A few months ago while researching and gathering gear, I noticed that more and more women's fitness wear companies were making a lot of claims about how durable their clothing lines were and how they could stand up to "years of abuse." If you've read this blog before, you've probably guessed that I'm a bit rough on equipment. Growing up it always seemed like women's wear traded durability and functionality for style. While I'm all for style, I was hard pressed to find women's athletic clothing that wouldn't all but disintegrate under my normal usage. So now with many companies touting durability as one of their main selling points I figured what better place to do a little R&D than at World's Toughest Mudder, a 24 hour obstacle race in New Jersey in the middle of December. If the clothes could stand up to years of abuse, I wanted to see if they could withstand one day of mine.
Triple Aught Designs was the only company that stepped up to the plate and stood behind their product line. I knew TAD had stores in the Bay Area, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they were in fact, locally based in San Francisco. When I swung by their Dogpatch location for the annual sale, the store was jam packed with a very dedicated following that was lined halfway around the block. I would soon find out why TAD drew such a following.
Mike, the marketing director at TAD, supplied me with the Artemis merino wool hoodie to test out at World's Toughest Mudder. The first thing I noticed about the hoodie was how it fit me like a glove. Since I have an athletic build with broad shoulders, I usually have trouble finding women's clothing that fits well. The Artemis hoodie had enough inherent stretch in the fabric where it easily adapted to my shape. Next, I noticed the attention to detail evident in features such as the lay flat hood (which is great if you want to layer without looking like quasimodo) and the reinforced elbows. Both of these add to the functionality of the hoodie without taking away from its sleekness and stylishness.
The hoodie was warmer than expected for being as thin as it was and although not windproof, it did block more wind than expected. My first true test for the hoodie came while traveling to World's Toughest Mudder. In one day, I travelled 15 hours from California in to New Jersey, over 11 hours in air transit and four additional hours driving. Normally traveling for for this long and in this many indoor and outdoor climates would be pretty uncomfortable. As a testament to the Artemis, I didn't overheat or feel chilly throughout the whole 15 hours. It was then that the Artemis quickly became one of my new favorite hoodies.
As I completed my registration for World's, I emailed Mike to let him know how much I was beginning to like the Artemis and that I was a bit reluctant to race in it. He assured me that sometimes a little tough love is necessary.
Here I am wearing the Artemis registering for World's Toughest Mudder
The next day at the start of the race the temps were in the high 40s to low 30s. I wore a shorty wetsuit and two layers of compression clothing clothing. The Artemis hoodie and a windbreaker were packed in a dry bag in my backpack. After wading through the frigid waters of the second and third obstacles my hands and forearms were already tingly and starting to go numb.
I wore the Artemis from this point through the next 8 hours and 9 miles of the course. The hoodie made it through mud, dirt, grime, sand and more than 20 water obstacles. My core felt toasty and warm up until the last 4 obstacles which were back to back water submersion with no chance to warm up in between.
Once back at my tent, I took off my wet gear and laid it out in preparation to go back out on the course in the morning. During the night, temps dropped down to 24 degrees Fahrenheit with the windchill bringing it down to 16 degrees. By morning all of my wet gear had frozen solid.
In this pic are one of my wool socks, my wetsuit and the Artemis in the bottom right corner.
If my fingers and hands wouldn't have been numb from the cold, I could've happily thrown all of this in the shower to thaw it out and hopped back out on the course. Once the event was over, I packed up all the wet gear into plastic bags and headed back to the house. The one thing that I was bummed about was that I wouldn't be able to wear the Artemis for the flight back. Luckily the house had a washer and dryer. I threw in the Artemis covered in sand with the sleeves caked in mud, washed it on cold and hoped for the best. Afterward I laid it out on a rack to dry.
In the morning, I was happily surprised to find the Artemis dry and looking and feeling like new. I did have another very good quality merino wool hoodie with me, but throughout the weekend it was primarily used as a pillow and only worn when the Artemis was frozen.
Here's the Artemis before the flight back home, less than 24 hours after the race. One of these days I'll learn not to race with my carry on bag.
