Everyday Carry; A New Hobby

A few years ago I stumbled across a reddit thread in which a bunch of users detailed what they would do in the case of a zombie apocalypse. It was fascinating. Some of the detail that users went to was astonishing, and it got me thinking about how unprepared I was for any kind of disaster situation. Not that we experience a lot of natural disasters in Melbourne, let alone zombie apocalypses, but it's always good to be prepared for anything.

So, as you do when you read stuff about the impending zombie apocalypse, I went a bought a bunch of stuff; a big backpack (too big, of course), multi-tool, first-aid kit, various tools and containers etc... I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube about survival tips and techniques ("I'm Dave Canterbury with the Pathfinder School, and I thank you for your support") and read more and more stuff about bug-out bags and preparedness for various situations.

Eventually I came across the everyday carry (EDC) community. The basic premise behind EDC items are things you carry with you everyday (maybe for a particular period of time) in an effort to be prepared for particular situations; camping, hiking, work, school, holidays, etc...

Of course, I already had my own EDC, although without purposely having it; phone, keys, wallet, phone charger, bottle opener, water bottle, pen, USB drive, etc... all in my pockets or backpack, which I take with me almost everywhere.

Putting the usefulness of these tools aside, there was also a kind of aesthetic beauty attached to it, whether the owner was going for a tactical look, a smart and classy look or a vintage look.

So how bad is this new obsession? Let's just say it could be worse. A lot worse.

Since February I have bought four flashlights; a Fenix E05, a Petzl Tikka 2, a Fenix LD12 and a Klarus Mi X6. Who the hell needs to buy four flashlights in the space of 5 months? And there are two more flashlights that I'm eyeing off too; the CountyComm AAA copper flashlight and a Foursevens Mini ML. I guess I'll have to wait until later in the year, or even next year, for those. A titanium flashlight would be nice aswell...

I'm just glad Australia has some laws that make it tough for me to carry knives around for no reason, otherwise there would've been a few purchases from Spyderco too.

Multi-tools. I don't even know where to start with these. I'd love to buy a Leatherman Skeletool CX, or a regular Skeletool with a non-serrated knife if it still existed, to keep in my backpack, but they're stupidly expensive in Australia! I guess I'll stick with my Leatherman Fuse and Victorinox Spartan for now. I'm carrying a Pry Bar from Tofty on my keychain at the moment, but I'd love an Atwood tool, like a Weevil, except it's stupidly hard to get these from Peter Atwood's site, due to the timezone difference and how fast his batches sell out, and they are marked up a lot if you want to buy them from a third party.

And bags. At least I can justify buying bags because I carry one every day. That's a good enough reason, right? If I get the 5.11 MOAB 10, I can carry it to work every day, and also take it overseas as carry-on luggage, since it easily fits the size limitations. That's pretty doable for $100 AUD. Or I could get a GoRuck GR1, for nearly $300... Or maybe I should just settle on a REI Flash 18 for a much lower price tag.

Or maybe I should just get out now, before all of my money disappears...

Melbourne's Strongest Man 2013

Yesterday I competed in my first strongman competition at Definition 352 in Doncaster, Melbourne. It was a long day, with about 20 athletes competing across 4 men's divisions and 2 women's divisions.

I was one of 4 heavyweights.

Sled drag. Drag 100kg for 10m on a flat, deload 25kg, drag 15m up an incline, deload 25kg, drag 15m up an incline. I was a little worried about this one. When I trained for it, we dragged the 100kg up an incline aswell, and it was slooooow to move for all of us. Since they changed it to be flat for the heaviest weight, it made it a lot easier. Came 3rd.

Deadlifts. 75 seconds for biggest total tonnage. 3 regular bars loaded with 175kg, 200kg and 225kg. All the heavyweights opted to just rep out the lightest bar. These were supposed to be dead-stop deadlifts, but ended up being touch-n-go, which I'm not used to at all. I still managed 15 reps with the 175kg bar to take 3rd place.

