Birthday Challenge, Nerd Style

Last week was my birthday. I turned 43, which isn't really a landmark celebration unless you happen to live in a society that uses a base-10.75 numeral system, in which case it would have been like I turned 40. But that isn't the case.

However, it was a super important birthday for me. As some of you may know, the last four years have been a challenge. I've spent them dealing with a divorce, a cracked spine, torn labrum, and a SLAP tear. This year was different. I've come out the other end of a long, dark tunnel and, come April 27, my body and soul were ready to party.

So to celebrate the fact that I have four functioning limbs for the first time this decade, I asked my buddy Steve Edwards to help me build a Birthday Challenge filled with torture and self-mutilation.

For those of you not in the know, here's a brief rundown of the Birthday Challenge. Back in the day, fitness icon Jack LaLanne used to attempt feats of great athleticism to celebrate his birthdays. For example, on his 70th birthday, he towed 70 boats across Long Beach Harbor carrying 70 friends, all while handcuffed and shackled. Steve, a long-time LaLanne groupie, formalized Birthday Challenges several years ago and has been bugging me to do one ever since.

At last count, I don't have 70 friends (or 43 for that matter) and I wouldn't trust the few friends I do have to handcuff me (except one--she knows who she is, wink, wink) so the boat thing was out. We came up with plan B:

1. A 43-mile bike ride through PV featuring 4,300 feet of altitude.
2. A 43,000 pound weightlifting session.
3. A 43-minute yoga session ending with a 43-breath meditation.
4. Eat 4.3 burritos.
5. Drink 4.3 cups of coffee.
6. Sampling 43 different types of beer.

For those of you questioning the healthfulness of those last three things, particularly 4300 calories worth of Mexican food, my short response is "piss off." If you're looking for a more insightful response, how about, "piss off. It was my birthday." If that's still not working for you, consider that my ride alone-- lovingly designed by one of main cycling gurus, Shaun "Battle Bro" Bobb--turned into a 47 mile, 4600 feet elevation hammerfest that burned approximately 2300 calories, according to Strava. That's before walking my dog in the morning, lifting the weights, doing the yoga, or wandering Redondo Beach at 11pm with Steve looking for an all-night burrito joint.

In other words, hard work takes calories.

All and all it was a huge success, I had friends and family come and go all day (almost 43 of them, if you count my dog Bruce) to participate, spectate, or speculate. No one believed I could pull off the weights, but thanks to Steve and Beachbody fitness guru Steph Saunders, I blasted it out, with enough strength to end the session by bench pressing my daughter. (Luckily, none of my friends work for Child Services.)


While the lifting was great, my favorite parts were the ride and the yoga. For the cycling, I brought together a group of seven guys, many of whom had never meet. United by a common goal and too much testosterone, everyone instantly bonded. The whole thing smacked of a Hemingway story, only this time the old man in the Old Man and the Sea was joined by six buddies who worked with him to fend off the sharks and catch that damn fish, then they all had a beer after. It was good and true and real.

The yoga was lead by Sarah Stevenson, aka The Tiny Yogini. She did a great job, but more importantly, my sister and several others who'd never done yoga joined in to try something new. Admittedly, a couple of the guys from the ride who, just hours earlier, had been acting like pillars of masculine goodness chose to skip the yoga, instead looming around the outskirts and checking out Sarah's butt, but we can't all be our best selves 100% of the time, right?

I'm going to gloss over the beer part, given the audience of this blog. Instead, I'll defer to Oscar Wilde: "Everything in moderation, including moderation."

My Birthday Challenge was not a day for moderation. It was a day for excess and celebration. I'm sure that I'm not the only person in the room here who's come back into their body after a long period of pain, frustration, or (insert crappy thing here). Some of you who came to this blog through Beachbody might even be celebrating your fitness after an entire lifetime of being trapped in an adipose prison. You, especially, need to do a Birthday Challenge. Take your bag of bones, tendons, and muscles out for a serious test spin. Open 'er up and see what you really got under the hood.

And invite the world to join you. I saw my challenge as an opportunity to challenge my peeps too. The majority of them chose to embrace the beer challenge more than anything, so I may fine tune that in future challenges. The burritos, however, are staying, so olé, mofos!