Throughout the weekend, the Artemis proved itself time and time again. The more I wear it, the comfier it gets. Midway through the race I decided that if the mud and stains didn't come out of the hoodie, I would gladly buy another one to replace it. The Artemis though, easily stood withstanding a day of my abuse and then some, and came up smiling. Bottom line, the Artemis hoodie is well worth the money.
"World's Toughest Mudder. It's the finals for the Tough Mudder Series. It's a 10 mile course with 30 obstacles. We have 24 hours to complete it as many times as we can."
"Where's it at?"
"In New Jersey. In the middle of December."
"Do you know anyone else that'll be there?"
"Well, sort of. I met a bunch of people in a Facebook group and we're all going to meet up there."
"Where are you staying?"
"A bunch of us sent checks for $300 to this guy in the group and he rented a house for us."
"How are you getting there?"
"Some other folks from the group said they'd meet me at the airport and give me a ride to the house. I'm sure it'll be totally fine."
Yup, that's how this incredible adventure started off for me. With pre-game jitters steadily building over the past two weeks, I hopped on a plane Thursday morning and headed out to New Jersey. Audrey and then Dan called me as I was on the ground in Jersey to coordinate a meet up spot. We eventually found each other, loaded up our gear and headed out to pick up Ray. The weather at 10 o'clock at night was super warm. At close to 60 degrees it was a good 10 degrees warmer here than it had been in California that morning. That was to be very short lived. This weekend would soon redefine my definition of cold.
As we drove and talked about our excitement and fears, I instantly felt better and more at ease with the event. Something that had bothered me with the World's Toughest Mudder is that they seemed to depart from their normal philosphy.
Tough Mudders in the past have been about teamwork, comraderie and enjoying the experience. Now in their finals they chose to have an event to find the one toughest individual on the planet. They offered $10,000 for both the top male and female finishers. Then they said that only 10% of participants would "finish the course." What happened to putting teamwork and comeraderie above your course time and it not mattering if you were first or last? It seemed like Tough Mudder was offering a whole lot of incentives here to do just the opposite.
As we all talked during the drive, it became very evident that despite all of this, all of us were still very much about teamwork and helping each other out. This theme continued as we arrived at the WTF (our facebook group team name - stands for World's Toughest Friends and a few other things) house. Even though it was 3 o'clock in the morning, people were still very warm and welcoming and doing all they could to help get us situated.
The next morning we got to meet everyone in daylight and get to know each other more as we headed off to registration and then as more people began to filter through the house.
At over 200 strong our team was the biggest team at the event and accounted for more than a 1/4 of the participants. This team was also interwoven with the GORUCK WTM team. We had a meet and greet dinner at the house Friday night. Even though we were all basically strangers, there was this odd sense of familiarity and bond between all of us because we had been chatting in the group over the past few months. We all settled into an easy and comfortable groove with each other as we chatted throughout the night. I had a great time getting to know the whole person behind the facebook posts. A lot of times as I was going through reading the posts and would come across something like "I just did 5,000 burpees in 1/2 an hour! Grrr!" I'd just sit there quaking in my little boots thinking "Good lord, I just want to survive this damn thing." As I got to know everyone and see that we shared a lot of the same feelings, I drew strength and confidence from my teammates. I can tell you this though, none of us had a clue what we were in for.
We got up bright and early Saturday morning. I ate as much as I could get down despite the butterflies and got my gear on.
After years of being a very competitive athlete, nowadays I like to have something during events that keeps me from taking myself too seriously, hence the flower swim cap.
At the last minute I threw on my shorty wetsuit over my wool and compression gear base layers. Tough Mudder had sent out an email saying that they would have a wetsuit staging area for the water section of the course. I didn't leave it at the wetsuit staging area the day before because when I was reading through the obstacle descriptions it seemed like we'd be going through cold water from the beginning. I had a full 2/3 spring suit at the house, but chose not to bring it because I was worried about overheating and chafing. Anyone that was out there at this event probably just laughed out loud when they read that statement. Overheating and chafing were the least of my worries. My suitcase was already packed to the gills and I figured that it would be a pain in the but trying to get it on once I was already wet. Live and learn.
