The 30 day blog fitness challenge

At work, we recently started the 100 day burpee challenge. The rules are simple: on the first day, you do 1 burpee, on the second day, 2 burpees, on third day, 3 burpees, and so on up to day 100. If you miss a day, you have to make it up the next day: for example, if you miss day 50, you have to do 101 (50 + 51) burpees on day 51. The point of the challenge is to increase general fitness (burpees use the entire body), develop good habits, and learn the virtue of consistency.

Suffering through burpees near the end of a workout at the '10 Crossfit Games NorCal Qualifier

When Adam Nash found out about the burpee challenge, he laughed at me. I'm not sure if he was put off more by the word "burpee" or the sight of me jumping around like crazy next to my cubical. As a response, Adam, along with Mario Sundar, proposed a different challenge: a 30 day blog fitness challenge. The rules are, again, very simple: write one blog post, every day, for 30 days straight. If you miss a day, you have to make it up the next day. The purpose of this challenge is analogous: develop mental fitness (writing uses the entire brain), develop good habits, and learn the virtue of consistency.

It sounded nice until I realized that I'm supposed to keep pace with:

• Adam, a VP of Product, who already has a very active personal blog (1.7M hits!) and is a regular on the LinkedIn Blog 
• Mario, whose job title involves the phrase "Chief Blogger" and who isn't exactly a slouch on his personal blog 

And I'm supposed to do this all while writing code, winning hackdays and doing burpees? I've given it much deliberation, realized I've barely written 30 blog posts in the last 4 years, tallied up all 3 people that read my blog (hi mom!), checked my busy schedule, and made a decision.

Bring it on.

I'm unquestionably the dark horse in the race, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve.

1. The fact that almost no one reads my blog is a benefit: I can afford to write crap and no one will notice.
2. I have a very high pain tolerance. See burpee video above.
3. I fully intend on cheating. Meta-posts of this sort are just the beginning.

And so, dear reader(s), prepare yourselves for 29 more consecutive days of blog posts, featuring exciting topics ranging from Crossfit, to game mechanics, to open source software. Oh, and burpees.