Insanity…..yup, pretty much.

Last night, Kenny and I had our first brush with Shaun T and his band of merry mentalists!  45 minutes of high intensity max interval training.  HINT: the warm up was hard enough. 

It starts with a 5 minute warm up consisting of jogging on the spot, kicking your own arse, power squats, and a few other moves including what I like to call “groove zombie”.  It steps up from a slow pace, to a fast past via moderate.  No rest.  Sounds all good so far.  After a few minutes of stretching and a 30 second water break you are basically thrown into a pit of sweaty despair as you jump, thrust, push, leap and shimmy through a circuit of 4 sets of exercises at a minute each, with no rest, followed by a brief 30 second water break and straight back into the next 4 sets….at an increased intensity!  We were failing by the end, giving up 10 or 15 seconds from the end of each set and doing as much as we could of the next before literally grinding to a halt.  We persevered though and got to the end….. soaked, in my case…. sunburn red in Kenny’s, but both totally done in.  After that we watched the Muppets before bed time….. pain and stiffness had already began to settle in.

Insanity – Hover shoes optional

I am sat here now with stiffness in the following places:  My ass cheeks, my thighs (front and back), my calf’s, my lower back, my lats, my delts and my traps.  What’s insane about Insanity is that we have to do it all again tonight, while already being as stiff as Jimmy Savile in an orphanage!

Time to part with your MONEY!!!

Right folks, I know this is very short notice, but as my organisational skills are second to…..well, just about everybody, it’s amazing that I remembered about it at all!

Enough of the guff, then and on to the charity.  I went vanilla here and chose Cancer Research UK, but to hell with it!  Who doesn’t know somebody effected by cancer in some way?  So get your wallets and purses out and click on the link below!

https://www.justgiving.com/BrentDeltaToughMudders

ROCK!!

TRX Trix

After reading a training plan a few months ago from my new hero Moustache Man, I started looking into suspension training for Tough Mudder prep.  I have kind of skirted around the fact that I need to actually follow this plan, though realistically I’m kind of ahead of it anyway, but I need to get trucking with it!  I digress…

It was only after I looked into what suspension (or swing set) training was, that I realised that Lauren was doing it in classes all along under the guise of TRX!  What a dumbass!  It was time to try this out.  My gym ran TRX classes about twice a week so I got Lauren to book us in.  I wasn’t too sure of what to expect…. but under no circumstances do I underestimate a class that requires coaching for beginners again! 

We started off with a ‘warm up’.  Let the TRX take your weight and do some side lunges….yeah, fine….whatevs.  Have you ever seen Clash of the Titans?  Either incarnation…. the bits where Medusa’s head turns shit to stone, that was my legs!  The WARM UP had every major muscle (and some that I didn’t know about) in my lower body going into a brittle stone like cramp, which was just NOT going away!

Save your legs… don’t use them!

I soldiered on with the upper body work, which was really good, the beauty being that you can make it as hard as you want by changing your lean angle.  I am not going to lie, it was hard going, and I suffered for days afterwards, even if I did keep that little nugget to myself.  The actual embarrassment came with needing a wazz!  I had to leave the class to go to the toilet…with Lauren, her friend and her friends mum thinking that I was bailing because I couldn’t handle it.  It was just a coincidence that it was while we were doing leg work!  Honest Guv! 

Pain was the only thing my body would allow me to experience for the next 3 -4 days.  The only time my muscles have felt more pain was after my Kung Fu lesson at the Shaolin Temple.  Despite all of that, I couldn’t stop singing the praises of the TRX system.  It kind of blew my mind that you could get such a good workout from a few strops!  So I bought one!  I haven’t yet managed to emulate that pain again (why the hell would I), but it really is a great system.  It comes bundled with a basic circuit DVD and booklet which shows you the major moves for the major muscle groups.

Unfortunately, this comes at a price…. at a lofty £204 for TRX, a door anchor (sold separately – annoyingly) and delivery, it could almost put you off.  Look at it this way though, how much would you spend on benches, weights, pulley machines, etc. when TRX can do all of this AND take up no more room than a medium chicken?  Winner winner, I say!

Just need to use it now….

The ‘Final’ Map

The map for the Tough Mudder North West has been updated, and unless the Mystery Obstacle is Nettles to Nipples (where exactly they would come from in mid November is a mystery in itself), then I think I can take the Doc leaves out of cryogenic stasis and stick them in the compost. It’s a shame really, because, as sadistic as it sounds, I was kind of looking forward to that.

Click for Map

The next question is…..what the hell do they have in mind for it?  My money is on Rhino Slapping!

Rest in Peace

I would like to take this opportunity to offer my deepest sympathies to the victims and and families of the Aurora, Colorado cinema massacre.
In particular Alexander C. Teves and Jesse Childress, who it has emerged were fello Tough Mudders. Keep on doing….

Kettlebells….Hoooooo!!!

I have, since my first run in with kettlebells, been a big advocate.  I knew of the benefits and I knew they were rock!  That being said it has been quite a while since I have done a proper kettlebell circuit.  Last night, that changed….a bit.  I went to Freddie’s expecting Kenny and Richard to join me….they bailed. 

