Tough Mudder, Melbourne 2013

On Saturday, I ran my second Tough Mudder down at Phillip Island. This time was a much different experience than the first time, given that I was a lot more prepared and injury-free!

I teamed up with Andrew again. And because Gordon is currently working in Indonesia doing some good deeds, he couldn't make it. But Andrew's wife, Jen, signed up, having watched us the first time, exclaiming "I reckon I can do that!"

Preparation

I don't wanna get into the boring details of it, but basically:

• From September onwards, I walked up to 6km a day in my commute to/from work.
• In the preceding weeks, I went on a very strict ketogenic diet. This was a last minute, all-out effort to cut a bit more weight. It worked.
• In the preceding weeks, I also upped my running/jogging/sprinting and did kettlebell workouts 3-4 times a week. Mostly clean+press ladders, but I threw in some swings+push up gassers occasionally.
• In the week before, I did a lot more foam rolling and mobility work than usual.
• The day before, I loaded up on carbs and drank a lot of 50/50 water/gatorade mix.
• In the morning of the event, I mixed a teaspoon of this magnesium powder stuff I decided to try with some water, and had that along with some eggs, a banana and some more water/gatorade.

The Event

The ice bath (arctic enema) still sucks. It sucked last year and it sucked this year. But luckily it was the first obstacle. Why does it suck? All of my muscles tightened up. My chest tightened up, which sucks as an asthmatic. And I felt ridiculous trying to get my legs out of the bath, which was just around chest height, because everything was so tight and it was hard to move.

The mud mile was a lot more fun this year; instead of cramming a few hundred people into waist-deep mud, single file, they had a much wider area to move, and about half of it was piles of mud that we had to "climb" over before falling into another mud bath. Team work was pretty important here, as was helping out anyone around you. Probably my favorite obstacle of the day!

Along the way, I was reminded that running in paddocks makes you fear for your ankles and knees. I was so sure I was going to roll an ankle. I certainly saw plenty of people who did.

After about 12km - a lot further than I expected - the cramps started to kick in. There's nothing more annoying than attempting to run while your adductors are cramping. The way you end up compensating for it makes you look like a zombie from a B-grade horror movie desperately chasing after fresh brains.

And after about 15km, I hit the proverbial wall. Stints of jogging didn't last long, and when I did get a decent burst of energy that inspired me jog for longer than 30 seconds, the cramps decided to kick in again. Lots of walking happened from there on out.

Diving from a platform into muddy water - which, by the way, makes it impossible to see anything, like, you know, how far away the surface is - is an odd experience. It's not a high enough platform to really be dangerous, but it's high enough that, in mid-air, you have enough time to think "oh shit, I'm still falling!"

On the second-last obstacle, Everest - that quarter-pipe that's prevalent in every Tough Mudder video on YouTube - I injured myself. Upon getting to the top, on my 3rd attempt, I grabbed the arms of two guys who were helping me up, and I guess the guy who grabbed my left arm pulled a little too hard; I felt my shoulder come out! I had to keep yelling "let my arm go, my shoulder's fucked!". And when he did, it must've gone back in, because I could move it in a full range of motion again, but it felt baaad! But it's all good! I went to the physio yesterday and there's no major damage. I just have to go easy on it for a couple of weeks.

Luckily the last event didn't really need my shoulders to be healthy; electroshock therapy!

Last year, the shocks were mostly tame, but you could feel them. This year, it was a whole other story. That shit hurt! I got zapped a good 9-10 times and by the laughs it was giving Cherie and her friend, James, it must've looked great. I guess it's true; there's nothing funnier than watching big, tough men cower and scream like children after a few zaps!

The End

Jen and Andy finished strongly and without injury! They, and Brendan, a guy we befriended at the start and ran the whole course with, were a lot of fun to do it with!

It was a great day and I was happy with how much better my running capacity, and performance on the obstacles, has gotten since my first Mudder!

