World’s Toughest Mudder part 1: The Training

The preparation for these races started the Monday after WTM 2014. I saw “The Cliff” obstacle and it grabbed me. I want to do that sooooooo bad! I checked in on the competition all day and woke up to video of the sandstorm. This is epic, I have to do this event. I spent December thinking of a plan of what I would need to do training wise, gear wise and goal wise to complete these epic races. I asked for gear I knew I would need for Christmas. Some of it I haven’t touched and is in my bag ready to go. I checked what lap times would have to be for different mileage goals. I picked out exercises that I thought to be the most beneficial and kept track of them in a log. I set goals for a majority of them including 10,000 pull-ups for the year, 1,000 miles run, 20,000 situps, and most important 275 miles raced. I used races as my training. It is a lot easier to go out and race to get your long runs in than to go out for a 26 mile training run. I knew would have to find races with big steep hills to train for Killington  and it could only help me in WTM. I searched all kinds of races and put together a mock schedule for the year leaving some to be determined based on how I felt at different times of the year. I decided on a race a month in hopes I would not get burned out. Also so I could gradually build throughout the year hoping to avoid injury. The same way I try to build my clients a little bit harder each time for nice sustained growth. I also would change the way I lift. Add more body weight exercises less strength making my whole body used to enduring whatever I throw at it. Notice that I still did all types of training because in OCR you have to use everything. I started doing challenges every month with Britt and Mike. They started off simple (at least they seem so now). 300 burpees in a row which as the year went on kept going up 400, 500, 600 till in August Mike and I did 1,000 it took 1:35:20. We did 100 burpee pull-ups which I thought was just going to be miserable, but ended up being 14 min and not that bad. This became a common theme over the year as well. My mental make up was being forged to take on whatever is in my way and just get it done. Britt and I did a mile combined of army crawls. We would alternate going back and forth on 4 mats till a mile was done. 110 times, it took an hour and 10 min and was probably the toughest challenge we did. We set out to lunge popular path’s in Wilmington completing smith creek and eventually the Loop. We did a crazy trip around the loop that included Army crawls, burpees, trudging through the ocean, situps, pushups, lunges and broad jumps on a beautiful day in July with Aimee the third person of the Wilmington Triple Threat. I completed two miles of a 75lb bucket carry it took an hour and eight mins. To get used to training at weird hours and running at night I would go for runs on the beach at 9-10pm and finish at 11pm-1am. Let’s just say you get some weird looks when everybody else is on vacation taking a leisurely stroll and you’re pounding out the miles. Mike and I completed an overnight deck of cards workout that featured about 3,600 reps it took us 6 hours. There were constant other little challenges I would give myself in a workout or just in daily life. One day last February I went for a run on the beach then afterwards jumped in the ocean. The air temp was about 60 but windy and I have no clue what the water temp was but it felt colder than any arctic enema I have experienced at tough mudder. There was also an older couple walking by as I did this just shaking their heads. Oh the thoughts they must have been thinking. As I write this I realize all of this sounds crazy. Maybe I didn’t have to do all of these things to succeed at WTM or maybe it wasn’t enough and I should have done more. I never got to go running in my wetsuit. I guess you can’t be completely prepared for everything. Which I think adds to the experience.

Obviously I tried a lot of different workouts, but I also had some go to workouts that really helped me gain endurance.  One that helped me the most was the 1,000 rep upper body workout 50 pullups, 100 pushups, 100 situps, 50 pullups, 100 pushups, 100 situps, 50 pullups, 100 dips, 100 situps, 50 pullups, 100 dips, 100 situps and sometimes I would add 200 burpees at the end it would take about 1.5 hours. For the lower body I did a lot of long runs and high rep walking lunges. I also did a lot of single leg exercises to work on hip stabilization. Popular lower body workout would include 100 squats with 135lb, 100 deadlifts with 135lb, 10 4 mat army crawls, 50 box jumps, 50 on each leg single leg press with 250lb, half mile walking lunges, quarter-mile farmers walk, quarter-mile bucket carry it would take about 2 hours. In a typical workout I would look to do between 100-200 reps of the exercises I was doing. I would break training up in to two-week blocks with the first week being heavier on the lifting and the second heavier on the running. Typical weak Monday-upper body, Tuesday-run or lower body, Wednesday-upper, Thursday-run or lower, Friday-upper, Saturday-lower, Sunday-run. As the year progressed I was able to start adding in some two a days. One problem I had was I raced so much that tapering would break up my workouts a little bit. Looking back I wouldn’t change anything about my training. I really feel like I nailed it. I am amazed at what I can do and how far I’ve come in a year. I’ve learned something from every race and every workout. Giving me an amazing amount of knowledge in endurance sports and there is so much more to learn, but I feel confident that what I have learned will get me lap after lap.