2" Axle Clean and Press. 75 seconds AMRAP with 90kg, each rep cleaned. This was the event I felt the most prepared for, since I was doing reps on the axle every week, sometimes twice a week. In training, I managed 8 reps when I was fresh, and 6 reps when I was slightly fatigued, so I wanted 6 reps for this, and if I'd gotten it, I would've taken 2nd in the event. But the bar was a lot more slippery from all of the previous competitors, and lost concentration and dropped my last clean and ended up with 5 reps for equal 2nd place.

Medley. Prowler +100kg for 20m, 60kg keg carry for 20m, 200kg tire flip for 10m. The prowler was super fast, the keg carry wasn't too bad either, but man did my tire flips suck. I missed the first flip due to nerves, and had shit drops on 3 or 4 of my subsequent flips. Although I got a little practice with the tires, it wasn't enough and it cost me. Came 4th in this event.

Atlas stones. 75kg, 80kg, 101kg, 120kg, 130kg over a 1.2m bar in 75 seconds. I had done a bit of practice with these in the lead up, and a couple of weeks ago managed to get the 120kg stone over a 1m high bar without tacky, but man it gassed me. However this time I had tacky, which was my first time using it. My goal for this was to get the 120kg stone over the bar, and at least lap the 130kg stone. Well I got the 120kg stone over in epic, grindy fashion, but could only break the 130kg stone off the floor by mere centimetres. Came 3rd in this due to slower time.

Overall I came 3rd out of 4 heavyweights. I was the shortest and lightest heavyweight there, and the only one in his first competition, so I'm super happy with how I did, and I'm incredibly happy with how the competition was run. George Mariolis and the Definition 352 crew did a great job running, judging and scoring the competition and I'm proud to be associated with them!

A big thank you to my lovely girlfriend, Cherie, for supporting me for the past couple of months while I trained and ate as well as I could. Thanks to Definition 352 for putting on a good show, and thanks to my friends and family who showed up to support me!

I can't wait to do more competitions in the near future!

I'll upload some videos somewhere once I get them all together. They're all spanned across a couple of friends' phones.

Things Australia should steal from the US

Last year, Cherie and I went on a holiday to the US for nearly five weeks. I attempted to write a blog post detailing the entire trip, but once I got done writing up the first week, it was really long and I couldn't decide what to take out of it and I really couldn't be bothered proof-reading it again or writing equally long posts about the remaining four weeks, so I decided to scrap the idea, and instead opt for some shorter blog posts about the trip. This is one such post.

In those five weeks, we came across a lot of things I wish we had back here in Australia, or at least in Melbourne, in case other cities are smarter than mine.

Pedestrian Countdown Timers

We did a lot of walking and, despite initially being skeptical as to how useful it was going to be, it ended up being really handy. They need to make noise though; I don't remember exactly how many times it happened, but on more than one occasion, while out on my own, I almost missed the lights because I was looking in another direction.

Truck Stop Food

Breakfast burritos? 99 cent tacos? A seemingly endless selection of beef jerky? Drinks that are bigger than the size of my head? On our bus trip in the first week, there was nothing better than hitting the highway in the early morning with a cheap breakfast in-hand and a stash of meaty snacks to chew on.

Mexican Food Everywhere

The thing I liked about going into almost any restaurant was that there was always tacos on the menu. Sort of like the equivalent of our chicken parma. Except, you know, better.

Slow Cooked Meats, Better Sandwiches and Burgers, Sweet Potato Fries and Chicken Wings with Blue Cheese Sauce

Big Boy BBQ, in Caulfield, is the only decent place for slow cooked American-style meat in Melbourne, and it's awesome! We need more places like that. More Australians need to be into slow cooked meats. Slow cooked meats are better than a sausage in bread, and pulled pork tastes better in burgers than self-oiling rissoles from Woolies.

Speaking of which, the sandwiches and burgers here suck. The US loves their burgers. Whether it was in a restaurant in Chicago, a liquor store in Washington DC or an outlet mall in Nevada, the sandwiches and burgers were better than almost anything I've had here.

