Tough Mudder Training

Today I woke up, and it hit me. It’s less than two months until I will be taking on the toughest challenge of my entire life – the Tough Mudder. Ever since I signed up for this in early November 2012, I have been watching the approaching date with burgeoning dread and abject fear. But also with the knowledge that I am going to do everything in my power before the day comes to not be one of the unfortunate people that are carted off of the field by civilian ambulance crews, or found lying hypothermia-bound by the side of the ice dip. As soon as I signed up, I went onto the Tough Mudder obstacle page, and tailored my training around it. Here, if you’re interested, is my game plan.

Running

 

A staple of course! The Tough Mudder is roughly 20 kilometres long, and if you don’t know how to run long distance, it’s going to take you a loooong time. The recommendation for these types of obstacles courses is that you are able to run at least 5 kilometres nonstop. As this is longer than a lot of them, I decided I wanted to be able to run at least 10 kilometres nonstop just to try and increase my stamina and heart strength. I am doing all my runs on trails of varying muddiness, including that sucking kind of mud that seriously saps your strength. I also like to run on both gradual and steep inclines. In my opinion, running on a treadmill or even a pavement is not going to be close to preparing you for the Tough Mudder’s treacherous trails! I have been slipping in random sprints and bench dashes so that I am never comfortably thud-thud-thudding along. My favourite activity to break the monotony of an easy stretch of training run is to act along to the words of DJ Caspar’s ‘Cha-cha slide’. This is the ultimate in stamina tests, and it’s funny as hell to see people cautiously eyeballing you as you run past madly waving your hands in the air!

Climbing

 

Well, this is an obstacle course! That means there are going to be plenty of nets, ropes, frames and monkey bars to hoist yourself up or along. My first thought was that I seriously needed to increase my arm strength! I started going to the Park Gyms around North London, which are amazing sets of gym machines provided completely free in local parks by the council. These Park Gyms have arm and leg conditioning machines, pull up bars, bikes, sit up benches and stretch bars. If I have an hour to spare, I head here to use the machines. I also found a high set of monkey bars to practice on, which I tackled in all weathers from bright sunshine to blizzard conditions. Apparently in the Tough Mudder they grease the bars to amp up the challenge, so I wanted to be prepared for this.

Two to three times a week, I head off to outdoor Parkour classes with the London branch of Parkour Generations. As well as being all about the varying ways to efficiently manoeuvre over obstacles in your path, their conditioning sessions are absolutely killer. Without a doubt these classes have aided me in developing strength and agility within the real world (as opposed to an indoor gym environment).

Swimming

Embarrassingly, I had not swum for 14 years when I signed up to this challenge. Tough Mudder does have swimming sections. Although they provide an alternative for the non swimmers out there, I want to enter into the full experience. So I bought myself a new swimming costume online, and headed over to my local pool! Luckily, my body seemed to remember a little from before, so after a clumsy start and a few mouthfuls of water I got my bearings in the water. Tough Mudder requires you to swim through rivers, so stamina in the water is definitely needed! To this end, I built myself up to swim around with no stops to rest. I was using a low energy swimming stroke, the breast stroke. Now I can swim without resting for thirty minutes.

The cold water

 

Okay, so I’ve danced around it up until now. But the truth is that even at the start of summer, repeatedly dipping in and out of various bodies of water is going to be cold. For one thing, water takes a lot longer to warm and cool than air, so it is possible that it will retain the chill of the colder months. Then there is the notorious Artic Enema. This is essentially an ice bath that is kept at 1 degree Celsius and dyed with various colours. Halfway through, there is a board across with barbed wire across the top and an arrow pointing down. Yup, you have to go underneath the ice water. In preparation for this, I took my first trip down to the Parliament Hill Lido in early December last year for my first experience of cold water swimming. That day, along with a friend I had roped in for moral support, I trudged across the ice encrusted grass, changed into nothing but a swimming costume and a long sleeved skins top, and ventured out on the side of the frigid 5 degrees Celsius pool. Now I won’t go into the gory details of my first ice water adventure (unless someone requests specifically for it!), but suffice to say that it left me with numb toes, a resentful friend and no small amount of mental trauma. This is despite the fact that I didn’t even actually strike out to swim in the water! On my second venture into the freezing depths, I took with me a hardened ice swimmer contacted via the Outdoor Swimming Society Face book group. The pool temperature had dropped to 3 degrees Celsius, and I was essentially shamed into swimming as he was wearing only swimming trunks and couldn’t stand around to babysit me! That first strike out into the water took my breath away. Gasping for air, and flapping my arms, I lasted in the water about twenty seconds before I had to exit. Now, a few torturous visits later, I can swim a length in the water. Last time I even managed to dunk my head under – twice! To be very honest, this is not an enjoyable aspect of training for me! But each time I do it, it becomes slightly more bearable. I even completed a dip in the Scottish sea at Leven for the children’s charity Clic Sargent. I hope it will pay off on the day!

Mud training

I have done a few other mud runs, so this gives me an idea of the level of mud and cold involved. Now i'm going to times this by about ten! I have done a good proportion of training runs in Hampstead Heath in the pouring rain, which makes underfoot conditions much more treacherous and akin to the expected Tough Mudder conditions.  Now I have just attended my first muddy workout session in Ruislip forest with the Wild Forest Gym, and I plan to go back for more to get more mud training in. The Tough Mudder website actually suggests trying to run on a slippy indoor surface with two pieces of paper underneath your feet. This is just my opinion, but I don't think that is going to work! The only way to be truly prepared is to get out in the mud!

So this is my plan, and since I began formulating it in November I cannot believe how quickly the intervening months have flown by! But as they have passed, the training has been paying off. I feel stronger, more agile and more resilient to stress. Now, all I have to do is keep it up until May. Then I will see on the day itself if all the training has been enough to get me through my ultimate challenge.

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