After a bit of last minute prep we lined up at the starting area. Someone started a chant of "GO! RUCK! GO! RUCK!" which of course got me fired up. Then a singer sang the national anthem which of course means game time.
The starting horn sounded and people began to run and jog their way onto the course. The first obstacle was the Insane Bolt. Competitors had an unknown amount of time to sprint 1/4 of a mile or else be forced to take an additional 1/4 mile detour. I walked it. This was going to be a long event. There was no need to get tired and out of breath right off the bat. I figured that extra 1/4 mile over the course of 24 hours probably wouldn't make that much of a difference.
As we made our way to the second obstacle the Jesus Walk I was quite literally at the back of the pack. My GRC Norcal family Hamilton and Rob were keeping me company as we strolled through the course. The Jesus Walk was a long stretch of waist deep muddy water with trenches up to 8' dug into the bottom at random intervals. People would be walking along and then drop off pretty suddenly. When we found a trench we would call it out for the folks behind us. I originally took my life vest along for the plank obstacle, but it came in handy here. I never dropped down deeper than chest level which helped to keep my core temperature up. It also provided a good bit of insulation which definitely came in handy in the later stages.
The next obstacle was the mud mile. The water was waist deep still, but somehow the mud changed from normal mud to this sticky slippery clay mud. It also smelled suspiciously like cow poop. And now we had to climb up small embankments and hop over 4' walls. Somehow these little walls seemed way more difficult than they should have been. My hands were already going numb at this point, but something else about them seemed oddly draining. Ham and Rob would offered help getting up the slippery embankments. At one point I looked back and saw a guy all by himself about 40 yards behind us at the very back of the pack. While I was chomping at the bit to get moving on the course and I did have a bit of an ego moment about being last, I figured as much as I appreciated the help getting up the embankments he'd probably appreciate it as well. Without a word about it spoken between us, several of us slowed down and waited for him. We saw he was starting to shiver a decent amount and in the beginning stages of hypothermia. The weather was in the low 40s that morning with a decent wind before we decided to go wading through the water. We struck up a conversation and stayed with him through the course until the first med tent.
After the Mud Mile I fished my neoprene scuba gloves out of my bag and tried to put them on. I meant to do this before the Jesus Walk but completely forgot. I have two sets of neoprene scuba gloves at home. I grabbed this set that I got used a while back instead of my more expensive ones, figuring that I would probably destroy them on the course anyways. I didn't realize that they were smaller than the other set. Now with my hands wet and muddy, there was no way these suckers were going on my hands. I took off my flower swim cap and GoPro at this point because my head was starting to sweat and the GoPro starting to feel a bit heavy.
Obstacle #4 was Get Railed. This was sets of parallel bars over water that we had to traverse using only our upper body. I put my upper arms and forearms on the bars to get momentum to swing and slide my way across.
Obstacle #5 was Devil's Beard combined with cliff hanger. This was a low net stretched tight across a hillside that we had to climb our way underneath to get to the top. This worked best in groups leap frogging our way to the top.
Obstacle #6 was Razor's Edge which I don't really remember anymore. I think it was another hill climb. After this Obstacle we came across the first med tent. My hands were burning at this point so I stopped in to warm them up. I was surprised and happy to see my WTF teammates Sam, Mario and Katy in the tent too. I told Rob, Garth and Ham to go ahead as I was going to hang out here and warm up my hands. Even though I thought I felt fine, I didn't realize how cold I truly was. There was a propane heater in the tent which the EMTs assured me was blowing out hot air. It felt like it was blasting cold air to me. They had cups of hot liquid jell-o in the tent which soon became my favoritest drink ever. Ever? Ever. As the cup warmed up my hands and the jell-o warmed up my insides I began to see that the heater was indeed blasting hot air into the tent. I stripped off all my wet layers down to my compression gear and at the EMT's suggestion threw them on the heater to dry them out a bit. While we in the tent we kept hearing reports on the EMT's radio of people being carted off the course right and left for hypothermia. At one point he said they had 6 people to an ambulance.
