Mud Run Training

A couple of weeks ago, I signed up for my first race. But this is no ordinary race, it's the Mud Run. It's a race in what looks to be a vacant field in the valley and it's 3.44 "hellish" miles (or so the website tells us). Throughout the course there are obstacles that are essentially playground equipment based in mud. I really only signing up because Kate and Carly were doing it, but what really sealed the deal was the "beer garden" at the end of the race, but after I signed up, I was thinking about what this would entail, and then it donned on me, I really don't appreciate being muddy, so this should be interesting.

Last week, Carly and I decided that we should start training since it's April 21, and time is flying, so we said that this week (today) we would go on a run and then stop at the playground by our house to do some circuit training. So after a quick run, we landed at Clifford and surveyed our surrounding. We decided doing 3 sets of: stairs, climbing up this 4 foot rock step "wall" that had a chain to latch on to, climb down a chain-rope-ladder, then hop over to a 10 foot wall that was concave on one side and convex on the other so we were going to climb up and over, then doing a few pull ups, and concluding at the spider web thing that we were going to climb up and over (and yes these are the correct names).

We took a deep breath at the bottom of the stairs and we ran up, thinking oh this will be a breeze. We got to our first obstacle and then that's where we were slapped to reality. First, I grabbed onto the chain and hoisted myself up (or at least attempted to) and was stuck in a 45 degree angle for a second, not knowing what to do. Then when we got to the chain-rope-ladder, I didn't properly gage the distance between the ledge and the first step so that was a drop that was much farther then originally intended. We ran over to the "wall" so I climbed up with all my might, ready to climb up and over, but once we got to the top, Carly and I both stopped, not knowing what to do next. Just leaning over so that we could see the other side's ground seemed to be close enough for government work so we scurried back down (we'll save the climbing over for further in our training). We then reached the pull up bar and that was a joke. We said we would just jump up and see how long we can stay up and do then do it again and move on. On three, we jumped and we no sooner lifted our feet off the ground then they landed back on the ground. Probably half a second (and that's being generous). So brush it off, and attempt again, and sadly, the second time wasn't much better either, but thats something we can work up to so moving on. We then ended up at our final obstacle (the spider web) and as we got towards the top, I looked down and thought damn this is high and I don't really want to fall so I kept moving to the right, which was when Carly caught on to my strategy. We thought it would be best (and probably safer) to just go around in a circle rather than cheat death and climb up and over.

I'd like to say that we got better each time, but it was not by much. Although the pull ups did improve a tad - I sounded like a female tennis player while I was trying to stay up for longer than a half a second but it surprisingly did work! And we moved around the wall pretty efficiently the last time, but still no up and overs.

We thought we had some good base training and we'll be rolling like big shots probably the day before the race. But everyone has to start training somewhere and hey, we tackled some key hand-eye-foot-coordination basics.