When I got in though, there was a circuit being run by a few of the contractors on the rig.  It looked pretty nails.  The main man, Gav, is a mixed martial artist and their circuit reflected that.  He has a fight coming up on September 1st, but he is a week behind in his training, so he will be running this circuit every night.  I may have to get involved!  Vomit to the max!

Arm failure = large dentist bill

I decided just to stick to the kettlebells though, and after my first sets, I remembered why I knew they worked.  I had already worked up a sweat and was starting to peck…. just how I like it!  I feel pretty good for it today, not overly stiff, but I feel like I’ve had a workout.  So today then, I make a commitment – when I am at home I WILL USE MY GYM CARD!  Banks o Dee, my local gym, runs Kettlebell and TRX (suspension training) mixed classes.  My good lady took me along to a TRX class a few weeks ago…..pain followed, as did walking like King Kong had multiplied and gang raped me, but it was GOOD!  These things must continue!

Squeal Piggy!

I think I work better in the cold…

Had my first gym session of this trip offshore last night….and I am ashamed to say, it was a poor attempt!

When I got into the gym it was already jam-packed, only an exercise bike free.  Nothing much I can do about that.  So I jumped on and fired out a reasonable fast 4k.  As I started reaching that point, there were a few things running through my mind – “why did I leave my water bottle at home, with my headphones, why are there no fans blowing me, why am I sweating more than Marlon Brando in a spin class and why did I take helium instead of air?”.

He could have been a contender, if it wasn’t for those pesky Double Bacon Cheeseburgers!

The first two questions are easily answered, I’m an idiot. 

Just then one of the treadmills freed up and I quickly jumped on, and only then was the answer to the third and fourth questions apparent, some fuck-wit had broken the fan, so it no longer had the ability to oscillate.  I just thought I would man up and crack on with my run.  The plan for this trip WAS to run no less than 7k and try for a few 12k’s instead of 5 and 10, well that went straight out the window.  As the run progressed at a decent pace, the temperature increase I was experiencing felt exponentially greater.  I was soaked in sweat from head to toe, but my mouth was drier than the Atacama desert.  Perhaps a similar sensation to running through Hell.

You would think that would be good training for running through fire, but fire will be a welcome sight in November!

The experience was….. uncomfortable to say the least, and when my nips started to chafe, I felt that enough was enough.  I called an end to my suffering at about 4.5k…. I felt like shit, now I feel even worse because Ken Dawg went in and threw a 5k in my face.  Tonight… I must break him!

Baker Hughes 10k

Well, my short-lived ‘Hells yeah, let’s get back into blogging’ even has me disappointed.  I just lack something that is essential…… giving a fuck.  Tough Mudder, however, is steadily approaching and I REALLY need to step my game up.  One or 2 runs a week will NOT cut the mustard.  This time, though, no promises….I will train, but I can’t guarantee blogging.

So….the Baker Hughes 10k was on May 20th.  My completion time was a small improvement on my Edinburgh run, but it could have been better.  58 minutes is still respectable for me I feel, and I shaved 5 minutes off of my official Edinburgh run in October ’11.  Besides this, and not that I am trying to make excuses, but I did slow my pace down so the KenDawg could keep up.  The inevitable did happen….. Kenny flagged at about the 5k mark and had to stop, that was time to step my pace up.  So I slowly pulled away from him, but only finished about 3 minutes ahead of him, so he done well for having trained twice for it!

All in all it was a fairly easy run and I have done a few 10k’s since and I am finding the distance quite easy now.  In the next few weeks I will be trying to progress beyond this in my normal runs, working up to 20k for the November deadline!

Watch this space……

….but don’t bank on regular updates!

THE New inspiration in my Trials!

Hello team, so yeah, I have been a lazy blogger.  In all honesty it has a lot to do with just getting it done and not really having too much to write about.  In the next day or 2 I will have a good bit to put down here, but I’m pressed for time now (it’s home time).

This blog serves one purpose only, to show you the man who, if my motivation HAD dropped off, would send it sky rocketing again.  He is a 6 time Tough Mudder vet…..and he is a real man (in the old school 70’s sense of the phrase).  He is Moustache Man, and this is him training – Click Here.

Peace!

Day 15

Well, allow me to begin with this, it was a slow start to the programme when I got home from offshore….i basically drank until Monday…..then tried a 10k.
The route I was running was from my flat and I worked the distance of the route on endomondo so I got it bang on 10k.  The run was not an easy one.  Half of it was down the coast road to Torry (for those of you that know the area).  There is no footpath and the speed limit is 60mph.  Every time I heard the revving of a car, or the rumble of a lorry, I would shit myself and jump onto the grassy verge, running squint until the danger had passed.  The stupid thing being that I was probably more likely to get an injury that way! 

Anyway, it was a very hilly run, and was pretty hard work.  By the time I got home, I should have been at 10k….but I was only 9.77k due taking a wrong turn…..oops! 58minutes odd.  Had I not been drinking all weekend before that i.could probably have shaved a few minutes off that.