Once warmed up a bit and feeling good, I put my layers back on and added a merino wool beanie, my TAD Artemis merino wool sweater and a windbreaker. Katy and I headed out to face obstacle #7 Electroshock Therapy. This was like the usual one with electrified wires hanging down, but had hay bales placed underneath so that we couldn't just crawl under the wires. At Tough Mudder NorCal the voltage was turned way down to where I never felt a shock, so I was all happy go lucky. Katy had been zapped pretty good before, but faced this one like a champ. With the wind picking up it was blowing all the wires to the right. We were able to stay to the left and avoid getting shocked.
Obstacle #8 was Turd's Nest. This was a horizontal cargo net stretched between two platforms. We stayed toward the sides where it was tauter and stepped on the areas where the rope crossed itself.
Obstacle #9 was Berlin Walls #1. These were a set of three 8' high walls that we had to climb up and over. Here we found WTF teammate Adam smiling and waiting for us. He was at a nearby obstacle, saw us and came over to help.
Obstacle #10 was Island Hopping. These were floating wooden platforms linked together in a line with a rope. We hopped, regained our balance on the shifting platform and repeated until we were across to the other side. I heard that as time went on, platforms would get progressively farther and farther apart and apparently later in the night, they had a thick sheet of ice across the top which made things interesting.
Obstacle #11 was Funky Monkey. Monkey bars over more cold water. Funky Monkey is one of the most fun obstacles for me. Once I get going, I feel like a kid on the playground. One thing that they changed for this time is that if you fell off, you had to dunk your head under water under a 2x6 to get around the obstacle and continue on.
Obstacle #12 was Creek Crusade. Pretty straight forward, cross through a small creek and claw your way up the slippery embankment on the other side.
Obstacle #13 Log Bog Jog - Up and over a bunch of muddy logs strewn across the course
Obstacle #14 Spiders Web - A vertical cargo net hanging off of a cable that we had to climb up and over
Obstacle #15 Peg Legs - This obstacle made me smile. This was a series of posts in water that we had to step from one to the other to get across. At work we have 3' high cement posts as barriers around the diesel tank. I had been walking from one to the next to work on my balance and get ready for WTM.
I think it was after this one when we stopped at the second med tent. I was still feeling pretty good here. My core was surprisingly toasty. My arms and hands were the main areas that were getting cold. My Mechanix work gloves were providing a minimal amount of warmth, but not nearly enough. I stayed in each med tent until I stopped shivering and regained feeling in my hands.
Obstacle #16 was Devil's Beard #2 which I don't remember at all.
Obstacle #17 Kiss of Mud - Belly crawl uphill under barb wire. Going sideways under the wires worked best, because then I could pop up and stretch out when I needed to.
Obstacle #18 Boa Constrictor - Remembering this obstacle from Tough Mudder NorCal I stayed to the tubes on the side. This time the tubes were smooth inside. This was fine on the tube going down into the muddy water pit, going up it made things interesting. I had to splay my hands, knees and feet to the sides of the tube, try to arch my back and brace it against the top of the tube, all the while pushing my pack in front of me. I bet I looked like a cat trying to claw its way up a playground slide. Again I heard this one was all kinds of fun when it froze over later in the night.
Obstacle #19 Shake and Bake. Jump into a pit of water then belly crawl under wires through peat moss. By this point this was kind fun. It was soft and fluffy.
Obstacle #20 Log Jammin' - Over and under more logs which were only in ankle to calf deep muddy water.
Obstacle #21 Twinkle Toes - The beams were about half the width of the ones at Tough Mudder NorCal. It sounds like just about everyone that tried to run across ended up in the cold water below. A side saddle scoot worked best for me.
Obstacle #22 Trench Warfare - This was a series of trenches dug into the ground with plywood over the top that we had to crawl through, with of course mud and water at the bottom. I had a fun time going through this obstacle. It reminded me of a firefighter survival course.
