Birthday Challenges – Page 3

BDC Update Day 4

By SpenserBirthday Challenges2 Comments

Captain’s Log, July 18th. The challenge is under way. I have begun hiking the mountain, an overwhelming series of tasks now in front of me. We’re gonna need a bigger boat… That’s why I gonna recommend my favorite online shop, you will find any kind of boats, take a look on shoppok – walleye. Day 1- Run the 3rd peak in 36 minutes or less Day 1 was, well, wow. Made it to the 3rd peak in ridiculously record time. Started at 9:05am on the dot and got to the peak at 9:41am. Okay, so if I’m totally honest, I think my total time was about 36 minutes plus 20 seconds or so, but I’ll tell you this: I hiked/ran my ass off. The strategy was simple: prepare the morning of as best as I could; hike/run at the fastest possible pace that I could sustain for 36 minutes; run like fuck from 2nd to 3rd peak and bulldoze the roots and rocks like they were just belts on a treadmill. I hit the 1st signpost at just over 8 minutes, 2nd at 18 minutes, and got to the base of the 2nd peak’s mini-Death Slabs in 25 minutes. According to Vikki I had 7 minutes left when she saw me dashing across the flats near the 2nd…apparently the slabs took a long time (I recall feeling like I was walking through molasses), but I sprinted like a demon until the 3rd peak. I passed Vikki, who was dutifully manning the tripod, as…

July 18, 2014

Love0

The Final Countdown to My Birthday Challenge

By SpenserBirthday Challenges, Climbing, Training7 Comments

I’m not normally the kind of guy to spray the world about my birthday. I’ve never been one for huge laser tag parties or making all my friends invite their friends to a big group takeover of some moderately expensive restaurant. Birthdays are weird…the only time I’ve felt compelled or entitled to a big gathering of any sort was when I turned it into a charity event. Interestingly, that one was also a birthday challenge. This time, I’m spraying for a few reasons. I’m stoked. I’m kinda marketing for our EpicTV series, and my challenge will be part of it. I have trouble following through with audacious personal goals unless other people know about them. I have a lot less trouble with audacious goals if others expect me to at least try really hard. One more thing: if I can, in some way, inspire others to do something similarly audacious (physical or otherwise), that’s all for the better. I really, really hope this isn’t spilling over into obnoxious narcissism (my parents are psychologists, so I’m very self-conscious about this sort of thing). But I digress… Last night I hiked a tripod up to the 3rd peak and stashed it, so that Vikki will only have a camera bag to carry with her to film my first element on Tuesday. It was my second time up there in two days and my legs are feeling it today, but I’ve got three days to rest and a killer set of recovery tools in the…

July 14, 2014

Love0

My BDC- Long Term Beatdown

By SpenserBirthday Challenges, Bolt Clipping, Bouldering2 Comments

“Just so you know, Georgie, I’ll be sprinting this one as fast as I can, since I’m training and all that.” “No worries, you can go ahead of me.” And so I sprinted up the first set of stairs on the trail that eventually gains 700 meters of elevation, bound for the 3rd Peak. About 150 stairs later, I was cooked. My legs felt like molten slag, and the air I was sucking didn’t seem to contain any oxygen, despite being at sea level. What began as running quickly turned into plodding. “I think you’re hosing yourself by not warming up” No shit. And so Georgie and I huffed our way up to the pinnacle of the 2nd Peak, arriving exactly 36 minutes after we began the hike. There is a trail, you see, that goes directly to the 3rd Peak, but it is vicious. Roots and rocks. The type of terrain that eats inferior ankles for breakfast. There is no moving quickly over that kind of trail. I think that, physically, the single hardest part of my birthday challenge will be this run, 36 minutes or less to the 3rd Peak. So why did we go to the 2nd? To see if the trail was faster, if longer. And it was. Despite lingering on the top of the 2nd Peak for a few minutes and dawdling over to the 3rd, we made it to the 3rd Peak in 51 minutes. That’s 1 minute faster than when I did the 3rd peak trail…