And they often came with sweet potato fries! We first had this (above) at Smashburger in St. George, Utah. Sweet potato fries are a golden idea and taste soooo much better than regular fries.

Now, ok. Sure. We have chicken wings here. But it's not the same. They're not cooked the same. They're not spiced the same (but we'll still call them Buffalo wings, anyway). And the blue cheese sauce is NOT blue cheese sauce.

Interstate Rail

On the east coast, we rode a lot of trains, with Amtrak, between New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington DC and Norwalk, and the longest train ride we had was 4 hours from Norwalk to DC. If I want to take the train to Adelaide, I'll be in transit for at least 10 hours, including lay-overs of anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes, and will pay a lot of money to do it, while it takes about 8 hours to just drive there, or 1 hour to fly there for about half the price.

Our interstate train system is craptastic!

Although, I've since heard that catching trains on the west coast is a very different experience.

That's about it! We're going back to the US later this year again, so I'll probably update this in a few months.

Move Around Vim Windows Less Annoyingly

On any given project at work, I will always end up opening 3-4 windows (and even more recently, the NERD Tree sidebar, which is a plugin I recommend everyone get) and I get sick of having to press Ctrl+W and then h, j, k or l to move to the next window. It's one of my most used key combinations and it needed to be shortened.

I wanted to just type Ctrl+[hjkl]. So I added this to my .vimrc:

nnoremap <C-h> <C-w>h
nnoremap <C-j> <C-w>j
nnoremap <C-k> <C-w>k
nnoremap <C-l> <C-w>l

And that's it. Easier window navigation with a quick vimrc addition!

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...

Lifting Heavy One Day a Week

Since moving out with Cherie and not having a car to drive to a gym, I haven't been able to lift weights much at all.

Every night, when I get home from work, there's a lot of housework that needs to get done; dishes need to be put away, laundry needs to get done, dinner needs cooking and eating, more dishes need washing, lunch the next day needs preparing.

There had to be a way to satiate my hunger to lift. It was eating me up. I was getting antsy about it; daydreaming about what lifts I would do the next time I could get a barbell in my hand. I was also feeling really lazy and getting a bit fatter, since I was still eating similar amounts of food. Spending an hour in the garage maxing my DB clean and press and then doing a bunch of DB rows, or some kettlebell work just wasn't hitting the right spot. And then I re-read this Dan John article.

From the article, I formulated a plan to use Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday as days to do something.

Saturday I lift weights, for 2-3 hours, or as long as I can before I'm sapped for energy. It's a basic squat/push/pull routine. Everything is heavy. Favorite exercises include front squats, strict presses, push presses, BTN push presses, barbell rows, regular deadlifts and snatch-grip deadlifts. I use Dan John's "rule of 10", and after 4-5 weeks, I've set a number of PRs on my front squat, push press and BTN push press.

Since I'm already playing basketball on Sunday nights, I've decided that day is sorted for now.

Wednesday is kettlebell night. No more than half an hour. I do clean and press ladders with my 20kg bell. Five ladders, working up to five rungs per ladder. Very short rests. If I feel like I still have some energy, I finish with sets of swings, with a few push-ups in between sets. That reminds me, I really need a heavier bell...

All other days are spent doing a little mobility work with my foam roller, and preparing food for the next day or two.

The bare minimum to keep me happy and still get a little stronger along the way!

My Run-in with Myki

Myki sucks. I had never had any issues using MetCards for ten years. So, despite having a good run with Myki for a few months without any issues, I was finally subjected to the clusterfuck that is Myki's complaint system.

I top up my Myki card with Myki Pass instead of Myki Money. I do this because it's a lot cheaper for me. So there I was, attempting to top up my Myki Pass with 170-something dollars for 4 weeks, with cash, when the machine stopped accepting my notes and took my $75, leaving me with a complaint receipt to take to Myki staff.

So I did that.

