Remember when I signed up for Run For Your Lives, a 5K Obstacle Course Mud Run in which you’re chased by zombies the entire time? You might also remember, then, when I finished the race (but barely) and lost all my life flags in the process.
Well, last spring I heard about the Tough Mudder - an extreme obstacle course where you complete 10-12 miles (that’s 15-20 km!) and roughly 25 obstacles that test your strength, stamina, and teamwork.
Tough Mudder PA – Electric Eel. Photo by The 621st Contingency Response Wing on Flickr
After doing Run For Your Lives (and having a BLAST) I got the crazy idea to sign up for a Tough Mudder event, with super fun terrifying obstacles like:
- Arctic Enema: swimming – and diving through! – an ice water bath
- Boa Constrictor: worming your way through a series of tubes filled with muddy water
- Funky Monkey: swinging across monkey bars, which sounds fun but they’re greased up AND you fall into an ice bath if you drop. Oh, did I mention they’re also on an incline/decline?
- Everest: somehow sprinting up and over a quarter-pipe covered in mud, grease, and other people
- Walk the Plank: a 15+ foot jump into cold water (and then you swim)
- Fire Walker: running through blazing hot, kerosene soaked hay bales that are lit on fire
and, the very last one before you get your orange headband of triumph and a cold beer:
- Electroshock Therapy: running through a bunch of live electrical wires, some that have 10,000 volts.
Aieeee.
Behold! The bad ass logo I designed for our team.
Somehow, I also convinced seven (possibly crazy) friends to do it with me: so we’ve got a kick ass team of eight ready to torture ourselves over 20 km of ski hills at Mount St. Louis Moonstone on May 11. We’ve even got a fancy team name and logo and are getting fancy technical shirts made so we can look bad ass as we tumble down, off, and over obstacles on our way to the finish line.
Needless to say, even with my former Booty Camp classes, gym membership, synchro practices, and various other physical activities – I need to kick it up a SERIOUS notch.
I designed myself a training plan from now (er, from Feb. 24 actually) until the Mudder, and have been (mostly) sticking to it so far. I’m a little behind these last two days because I nearly wrecked my quads after a treadmill sesh followed by some serious bouldering and a killer lower leg workout – I’ve been waddling (literally, I wish I was kidding) for two days straight.
Basically, it involves some sort of physical activity five days a week for the month of March – working on the Couch to 5K program, doing upper and lower body strength training, rock climbing, and some light yoga to help keep me all bendy and uninjured (hopefully, at least). In April, I plan to take it up a notch. I’ll be done the C25K program by then and will start working on running longer distances (and, if the weather cooperates, beginning to trail run since I’m training on the treadmill right now). I also plan to work in some HITT and Tabata training, hopefully working out in some semblance 6 days a week instead of 5.
If I stick to this, I’m pretty confident I won’t die will make it to the end of the Tough Mudder.
Of course, there will be some modifications as I go: sometimes I might want to put in an impromptu workout with friends, or swap a gym date for the pool, etc… but the goal is really to try and be active five days a week. For instance, I can already tell you right now I did NOT do Wednesday’s scheduled C25K running, as my legs were shot from the previous two days, so I just stuck to Yoga.
Either way, I’m going to be blogging about my progress as I go – the plan is to do a recap of my weekly workouts, etc. It will not only hopefully be interesting to read and follow along, but most importantly it’ll keep ME accountable for my diet and exercise, as I tend to fall off the exercise horse if I don’t have someone to remain accountable to. My couch is just so much comfier than the deadweight bench at Goodlife ;)
Week One
Sunday Feb. 24
- Rest Day
Monday Feb. 25
- C25K 4-2 (1.77 miles in 30 minutes)
- Upper Body (15 x 3): push ups, tricep dips, back rows (10lbs), bicep curls (20lbs), lat raises (15lbs), and assisted chin ups (90lbs assist)
Tuesday Feb. 26
- Boulderz Climbing
- Lower Body (x2): 20 prisioner squats, 15 lunges/leg, 15 elevated to one leg squat/leg, 20 jump squats, 15/leg donkey kicks
Wednesday Feb. 27
- Yoga (1 hour)
Thursday Feb. 28
- Rest Day
Friday March 1
- Synchro practice (2 hours)
- Upper Body (x3): 15 pushups, 15 tricep dips, 15 back rows (10lbs), 30 bicep curls (5lbs), 20 lat raises (5 lbs)
Saturday March 2
- Unintentional day off :(