I've been telling myself that this was the last Tough Mudder I'd do, but... it really was a lot of fun. We'll see if I sign up for the September run...

Tough Mudder 2013 Preparation

I've signed up for another Tough Mudder in Melbourne for January 2013. I'm excited and anxious to get started on my training this time, and I've got a couple of extra friends to do it with this time, which should make it even more fun than the one I did earlier this year!

I've been having a bit of a think about how I'm going to prepare this time around, and here's a few of my random thoughts:

1. Drop 10kg. I weighed a good 115kg the first time around, which was fine for all of the strength training that I do for the powerlifting and/or strongman comps I want to do later this year, but carrying the extra body fat sucks for a mud run, so I'm tackling this early on. I've got 7 months to drop 10kg (the more the better), which is more than enough time. Going low carb, high fat, high protein for this. Carbs to fuel workouts only.
2. Run more. I'm going to start with running once a week, either for a short sprint around the block a couple of times, or for a slower, 5-6km run/walk around my area. I'll build up to 2-3 runs a week.
3. Drop the volume in my weight lifting. Low volume. High intensity. For most exercises. I'll still hit high volume on my Kroc rows, because that keeps my upper-back strong for benching and deadlifting, my two favorite lifts. I'm not trying to get bigger. I just wanna get stronger.

That's it; drop some weight, run more and lift a little less. Simple.

Tough Mudder, Melbourne 2012

On Saturday, March 31 2012, I ran my, and Australia's, first Tough Mudder at Phillip Island.

What the Hell is it?

You can find out more on the website, but in brief, Tough Mudder is a, roughly, 20km obstacle course with obstacles ranging from ice baths to 4m high walls to electric wires designed to test your muscular endurance and mental strength.

So last October I sent out a message to my closest friends asking who wanted to do it with me. I ended up recruiting two mates, Gordon and Andrew.

Training

Although early on we had discussed training together for it, our schedules clashed a lot, so we ended up mostly training separately.

How did I train for it? Mostly strength training; I've been on Wendler's 5/3/1 for about 12 months now, so all I changed up was adding in a lot more upper-body assistance work, in the way of rows, pull-ups, lat pulldowns and high-rep push presses, to help with pull-ups and endurance.

I relied on my endurance and running/sprinting ability from 16 years of basketball to get me through the running, although this didn't work very well. I'm good a short distance sprints, but not long distance running.

Injury

Six days before, the three of us, accompanied by our wonderful partners, did an obstacle course out in Gembrook. On the first obstacle, a rope net, my left foot got caught and I twisted it. It hurt a lot! I jumped up and down on it a few times, felt the pain setting in, and in my stubborn ways, decided to keep going. I went to a physio during the week, who told me I had pulled some of the tendons in my ankle on the inner side, instead of the usual outer. She strapped up my foot, told me to go easy on it and sent me on my way. I decided that, even if I wasn't going to be able to run, I would, at least, go down and start the thing. After all, I paid for it, dammit!

Pre-game Nutrition

The night before the big day, I ate a decent meal (from the advice in this article), prepared by my lovely girlfriend, consisting of a t-bone steak, leafy green vegetables and a lot of a sweet potato. This worked out spectacularly; I had a lot of energy throughout almost the entire thing, with exception to the last few kilometers, for which I relied on the bananas provided by Tough Mudder staff.

Before the Start

My girlfriend and I had tickets to see Avenue Q on Friday night, so we didn't leave Melbourne until about 10:30pm, and after a few stops on the way, we arrived at Phillip Island to the house we were staying at, which Andrew had organised, at about 1:30am.

Five hours later, we all woke up, suited up and headed off.

As soon as we parked our cars, we had to walk for a good ten minutes to get to the entrance, which meant we were cutting it pretty close because it was almost 8am, which was my designated start time. Luckily, registration was super quick, as was the bag drop. I quickly jumped into the back of the pack as they were counting down from 10 and headed off. Due to a bit of a mix up, I started earlier than Andrew and Gordon, who ended up sneaking into the 8:15am pack.