Obstacle #23 Hanging Tough - These were basically American Gladiator rings. I got the first two rings, but even after swinging back and forth I was just shy of the third ring and fell into the water below.
Obstacle #24 The Factory - This was a rope climb up to a platform and then slide down a chute into the cold water below. Some obstacles were designated as penalty obstacles where if you couldn't complete them, you had to wait 5 minutes before continuing. This was one of them, but by the time I had gotten to it, so many people had dropped off the course that they had done away with the penalties. As I grabbed the rope I found that I couldn't pull myself up despite the knots in it. Normally I can do a 30' rope climb without using my feet no problem, but at this point my hands were so cold and numb that I had very little grip strength left. I walked around to the other side and jumped into the water pit. I could've gone around it, but I was here to do an obstacle course, not a trail run. I was going to give every obstacle a genuine effort.
Obstacle #25 Rubber Necking - This was one of the few dry obstacles on the course. The had tires zip tied together in pairs that we had to pick up and carry around a section of the course.
Obstacle #26 Tired Yet - Step through tires piled on top of each other
Obstacle #27 Berlin Walls #2 - This was a set of three 12' high walls. There weren't a whole lot of other competitors around at this point in the day so I was all by my lonesome. I stepped on the board nailed into the wall, grabbed the top, threw a leg up towards the A-frame brace on the side until my muddy, slippery shoes finally found some traction, threw a chicken wing over the top of the wall, worked my foot up to the top of the brace, straddled the wall, threw the other leg over and lowered myself down. I couldn't believe the effort this took. My heart was racing and I was breathing hard each time. The volunteers at this section were awesome and cheered me over each wall.
Obstacle #28 Bale Bonds - Climb up and over hay bales. These were higher and wetter than the ones at Tough Mudder NorCal, but still doable.
Obstacle #29 High Steppin' - This was a series of hurdles about 3' high. My hip flexors were both pretty tight by this obstacle most likely from hiking all this distance in a wetsuit. Getting over this obstacle was less than graceful.
Obstacle #30 Meat Locker - This was just a shipping container with tires hanging from ropes, a smoke machine and a strobe light.
Obstacle #31 Electric Eel - This was Electroshock Therapy combined with Kiss of Mud. I stayed to the left because that looked to be the lower side of the obstacle. As I crawled through it was no big deal until near the end when my muscles began to have mild spasms. Once I realized it was the shocks, they had increased in strength to the point where I couldn't crawl anymore, but could only roll my way out of the obstacle. I now understand the big deal about Electroshock Therapy
Obstacle #32 Everest - This was the same as Tough Mudder NorCal, but flatter so that people couldn't just run, take one step and jump to the top. I sprinted (it was probably more like a jog) jumped, got about 6" from the top and slid back down. It was a good college try.
Obstacle #33 Massive Turd - This was pretty much the same as Turd's nest except that it was 30' up in the air. This was fun, because normally I'm more comfortable at heights. I say normally, because there was a section in this course later where that wasn't the case.
If I remember right, the wetsuit staging area was right here. There are probably a few hundred folks that never made it to their wetsuits. It was starting to get dark as I passed through this area so the staff were zip tying chem lights to our race bibs.
Obstacle #34 Dong Dangler - Ropes stretched across cold water that we had to shimmy and slide our way across. Through the course I had heard of people saying how badly their calves were cramping, but mine felt fine. Not until I reached up to grab the rope and try to swing my legs up and over did my calves put up a fuss. I let go and swam across to the other side. The temps were down to the low 30s and it was starting to feel very cold.
Obstacle #35 Underwater Tunnels - A series of floating barrels that we had to duck underneath completely submerging ourselves. This was when my core stopped feeling toasty warm and joined my limbs in feeling downright frigid. As the ice cold water was cutting right through my little beanie, I remembered I meant to switch over to my neoprene cap and flower swim cap before this obstacle. Note to self.
