I never saw this one coming. If I had, I don’t think I would have been so keen to start on this path to getting fit.
“I see you’re doing really well with your exercise stuff”, he said. “So how about joining our Tough Mudder team?”, he said.
and the craziest part about it is, I didn’t say “no”.
the marathon has not even been run yet
a lot of thought has been given in recent times, to the matter of what happens after the marathon. It’s only 9 weeks away, and I don’t want to find myself in a motivation vacuum, leaking momentum and plunging headlong back down the slippery slidey slope.
so much has been gained, so much could potentially be lost.
my thinking turned to ultra marathons – 50km, 100km races, many in the form of “cross country” rather than road running.
I’d get a few marathons under my belt, then think about an ultra.
Also on the radar was to re-focus on shedding fat, building lean muscle and improving all round strength and fitness.
it all became as clear as mud
I hadn’t committed to any clear course of action – that’s really the cause of what happened next. There was a void crying out to be filled.
There had been rumblings about an event called “Western Muddrush”. I was giving some thought to being a part of a team.
At the same time, my Facebook news feed has been filled with people “liking” a page/event called “Tough Mudder”. I’d looked at videos, I’d dismissed it as completely mental and way way waaaaay out of my league.
Then I got the private message, innocently enquiring if I wanted to join a team of other middle-aged males in this absolutely ridiculous race.
Mud, ice cold water, monkey bars, cargo nets and 10,000 volts of electric shock therapy… yeah that sounds like a sensible way to spend a Saturday or Sunday. NOT!
and yet it was so so tempting
18 months ago, the idea of running a marathon seemed beyond belief. I couldn’t run 10 metres let alone 42.2km.
I still haven’t run 42.2km but I’ve rowed it, I’ve run 10+km many many many times, I’ve run the half marathon distance (within a km or so anyway) a few times, and at the time of writing I am less than 24 hours away from a 22.5km training run.
I have absolute confidence that I can complete a marathon – even if it takes all day (though in all likelihood, it’s probably going to be between 6 and 6.5 hours)
So, if I can completely turn around a lifetime of hating running, a lifetime of believing that any form of running was beyond me, then surely the same principles can be applied to a 21km obstacle course designed by the SAS, right?
I have 6 months…
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