100 Days of Burpees?and Combat

Justin Connelli finds stability in combat through CrossFit Fort Bragg’s 100 Day Burpee Challenge.

Being deployed is like being in a time machine: days fly by or drag on influenced by the ever-changing tide of combat. Your time will undoubtedly be marked by key events that shape your experience, and in war that sometimes means the tragic loss of life. Daily life can be so dynamic you find yourself clutching for any type of routine to return some semblance of normalcy.

For a CrossFitter, this will no doubt involve working out, and for me, it involved the CrossFit Fort Bragg 100 Day Burpee Challenge.

I found out my home gym was putting on the burpee challenge and decided I would follow along while I was in Afghanistan. The premise is simple: do one burpee on Day 1, two on Day 2, and so on, until you ultimately complete 100 burpees on Day 100. The rules stated you could break up your daily burpees any way you wanted, and if you missed a day, the burpees would get carried over to the next day. Additionally, days 25, 50, 75 and 100 would be for time.

I figured it would be a great way to stay in touch with friends at home, as well as give me a healthy distraction with which to pass the time. What I could never have anticipated was the life-changing events that would occur during these 100 days.

Izabella Miko Cameron Diaz Sofía Vergara Nicole Richie Norah Jones