like “It’s too hot out”, “It’s too cold out”, or “I’m too self-conscious about these two free-swinging, pepperoni-dotted sweater puppets I used to call my pecs.”

Two to Eight Weeks Away: The event looms closer and you’re still not grasping the urgency of how awful your awful body is. Nevertheless, in an attempt to ease your way into a normal exercise routine, you start doing the little things. You start using the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator to get up to your second-floor apartment. You start actually walking on moving walkways. You even start standing up in the shower instead of writhing around in the drain suds. Like a laid-off teacher in the Deep South arguing with her doctor to get on that disability money, you’re working hard to avoid working hard.

Less Than Two Weeks: Reality sets in that the event is only two weeks away and you’ve decided to cram four months of training into fourteen days. Your binge lifestyle has got you this far; there’s no reason to stop now. You’ll exercise to the point of exhaustion. You’ll gorge on laxatives. You’ll figure out all the fun tricks those teenagers with poor body image are experimenting with these days. In a perfect world this would be the point in training where you’d break your ankle and have a legitimate reason to back out. We all knew you couldn’t avoid procrastinating, so Godspeed in making your injury seem believable or Godspeed in not exerting yourself to the point of public defecation should you attempt the course.

Justin Gawel is an adult baby from Michigan. Look his updates at www.justingawel.com or follow him @justingawel on Twitter.

[Mud image via ShutterStock]