Obstacle #36 Jersey Shore - Wade/swim through cold water
Obstacle #37 Rope-A-Dope - Climb a rope ladder to get up to obstacle #38
Obstacle #38 Walk the Plank - Jump off of a 15' platform into the water below. This was the obstacle that scared me the most. I'm that 8 year old kid that chickened out at the top of the high water slide and have been slowly working on facing that fear ever since. Fifteen 15' isn't that high. It's as high as the top of the bouldering wall at my climbing gym. I fall off that all the time. Looking down at the water it sure seemed a whole lot higher than 15 feet. I don't know how long I stood there staring at the drop. I sat down on the ledge thinking over and over again "Am I really going to do this? Am I really going to do this?" Well apparently my arms were cold and tired of waiting around because the pushed me off the ledge as I was still thinking "Am I really going to do this?" and then as I was hovering in mid air right before the fall "Okay, I guess I'm doing this." I slowly swam my way across the pond to the next obstacle
Obstacle #39 Hold Your Wood - For this we had to swim about 30 yards with a log around some buoys and then back to the shore. The thing that was so brutal about this was that all of these water obstacles were back to back with no time to warm up back in between. We just kept getting colder and colder with each one. After this one is where I had my hissy fit where I was done with all this, but it was a small hissy fit that passed fairly quickly. I kept putting one foot in front of the other, knowing that I would eventually arrive at a med tent and have a chance to warm up.
Once there I stayed in the med tent for probably a good hour trying to warm back up. I never got to the point where I stopped shivering, but I got warm enough where I felt I could continue on to the pit stop area and go to my tent. Turns out the pit stop and lap finish line were only about 100 yards away.
Once inside my tent, it was cold. I stripped off all my wet clothes, which was even colder and hopped into my sleeping bag with a bunch of hot pockets. The wind was whipping through my tent even with the rain cover on it. I bundled up and began eating like crazy. In true Trucker fashion, I ate until I was sleepy, slept until I was hungry and rolled over every hour or so every time the staff came by to do a med check (The Truck crews roll wake up enough to find out that the call is for the Engine and not them and then roll over and go back to sleep). When I'd wake up I'd check facebook to get updates on how everyone else was doing and hear words of encouragement. I can't begin to tell you what a huge morale boost that was. Our tents were set up by our bib numbers. Mine was way far away from anyone else that I knew, so if not for the updates I wouldn't have had contact with anyone else out there that I knew.
The temperature dropped through the night into the low 20s, with the windchill, it was down to 16 degrees when I woke up at 6 am. Still, I felt good and determined to go out and do another lap, still be standing at the 24 hour mark and cross the finish line in my little flower cap, just cause I could. I sat up to get my gear to find that it had frozen solid during the night while it was inside my tent with me.
This is one of my wool socks, my wetsuit and TAD Artemis hoodie. Still feeling in good spirits and not to be deterred I figured I could throw all the stuff in the shower and thaw it out because warm and wet beats cold and frozen any day. I went outside to get my flower cap out of my radio ruck to find the zipper on the pack frozen solid trapping the flower cap inside.
I took this as a sign. The main reason I was going back on the course was to get a pic crossing the finish line in the cap. It was colder this morning than it had been the night before when I finished that first lap. My fingers were already starting to go numb just being outside before I got anywhere near the water obstacles. It was looking like if I wanted to go home with all my digits, I needed to call this event good with 1 lap done.
Ultimately, regardless of whatever Tough Mudder says about "finishers" at this event, anyone that got through a lap of this course is a finisher and anyone that even attempted this craziness is a true warrior in my book.
I came out to this event to have fun, exercise a few demons (yes, that's intentional. My demons get restless when they don't get out to play), face some fears, challenge and push myself mentally and physically, and meet a great group of folks. The caliber of people participating in this event far exceeded any expectations I ever had. They were the best part of this whole experience. I thank not only each and everyone of you that was there, but all of those along the way that supported us to get there. I look forward to doing this with you again and whatever other craziness we find along the way.
(More pics from the event can be found at the NS6 facebook page www.facebook.com/NS6Athletic)
Well, one thing is for sure - these Goruck Challenges aren't getting any easier. GRC Class 086 was the longest (13 hours), heaviest (6 bricks), coldest (low 40s to possibly dipping into the 30s), and wettest (it was raining pretty steady almost the whole time) challenge that I have done to date. This simply means that the the conditions were better for testing my gear, set up and training.
