New Tough Mudder Obstacle - 'The Ball Tearer'

After realising what my knee/leg pain was coming from (ITB syndrome) and doing a fair bit of research on it I discovered the best way of working this out was through the use of a foam roller. So, straight onto the web and soon ordered a neato roller from a local place for $30 bucks. I also looked at the following video which was hugely informative on how to use it.

Naturally my roller will take a few days to arrive, but I'd seen reference to using a soccer or volleyball as a 'make do' roller, and that I had - So on getting home last night I grabbed a ball, pumped it up a bit and started to experiment with the exercise.

Well, I'd chuckled when in the above video the presenter indicated that you could "feel free to scream at any point".... But my chuckling stopped in the first 10 seconds. OH MY GOD!!!!! The pain through the thigh was excruciating and it wasn't long before I was regarding this exercise and piece of the equipment as the first 'obstacle' in my TM journey - which I will forever now refer to "The Ball Tearer"....

I was literally crying out in pain at some points of that exercise, but I knew it was the right thing to keep doing it. When I played with the other leg the pain was nowhere near as bad so I knew it was the right thing, but geez.... This is going to be a brutal part of my training regime.

I guess therefore that these exercises are going to have two benefits for the upcoing Mudder - Both improving my leg but also increasing my pain threshold!!!

Pain & loathing

The increased exercise of the last couple of months has inevitably caused a few irks and niggles. Some sore muscles here, a tweaked joint there... but nothing that felt that debilitating. Just the body sorting itself out and getting used to a new routine.

On Saturday I did a 13km jog on the local trails and at about the 8km mark I noticed that might right knee was getting pretty painful. Slowed to a walk and stretched it out, then began running again only to have it become much more severe.... Crap. Managed to walk and then slowly ease into a very slow jog for the remainder.

I rested up that day, then spent the day at the beach on Sunday which I felt helped it a lot too.... It felt great again this morning (Monday) so at lunchtime we hit the oval again for a 4x1km circuit....

Well, after 1km I'd had it. The pain was back and with a vengeance. I bailed and ventured over to do some general strength work. Squats were ok, but lunges were impossible. Double crap....

After some research I've pretty much figured it out as an illotibial band injury - A pretty common injury for runners... And while it's a pain (literally) it's good to know there's a way through it. However, the first step is of course 'rest' and that's such a hard thing to do when you can see the Tough Mudder deadline creeping up on you. Yes, I know that arriving at the 1st of April injured is worse than arriving a little less prepared - but the compulsion to go out there and train is a hard one to shake...

So I'll be focusing on strength work, upper body especially, for the next few days while I try and get this knee under control. Might even squeeze in a proper massage to and a lot of self-massage and anti-inflammatories to see what we can do in the meantime. Fingers crossed... 

Grabbing Tough Mudder by the neck - (aka glove choice).

In between training (or sometimes, whilst procrastinating about training) my mind turns to equipment choice for the day...

Most of its decided: Kathmandu dri-fit top, cheap K-mart compression shorts with zip-pocketed shorts over the top (to carry ventolin, GU packs, etc), and my trustworthy Gel Trabucos. But one thing I've still been pondering is what gloves to wear.

I initially planned on getting a set of Nike Vapor Jets, as they'd been mentioned in the media here regarding AFL players and the criticism that they had TOO much grip to be fair. :)  Sounds perfect to me! But I soon realised that finding them in Australia was near impossible (they must have all been bought up by aspiring footy players...) or incredibly expensive. Scratch that idea then...

So while at my local hardware store yesterday I scrounged around and soon saw what looked like a really good option - A set of MadGrip ProPalmKnucklers.... These looked a little odd at first but as soon as I slipped one on they seemed perfect. Super grippy, tight fitting, and lots of breathable fabric on the back. In fact the only problem I could find was them was when I foolishly went to brush my hair from my face and discovered they were SO grippy they just proceeded to take big chunks out of my scalp!  - This will be remedied by chopping the finger-tips off.

And at $15 they were perfect for a cheapskate like me. 

Returning home I hit the internet and soon discovered it's a glove of choice for a lot of Tough Mudders, many of whom do the same thing and take the fingertips off.

Looking forward to trying these out this week - And it's raining right now so the timing's perfect for some wet monkey-bars :)

Training Evolution - yet another Tough Mudder program

After several weeks of being brutalised by our trainer's program we were literally begging for a new program. So weary were we of pyramid running programs and endless bridge walks that we ignored his maniacal laughter and warnings of 'this will be tougher' and were just desparate for something new and different...

And this weekend it arrived:

SESSION ONE

10-12 KM CONTINUOUS RUN/WALK

Use a Mixed terrain course, try to run the whole way but it is ok if the occasional walk is needed.  Does not need to be completed at a fast pace.

SESSION TWO

4 x 1km TIME TRIAL.

Complete each rep as fast as you can. Record your time and whatever time it takes, give yourself that amount of recovery before the next one. I.E 1:1 ratio.

SESSSION THREE

BODY WEIGHT/RUN

SPRINT 200M, COMPLETE 10 PUSH UPS, 10 BURPEES, 10 SIT UPS

Repeat 8 times and rest on a 1:1 RATIO.

***** REMEMBER to record all times so that you can see progress and push harder next session.

STRENGTH PROGRAM

(Should be completed 2-3 times per week, on same day or alternate days to running program)

FOR EXTRA WEIGHT- Wear a back pack that weighs between 5-10 KGS

Must be tightly fitted and firm across back.