The Obstacles

I'm not going to go through all of the obstacles or every bit of my experience, so I'll just outline the favorite and not-so-favorite obstacles.

The 4 metre high Berlin Walls were a lot easier than I thought they were going to be. There was a little edge to get your feet onto, which was more than enough for me to launch myself from, grab the top of wall and pull myself up and over. However, it was good to see teams helping out others, and I stuck around at one of the walls to help up the last members of a couple of teams who couldn't get up by themselves.

The pinnacle of team work, however, was the tight rope net we had to crawl under. Three teams and a couple of lone rangers (myself included, as I hadn't met up with Gordon and Andrew yet) all grouped together to completely annihilate this obstacle.

The ice bath was my downfall. My right calf muscle cramped up as soon as I tried to get out and my left ankle started to ache a lot even when I just walked on it. And this was only at about the 5km mark. I thought I was done. If I couldn't even walk without it hurting, how was I making it through another 15km of this? After a couple of kms of walking, the pain went down enough (or did the pain in the rest of my body go up?) and I decided to keep going.

The mud crawls, with barbed wires a few inches above me, scraped up my knees a lot. The mud was mixed with some kind of gravel, although this seemed necessary as the mud was stubborn and impossible to push yourself off of. Soon after this point, we stopped to stretch out our legs a bit, and Gordon decided to lean on a fence. Turns out it was an electric fence. Good work, Gordon!

By the time I reached the hay bales (a little over half-way through), both of my calves were cramping, as were my adductors. A lot of other people around were suffering from muscle cramps too by this point.

The mile of mud. If ever there was something to tire out my legs and mid-section, this was it. By the time I got out of this, walking out of mud felt like floating on air.

Everest. A quarter pipe that made the Berlin Walls look like a warmup. My first two attempts at this were in the middle of the pack, where the grass was quite muddy. When attempting to push off with my left foot to get a hand onto the top, I slipped and face-planted instead. Oops! My third attempt was on one of the ends, where the grass was dry. And it was a success!

Last but not least; electro shock. I shat myself coming up to this, because I didn't know how much it was going to hurt and I couldn't see any gaps to minimize the number of wires I would hit. So I just ran through it and got zapped what felt like a dozen times and had my muscles flailing all over the place, without any say from me.

The End... Nearly

As soon as I crossed the finish line, with a hurt left ankle, muscle cramps, a giant blister on my right foot, scratched up knees, some gashes on my arms and a whole lot of mud on my clothes, I shook hands with the MC at the end, grabbed my free beer, which I necked in about ten seconds, grabbed my head-band and t-shirt, let my girlfriend take a few pictures and then headed for the nearest patch of grass to fall over and die.

After waiting for over an hour to get my backpack, my girlfriend and I finally made our way to the car. Or, at least, we tried to. We got lost! All I wanted to do was take my shoes off, unstrap my left ankle and relax! It took us about half an hour of walking around to find it, and with my backpack on my back the entire time, there wasn't a single part of my body that didn't have something to say.

Recovery

Back at the house, Andrew, Gordon and myself were dead tired. We had our long-awaited showers (separately, of course) and let the recovery begin. Our girlfriends all did wonderful jobs looking after the three of us, and we wouldn't have made it through the rest of the Saturday or Sunday without them doing things for us, and shopping for lunch and dinner for everyone.

For me, recovery food that night consisted of a bowl of chunky soup (provided free by Tough Mudder), a pack of Oreos, an iced coffee Big M, chicken, bread and a shitload of water.

Next Year?

Would I do it again next year if they come back to Melbourne? Absolutely. As much as it hurt, I really want to do it again with a healthy ankle, just to see how much better I could do. It also made me realise how fun trail running is compared to road running.

And that's it! That's my Tough Mudder 2012 report. I can't wait to do it again! Now I'm off to take more fish oil and stretch my damn calves before my lunch break is over...