Over all my pack set up worked well. I would change a few things about it though. I used the Radio Ruck again, which for me is the perfect size for the challenge. The last post shows how the bricks were positioned in the pack with 3 up high and three low beneath them. With the bricks wrapped individually, they did shift in the pack by the end of the challenge.
Next time, after the bricks are inspected, I will strap them all together in their bundles with a few more wraps of duct tape. A few people had their bricks zip tied together after being individually wrapped. this worked out great because when we had to shoulder extra packs, we could more easily divvy up the bricks and spread the weight amongst more team members. Next time as well, I will play around with a 4 high/2 low brick set up. This time having the 3 bricks low did place some strain on my low back.
Another change I made for this challenge was adding the Camelbak HotShot bladder to the outside.
This worked out quite well. Because there's no telling when we'll get to refill our water, I'd recommend carrying at least 3L of fluid from the beginning. Another thing that I liked about the Camelbak is that it has an insulated tube and a cover for the mouth piece. A lot of the times in these challenges a drink tube might find itself dragging across the ground during bear crawls or when we roll around in the sand. Also, a lot of the water that we find ourselves in is less than pristine. Here you can see me biting my drink tube while doing pushups in Manhatten's East River.
The water really was as murky as it looked. Ah yes, memories of that East River aroma are wafting back to me now... or that might just still be my gear. Seriously though, protect your drink tubes. It's all fun and games until someone gets Salmonella or Hep A. Both Camelbak and Platypus make mouth piece covers that can be purchased separately. While I like the ease of filling and the locking feature on the mouth piece of the Platypus Big Zip, unfortunately, it is not compatible with the cover.
Along the lines of hydration, race nutrition is something that I'm constantly tweaking. In the past, I've had snacks easily accessible in front zip pouches or in MOLLE pouches attached to the bag. This time since our bags were not allowed to touch the ground, I rarely took my pack off during breaks. Other times, we rotated our packs so much during log carries and at other times, that I rarely knew who's pack I was carrying, or where my pack was. Therefore I recommend keeping at least a few snacks on you in easily accessible pockets that won't rub or chafe. These are long events, so it's very important to eat, even if you don't feel hungry.
For my gear I'll start from the top and go down.
The 5.11 watch cap worked great. My head felt toasty and warm the whole time despite the rain.
I once again used a Princeton Tec Byte headlamp, same as class 036. This light is inexpensive at around $20, it has an additional red LED to preserve night vision, two brightness settings with a max of 35 lumens, and is fairly lightweight at 64 grams. I was really impressed with this little light after Class 036 when I didn't realize that I had sent it through the washing machine until I saw it shining bright through the pocket of my windbreaker afterwards. It rated as IXP4 resistant to splashing water and inclement weather. I wouldn't go dunking it in a tub of water to test it out, but mine did survive the spin cycle. One drawback to this light is that it does drain batteries when it is turned off, so therefore the batteries have to be stored outside of it until it's ready to be used. Last challenge with class 057 I used a Petzl e+ headlamp. This is also a great little light. It is waterproof up to 1m, operates in a wide range of temperatures, has a shelf life of 10 years and is extremely lightweight at 28 grams. I took this one along for 086 as a back up light. I chose not to use it as my primary this time, because I wanted something just a little bit brighter, with its brightest settings only being 16 lumens.
New for this time I tried out the Columbia Omni Heat thermal 1/4 zip top. The Omni Heat line has these little silver dots on the inside of the clothing making it look like a space blanket. In the days before the challenge when I was wearing it around town it did in fact feel warmer than a normal top. Still though, it was not quite as warm as I expected it to be once it got wet. I wore it over the 2XU short sleeve compression top, and under my windbreaker. This was not enough insulation for these conditions. I was starting to shiver pretty significantly until a classmate lent me another light jacket to wear on top of my other layers.
