My first Park Run.....

I was up in the North West for a family wedding this weekend and had planned to go for a little jog in the morning before the big event. However; the night before my brother in law who is an avid fan of the Park Run in London had researched and found a Park Run taking place on the morning just 10 minutes drive from the hotel.

Perfect - a chance to try a 5km and actually have it timed :-)

The group were super friendly and the course was round a really nice lake (Delamere) and I managed to come 3rd out of 146 in a PB time of 18 minutes and 30 seconds.

It was well organised and has made me want to do the Park Runs in London.....

Tough Mudder

During a training session my trainer the topic of the Tough Mudder came up. Tough Mudder is an 11.5 mile run through mud, uneven terrain with a total of 21 obstacles along the way. It is marketed as “probably the toughest event on the planet”.  My trainer suggested that we consider entering together as we would make a good team to get through it as he clearly was very physically strong and I had stamina to keep going along the running part of the event. I thought why not…so we signed up. Only after doing this did I research the actual obstacles that would be in there and discovered it involved fire, ice baths, 15 foot walls and electricity. Shit the bed! What had I got myself into?! Training wise we were fit enough to do it (him especially) but I was very much bothered by having to crawl and run through water whilst getting electric shocks and signing a form actually called “death waiver” prior to being allowed to collect your race number. The night before the event I was extremely nervous and haven’t felt like that since the night before my first half marathon (the Great North Run) 7 years ago back in 2006. It was an early start to drive to the location just south of London but as the morning went on I started to relax a (very) little. Upon arrival at the event the atmosphere was electric…a sign of things to come. I relaxed a little during the warm up but then was a somewhat worried when I struggled to get over the warm up wall before the start….how the fuck was I going to make it over the real obstacles? What kept me going was the real sense of comradery at the start line and that everyone was really in the event to help each other get through it. If need be someone would need to push me over each obstacle (i.e. my trainer!) Once we were underway I relaxed and the first obstacles were not as bad as I had been expecting and I was enjoying climbing walls, crawling through mud under barbed wire, jumping into pools of water from a height and crawling under tanks and in tunnels. One I hadn’t been so worried about was the “funky monkey”. Monkey bars – how hard could that be…I used to love them as a child. Problem being that I hadn’t actually done them since childhood. I made it about half way across when I made the grave error of holding onto the bar with both hands. I knew there was no way out and hung there for a few seconds like Reverend Scott at the end of The Poseidon Adventure and then let go falling into another pool of murky water. The only one I found amazingly tough physically was where we needed to carry a log between us for what felt like a mile but was in fact probably about 500m! Before you knew it we arrived at the “electric eel” obstacle. It was a shallow pool about 15 metres long that had electric cables hanging above it. Essentially you had to move on your belly through the pool trying to avoid the cables. I quickly found out that I was not good at this and second by second I seemed to be getting shocked making my language progressively worse as I moved each inch. Apparently quite amusing to hear according to my trainer! Making it through I was relieved and continued to enjoy the other things in our path. Not long later we made it to the final one just at the finish line….electro shock therapy. More electricity?! I had to stop to gather my thoughts before running through the barrage of cables that stood between me and the end. Egged on by the crowd I made a run for it and again experienced shocks that I would not want to repeat but it was worth it…I was at the end and was given my Tough Mudder headband and a pint of Strongbow. Despite being so nervous before the event I thoroughly enjoyed it and am pleased as punch to have done it. Perhaps a career in the army is not out of the question should things in the travel industry go wrong?! Michael = one tough fairy and I have the coveted orange headband to prove it!

Some pics below: