As someone who hates burpees, I seem to be doing a lot of them. After all the talk of burpee challenges, Spartan Race Australia created a special event to raise money for youth homelessness. The challenge: 1km of burpees on the beach.

For anyone who has done burpees before you’ll know that they can tire you out quickly. When you add in the additional challenge of sand the burpees become even more tiring After doing my 500m of burpees a few weeks prior I knew that this was going to be challenging, but pushing through the pain barriers is what life is all about.

I rocked up at City Beach on a cloudy and cool Sunday afternoon and after a quick warm up I started burpeeing my way along the beach. There were two bins in the distance that were the 250m markers, and with every burpee they still seemed so far away. Going into the burpees I knew that I wanted to finish in under an hour and I rest as little as possible.

I got to the first turnaround point and saw that everyone else had gathered, ready to start their 1km of burpees. I stopped to catch my breath and checked my time – 17 minutes down. I needed to pick up the pace if I was going to get it done in under an hour! I started burpeeing back and said a quick breathless hello when passing my friends. At the halfway mark I had already taken 32 minutes, so I had a quick water break and got ready for the last 500m.

My triceps were already sore from all the burpees two nights prior at the Gut Check event, so by the time I reached the 500m mark they were on fire. My ankle started to hurt so I started stepping instead of jumping my way along the beach. Thanks to my long legs I was travelling a good distance with every burpee. I changed my technique to let myself fall to the sand instead of lowering slowly which resulted in less pressure on my arms.

I had made up some time by the 750m mark so I took a quick sip of water before the home stretch. I had several people ask me what I was doing and one guy asked if I was Buddhist and this was a religious thing. I don’t blame the for wondering what 20 people were doing throwing themselves on the sand and then jumping along the beach.

The last 50m were the hardest – my lungs were burning and my arms were feeling quite heavy. But as I jumped across the finish line with that last burpee I was happy as I managed to get them done in 55 minutes – 5 minutes short of my goal.

As much as I complained about the burpees while I was doing them, I had a lot of fun and would definitely be keen to try this again and improve on my time!

Event: Burpees for a Cause

Type: N/A

Distance: 1km

Location: City Beach, WA (Australia)

Date: 21 February 2016