Since I was trying to top up at Southern Cross Station and there is a Myki office thing right there, I walked over and handed the receipt to them. The guy was very kind and helpful. Everything after that kinda sucked.

The short of it was, customer care asked for a bunch of details, told me to write down a case number, told me I had to keep the complaint receipt, left me without any way to get home (so I bought a trusty MetCard) and told me they'd get back to me in a couple of days.

A couple of days later I get a phone call.

They asked me for the same details I had given them when I lost my money and and they wanted a copy of the complaint receipt. I offered to read out the numbers on the receipt (as the guy at Southern Cross Station had done), but the woman said they had to see the original. WTF? I asked if a picture would suffice, because fuck having to send it to them in the mail and wait yet another couple of days. She said a picture would be ok, so I sent it immediately.

She called back a day later. I was then told that they would reimburse the money I lost (within the next 24 hours), but that they would put it on my card as Myki Money. But I didn't want Myki Money! I was trying to buy a Myki Pass because it works out cheaper for me in the long run!

Whatever. I just decided I was happy that I at least got something back.

Why do I have to keep the complaint receipt? After the guy who helped me at Southern Cross Station read out the numbers over the phone, why not just put those numbers into the case (or issue or ticket or whatever their system refers to it as)?

After they called me, part of verifying who I was was me telling them my phone number. They just called me! This is pointless and weak security.

I can't help but feel that 3-4 days is a long time to reimburse someone for money lost because their machine decided to not do its job.

Strength Quest Grading on July 22

A couple of weeks ago I went and did my Strength Quest grading at Definition 352 in Doncaster. Strength Quest is Australia's new system for strongman. The idea is that, to enter a competition, there will be a minimum grade required. You achieve your grade based on your performance in the yoke, log clean and press, deadlift and farmer's walk. I decided to attempt C grade as a heavyweight.

First up was the yoke walk. I needed to walk 300kg for 15m. Having only first walked a yoke two weeks before that, and with only 230kg, I knew this was going to be my hardest event, and it proved to be. Getting my first couple of steps sucked and I dropped it soon after. On the second pick, I finally got some momentum and moved about 7-8m before dropping it again. In the end, after a couple more drops, I stopped at 10.5m, saving my energy for the other events.

I would've liked to get the full 15m, but given that it was only my second time doing yoke walks, and I only needed 1.5m to get my grade, I was very happy with my result. I asked a couple of the other guys how to improve and I've got a few things to add to my training to get better now!

Next up was the log. I needed 100kg. I love pressing and I do all kinds of pressing multiple times a week, so this was an easy get. 100kg flew up!

By this point, it had been a few hours since I ate breakfast and I was starving, so I ate a peanut butter + jam sandwich. I swear it was the best damn sandwich I've ever had! This was also a good time to get a bit of foam rolling in.

The deadlift was next and 210kg was the target. I deadlift every week and have pulled 210kg many times before, so this was also an easy get.

Last was the farmer's walk. I needed to carry 100kg per hand for 25m. Again, having only done farmer's walks with proper farmer's bars two weeks before, I was a little worried about making the distance, but I was fine! Although I felt a little slow, I managed to walk the full 25m without needing to re-pick the weight, so I'm a lot more confident about this event now, and actually enjoyed it more than the first time around. A pair of farmer's bars are very high on the list to buy now.

I'm pretty confident that, with a bit of planning, I can hit the numbers for B grade by the end of the year.

One of the things I loved about the day was the amount of cheering everyone was doing. Everyone wanted everyone else to hit their numbers. Everyone gave everyone else advice on how to approach a tough event. Everyone congratulated everyone else when they hit a PR. Everyone was supportive of everyone else. And that's something I can get used to!

All up, it turned out to be an awesome experience. George Mariolis put on a great day at Definition 352 and I met a bunch of new people who were all super nice and very willing to talk about anything. I'm looking forward to more!

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.