I did have one set back which is not bad for a year of testing my limits. If you have been reading the racing recaps you know about the ice pick in the knee pain I had in the 50 miler. Well it was bad enough to get an appointment with a doctor. Her M.O. is to explore all other possibilities before surgery and deals with athletes to get them back to doing what they love. She didn’t think it was crazy what I had done or was about to do nor did she think I was crazy for wanting to run this kind of race on a messed up knee. She diagnosed me with quad tendonitis. My knee cap had risen slightly, but all my ligaments were in great condition. She gave me some higher strength anti inflammatories and scheduled a follow-up before the race. That was good news. We have a plan let’s do this. The next day I have a massage with Julie. She figures out my Sartorius and Rectus Femoris are extremely tight. After some of the worst pain I have felt (elbows to the middle of your thigh are not fun) my legs felt 75% better and I got to add to my plan lot’s of stretching. The next day I decided to test this great feeling I have and not even 20 steps into it the pain is back. A half mile in we are back to ice pick status. This began a pattern of emotional highs and lows. everyday I would think something I was doing was making it better and then nope not better at all. I tried everything I could think of ice, heat, stretching, light exercise, chiropractor(he just couldn’t help me. The injury was not bone related), Physical Therapy (This was an absolute joke and waste of an hour) and acupuncture(the jury is still out). Then I got another massage with Julie. I told her I didn’t care how painful if there was anything in there to get it out. That was the worst best decision. It couldn’t be more painful than last time, right? Let’s just say not even going to the happy place was working to get through the pain. After it was over aside from the bruising that took 7 days to go away the pain was way down. My muscles were back to normal but the ice pick pain was there anytime I fired the quad especially going down stairs. Back to the doctor. She reconfirmed nothing was wrong with the structure of the knee and the only damage I would do in the race would be making this process last 3-4 months instead of 4-6 weeks. She prescribed some more anti inflammatories to get through the race and scheduled a follow-up for after the race to make sure no more damage happened. Julie and this DR. were great and did everything they could to get me to the starting line healthy. 6 days before the race I decided to got for a 3-5 mile jog to see if the pain was bearable and if it would get worse. I started out with a big hitch in my giddy-up. It kept getting more and more painful. It’s going to be a long 24 hrs I thought. About a half mile from home a sharp pain with an intense burning hit me. I should stop. Home is just around the corner I can make it. Then it happened. The burning gradually went away and I felt nothing. Instead of turning for home I kept running testing to see if this is for real. I did sprints, high knees, buttkickers all without pain. Afterwards it was tight but no more Ice pick pain. A couple of days later going for a run there is still some pain like when the pain started in the 50 miler. Not terrible and not ice pick status but it’s there with every step. I guess that just means I have another obstacle.

It’s not the destination but the journey. I hope that is not true. I have been thinking about November 14, 2015 for a year. Always on my mind or in the back of it. I hope it is as epic as I have built it up to be, but the journey to this point has been truly awesome. I have been to the tops of many mountains to look out and feel on top of the world. I have learned what I can push myself through. Different kinds of pain, that voice in your head that says no and “the suck” I have gotten really good at “embracing the suck”. This has not just taught me how to push my body. Life just doesn’t suck. Problems kind of seem trivial(don’t get me wrong they are important and deserve attention). When something happens it kind of feels like ok what’s the next step to fix this and let’s get to work. The extra stuff and worry has just kind of gone away. Mentally it has made me appreciate the moment even more. I enjoy time with family more. I enjoy time at work more. I enjoy beautiful days, the beach, friends and just life more. On the other side if it is something that doesn’t enrich my life or the life of someone close to me I discard it. I have been surprised how people around me have been effected. Amina has shown interest in doing more OCR’s including Tough Mudder which she said she didn’t want to do again cause of the ice water. Cheese has really enjoyed these races. She was disappointed she wasn’t able to come to Atlanta especially after seeing all of the mud. The racing has made her realize she is pretty good at running and try harder at it. She runs the mile every other week in her after school program. She has gotten her time down to 9:08. So proud of her. A couple of weeks ago I came home and my little guy had set up his own obstacle course in the back yard and was running it over and over. There is a group who decided to do a Tough Mudder who have been on the fence for a while about it. These are all awesome things. All the support I have received has been overwhelming in a good way.

Here are the stats for the year so far:

355 hours working out

915 miles run 253 in a race

8,905 Pullups

11,803 Pushups

2,408 Squats

14,930 Situps

6,079 Burpees

8,364 Dips

1,575 Deadlifts

175 laps pushing the sled

389 mins carrying the bucket on incline 15 on the treadmill

317 times up a 20ft rope climb

14,462 Lunges

They hay is in the barn. I feel like I can do anything. I am so excited this is like my Disney World.

You can follow me during the race at these sites:

http://edge.raceresults360.com/rr360/race/gIiuN5/#/results::144668691082800        This will have how many laps I have done and times of those laps

https://toughmudder.com/events/worlds-toughest-mudder      Will have live video among other things, also on facebook

http://obstacleracingmedia.com/       also on facebook

http://www.mudrunguide.com/