SQUAT JUMPS

WALKING LUNGES

NEGATIVE CHIN UPS (Jump to hold chin above bar, lower your body as slow as possible and then let go and jump up again)

BRIDGE WALK AND PUSH UP

STEP UPS

MONKEY BAR SWINGS FORWARDS/BACKWARDS

AB crunch

Prone bridge

***PAIR these exercises together do maximum repetitions of each and give 2 minutes recovery between each set.

Do 3 sets of each pair. Record your repetitions.

To be honest, we were all a bit relieved to see it, and enthusiastic to give it a go. It looked good, and less 'tedious and painful' than the previous. But something dark lurked in the background.

Today we tried it - taking Session 3 as our starting point. It looked neat, short, tidy.. And indeed we finished the whole set in about 26 minutes. But heck - what an agonising 26 minutes it was. Amazing how something that looks so simple on paper could be so ridiculously painful.....  I can just hear our trainer chuckling to himself from here....

A baptism of water (and fire).

Another Sunday, another big training run for the team around Lysterfield...

Each fortnight we've been trying to up the distance a little bit more and push ourselves in terms of speed and distance. However, this weekend we had something extra planned...   As well as pushing ourselves a bit further we would also do some 'equipment testing' and 'experiential learning' by jumping in the lake, clothes on and everything, halfway through the jog!

That actually all got us quite excited about the run and was something we were, perhaps a bit foolishly, looking forward to. We took a different route (which I'll upload as a GPX soon as it's a good'un) and pretty soon we were at the lakeside beaches. No more procrastinating now. So, with only a brief pause to remove my hydration pack we charged into the water.....

First, rather thankfully, the water was surprisingly warm. OK - perhaps not the preparatory experience we needed, but it was much appreciated. The second surprise was how, with shoes on, swimming becomes much much harder. It almost becomes entirely an upper body exercise as it's almost impossible to kick properly with water-logged shoes. That really took me by surprise and I'm really glad I know that now, otherwise all that lap-swimming at the pool would be a bit misguided.. 

After a bit of splashing about and generally feeling a bit daft (and celebrating that fact!) we emerged like soggy cats and continued on our run. Here come the next surprise - I was expecting the biggest problem to be chafing of shirts or shorts - when actually I felt quite comfortable (perhaps thanks to the lycra/compression gear we were all wearing) - But what was actually the greatest challenge were those same water-logged shoes which, while still comfortable, now weighed an extra kilo each (or so it felt) and the next km or so became much harder to run. I can only imagine how much harder it will be with water + mud sticking to the shoes... 

Slowly we started to drain out and could run a bit more easily again so we continued on for the next few kms. We were almost foiled by some backburning activities in the park (which for a second there I thought might be an unexpected bonus in preparing for the fire obstacles!!), but the path we needed was open and allowed us to continue and finish the 13kms that made up the route today.

All up a great run - All of us moving a bit quicker, more comfortably, and feeling a lot less sore the next day - so it's definitely paying off.  Now to just find some electric fences, commercial freezers and swamplands and we'll be prepared for all the terrain! 

Interruptions and Opportunities

I'm sure it must be the case with most training programs that life rarely flows along smoothly but is filled with unplanned events, diversions and clashes. This has certainly been the case with Tough Mudder training with a beautifully crafted, balanced and well-rounded training program almost constantly having to be modified, tweaked and gaffa-taped together to work with an unpredictable lifestyle.

This week had me up in Brisbane for a couple of days which meant (a) skipping Monday evening's circuit training, and (b) missing two days of lunchtime workouts. However, it did present the opportunity to go for an early morning jog one morning along the beautiful Brisbane river - It's always nice to mix up some training with a different view, although it did slow me down somewhat as I occasionally pulled up the pace to take in the view! :) 

However, it's still all progressing well. Times on most of the jogging routines have been falling and while I'm the WORST person in the world at judging my own fitness level and whether I'm improving, I do seem to be feeling that some things are coming a bit easier: The boxing last night seemed more manageable and I was putting a lot more force in for a lot more time, and I even managed to eke out 100 push ups (on toes!) over an extended period of time on the weekend, which was certainly a first!

On other news, my wife has decided not to compete - However she will be there volunteering, so I'm sure she'll enjoy that, especially if she's on one of the more 'painful' stations.

Hitting the Wall - Berlin or otherwise.

So late last week it seems all of us in the team 'hit the wall'. After a solid period of training we all started to suffer the toll of what we were doing to ourselves. People were off sick, needing days off from training, and I found myself trying to keep going but ending up in severe pain - Especially my calves. 

It certainly has reminded us of the importance of rest and listening to our bodies.

So with that in mind, and a bit of rest under our belts, 4 of us rocked up again at Lysterfield for the same training run on Sunday, with a few small extra bits to bring it up to 12km. It's a great course if you haven't run it before.... Scenic, with a nice mix of hills, trails and forest. We did it all in 1:37 - involving a few stops to allow the rest of the group to catch up. 

That afternoon I rested more in preparation for the pain to come on Monday....

Yes, our trainer was back... and ready to dish out more suffering. It consisted of three minute sets of push ups, squats, dead-ball squat/throws, lunges and burpees. And then followed by a high-intensity interval session involving various sprint lengths. Great workout, but agonising....

And then, given that Monday night we normally have circuit training anyway I joined in again, foolishly perhaps, only to be confronted by a lot more squats and lunges... Ouch. Every time I sit down or get up it's just agony right now. Going to the toilet is an exercise in balance and pain. 

On the bright side I think I am recovering more quickly from the pain, but will have to keep watching myself, especially the recently-damaged left leg. 

Tough Mudder certainly has been getting a lot of press around here during the last week or so too. Lots of newspaper articles, radio mentions and so on. 20,000 people are predicted already so it's certainly taken off, and we seem to always be bumping into people who are planning on doing it too...