Lifting Weights Away from Home

I recently spent around 10 days house sitting with my girlfriend, Cherie, for her brother-in-law's parents. Given that I usually lift weights at home and not at a gym, I wanted to take a couple of pieces of equipment with me so I could get some work done. I wasn't looking to break any new ground or anything, but I wanted to keep myself busy and not feel like I was being lazy.

The equipment I took with me:

• 20kg kettlebell
• Adjustable dumbbell with 40kg of plates (2x10kg, 4x5kg)
• FatGripz
• Chalk

The only thing I would change is bringing more plates. Last time I tried to press a 40kg dumbbell, without FatGripz, I nearly dropped it and left a dent in my dad's car which would've resulted in me getting a boot in the ass. This time I was pressing it with relative ease.

I wanted the workouts to be very simple:

• Heavy-ish, low volume, 1-2 exercises at most. Mostly technique work with the dumbbell.
• Hard conditioning. Just to gas myself given the low volume lifting.

Next time I would add some kind of bodyweight/gymnastics training to this.

Some of the workouts I did:

• Fat dumbbell snatch 4x2 @ 30kg. Fat dumbbell clean and press 4x1 @ 40kg. 40kg bear carries 3-5 sets of 100-150m.
• Fat dumbbell clean and press 6x3 @ 30kg, 4x1 @ 40kg. Bear carries as above.
• Fat dumbbell clean and press AMRAP sets at 60, 75 and 90 seconds. Bear carries as above.
• Turkish get-up 4x4 @ 20kg. Sprint 10 lengths of 20-30m, record time, repeat for 3-5 sets, etc...

This was a good opportunity to do some technique work for some strongman movements that I want to nail and don't usually prioritise at home. I hit all the reps I wanted to hit, and walked away feeling like I got some work done, and that's all I care about.

Attack of the Phone Scam?

Yesterday afternoon, my girlfriend, Cherie, and I walk into her home. Her dad was on the phone with his laptop in front of him. He's not the most computer savvy person in the world, so he asks us to help him with this person on the phone. I sit down at the laptop and take the phone. MSConfig is open (alarm bells start ringing), as is the "run program" box with "www.ammyy.com" typed in (ding ding ding).

"Hello?" No answer... "Hello?"

A man with a thick Indian accent finally speaks. "Hello, are you the manager of this laptop?" I respond, "No" The man repeats his question and I repeat my answer.

"Who are you? Where are you calling from?" Apparently he is from my Windows service provider (which I never got the name of) and apparently the laptop had made several attempts to access forbidden sites (which I never got the addresses of) and they needed to fix the problem for me.

"Ok, so what do you need me to do?"

After a bit of confusion on his part - apparently "all the programs are closed, I can only see the desktop" is a little confusing - he asks me to press the Window button and "R" at the same time. I then have to type "www.ammyy.com" and press Enter. I don't, of course, because I'm a critical thinking human being who knows that Microsoft don't have the resources to call the billions of end users that they have around the world to remove a virus, which their Microsoft Security Essentials product is supposed to take care of anyway, and certainly not via some non-Microsoft owned remote desktop software.

I Google the address, and quickly find out that the site hosts some kind of remote desktop software and that there are forums all over the internet talking about getting phone calls, having the same story spun to them, and attempting to coax the mark into downloading some software and some people even getting charged a small fee.

While stalling him, I hear him put me on mute a couple of times, I assume because he's annoyed that it's taken me a good five minutes just to press Enter.

He starts talking again. I hang up.

Cherie and I tell her dad that it's a scam and to hang up on him if he calls back, and we head out for a few minutes. When we return, her dad is on the phone with this guy again. Cherie grabs the phone.

"Hello, we have looked up the site that you asked us to go to and it's quite obviously a scam. Stop calling." She's pretty awesome like that. I would've preferred to mess around with him a little, but time is precious. The man responds with something along the lines of "I will call every day." Fine, whatever. The more time you spend failing to scam us is less time you spend successfully scamming others.

I'd always read about phone scams like this happening in other countries, but never in Australia.

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...