July 7, 2014

Love0

Hair on Fire

By SpenserBirthday Challenges, Gym Climbing, TrainingNo Comments

I’m not ready to turn 30. The saying goes that time flies when you’re having fun. Strangely, I find that time flies when I’m standing still. Take the past two months for example. The RV Project moved its headquarters into my parents’ house, where we soaked up the comforts of a house and a doting mother and father who love to cook delicious food. A 2 month hiatus from the road seemed like a great chance to catch up with the videos we’re making, do some needed maintenance on the trailer, see our non-nomadic friends, and for me to prepare for my upcoming Birthday Challenge. The problem is, it feels like I’m just starting to train, and we’ve already left. It’s now less than a month from my birthday, and I am already dreading many of the elements I’ve set for myself. I’m not in poor shape, but the list of challenges is long. Time is fast dwindling, moreso as I’ll want to taper for a week or so before the challenge. I spent most of my time in the gym lifting weights and gaining endurance. I followed the format of Phase 1 of John Long’s Workout From Hell. I’d done the entire cycle once before, and remember feeling much pain and suffering during the 30-rep phase, but I also recall that my body felt as solid as a tree, as though bullets would bounce off my chest. I figured this would be a good way to train for my 300,000-pound lifting day,…

June 19, 2014

Love0

Birthday Challenge Episode 1: Alex Johnson

By SpenserBirthday Challenges, Bolt Clipping, Bouldering, Film2 Comments

EpicTV’s newest series, Birthday Challenge, went live today! Episode one follows Alex Johnson as she hits the quarter-century milestone with grace, humor, and optimism. She also manages to climb 25 routes and enough boulder problems to amass 25 stars in Las Vegas’ incredible Red Rock Canyon. Check it out below, and share with your friends, because we want as many people doing birthday challenges as possible this year! (Speaking of which, if you have done, or are going to do a birthday challenge, let us know! Also, there’s a BDC group on Facebook you should probably join.) We mentioned earlier that this year was going to be quite an adventure…all of a sudden we are making films…professionally! We dove into this one. Drove across the country to one of our least favorite cities (Las Vegas), and spent a couple of days filming Alex, interviewing her and her awesome mom Trish, and gathering some ridiculously cute footage of Fritz. When it came time to edit, we wanted to tell a story. We wanted to inspire. We wanted to give you Alex in the raw. Several long nights yielded a great 8-minute film we were proud of, and better still, that Alex was psyched on. We sent it off to EpicTV. EpicTV responded that they wanted something a bit more “action-packed.” So it was back to the editing station to chop it up again. The result is a totally awesome 4 minute video showing some of the gorgeous sport climbing in Red Rock, classic boulder problems from…

May 23, 2014

Love0

Birthday Blunder

By VikkiBirthday Challenges, Climbing, Trip Journal5 Comments

I am finally sitting down to finish digesting my 27th birthday challenge that was over a month ago (ahem, September 13th). What the heck took me so long?! Thinking back, I definitely needed about 2 days to recover post-challenge (mentally & physically). Then, the rain came and we booked it out of Squamish and begin our charge across the US, seeing who and what we could, but mostly just driving. What was the rush? I had a date I couldn’t miss: meeting five of my best college girlfriends in Charleston, SC for a reunion weekend. I’m officially back and settled in Boone, NC, nestled between two tabby cats-who-act-like-dogs (my favorite). After reading the latest The Morning Fresh post today, I realized I was out of excuses so here it goes! The Challenge: 27 kilometer bike ride. 27 (all new) V-points. 27 Polaroids. For this post, I was planning on taking a cue from my dear friend Alana and get straight to the good stuff: Highs, Lows, & Heroes. Bam. Then, as I was re-writing my ticklist into this post, I realized something that I thought was impossible: I only did 26 V-points. I read my notes over and over again and, sure enough, there was 1 point missing… I ran (seriously) out to the trailer and asked Spenser if I was crazy. How could I have F-d up the counting? Even more silly, I clearly remember Sloppy Poppy bringing my V-point count up to 13 (a memorable number). This means I messed up the…

October 23, 2013

Love0