New for the bottoms, I tried out the REI Airflyte Running tights over my 2XU compression shorts and under board shorts. One of the easiest ways to identify a Gorucker or like minded person is by our snazzy fashion sense of board shorts over running tights. This is similar to the wildlander look of shorts, 8-12" leather boots and wool hiking socks, which I've also sported on training hikes. The tights held up to the abuse of the challenge and were pretty comfy. In the cold and wet I could've used another layer here too.
My feet were surprisingly toasty and warm. My toes got a case of frost nip years back on a high school camping trip. Because of this they tend to get cold and go numb earlier than they normally would when it gets cold outside. I wore a pair of smart wool PhD running socks which kept my feet much warmer and shed water quicker than expected.
For the training portion this time I stuck with my tried and true 5k to 50k. As I was starting to ramp things up, I got a mild case of plantar fasciitis which forced me to back off of the running for a bit. Weighted pack stair workouts and Viking Warrior made up the bulk of my longer cardio sessions.
This worked out okay. I would have liked to have a better cardio base for this challenge, especially with the mission based challenges with time limits to destinations. It's no longer enough just to gut your way through a challenge. Now there is a pretty rigorous pace that needs to be met. I still do not recommend running with a fully weighted pack right off the bat. Work up to this gradually, on varied surfaces, learning to cushion your foot strikes by keeping your feet low to the ground with a shuffle run.
Another thing to practice is moving at pace holding the pack without using the shoulder straps and/or moving at pace with an extra pack. This turned out to be a pretty good forearm burn. One thing that helped us during Class 086 was to rotate the packs frequently and at predetermined times. This way we weren't waiting until someone was completely burned out before looking for someone to take over for them.
So that's it for this time. Three GRCs down, more to come soon.
This past weekend marked my third Goruck Challenge. There's so much to write about all of this that I barely know where to begin. Apparently I've got this weird little wildland/Goruck gene that makes me forget all the pain and misery of the challenges and within hours of completing one has me looking forward to the next.
My first GRC with class 036, I just wanted to survive it and earn the patch. Within the first hour, I was seriously wondering what I had gotten myself into. There were a few doubts as to how I was going to maintain this pace for 12 hours, but we all kept working, settled into a groove together and got through it.
For my second GRC with class 057 I was still nervous, but settled into a mind set of focusing on getting the whole team through to the end. This challenge commemorated the 10th anniversary of September 11, and was about something bigger than my own nerves. Due to a bit of dehydration and heat stress I hit the wall in the wee hours of the challenge. But thanks to to the support of an awesome GRC class, I was able to pick the wall up and carry it with me until I got my hydration all squared away again. Just another coupon.
The first two challenges, being that nervous about something and then making it through to the other side were huge confidence boosters for me. For my third challenge, I really wanted to step things up and support the team as much as possible. So much for the best laid plans.
As the challenge was approaching little slivers of info began to make things seem like this was going to be an interesting challenge. First the brick standard had been changed from 3 bricks to 4 bricks if you weighed under 150 lbs, and 4 to 6 if you weighed over 150 lbs. I haven't been under 150 lbs in well over 20 years, so 6 bricks it was. Next we heard that there had been a change in our Cadre. Jason, the founder of Goruck, who has led over 40 GRCs was going to be our cadre for this challenge. This was sure to be a challenge to remember. Then a few days before the challenge, Jason posted this to the event's Facebook page
"I'm your cadre, and this is a special one. SF was the site of the first ever GORUCK Challenge, which I ran, and recently the other cadre have told me I'm soft. They did it so I would inflict more pain on you all. Which I will, so I cant wait for that. See ya soon, all smiles."
Yeah, smiles. But hey, this was just the latest in a series of challenges over the past year that I had gutted my way through and come up smiling. Ya know, sometimes ignorance really is bliss.
When I did the 6 brick field test with the Radio Ruck a few months ago, I had no idea that this would become the new standard. Who knew I'd soon be replacing my yoga brick support with more bricks. I played around with a few new brick configurations. This one seemed to work out the best allowing for more range of motion for the shoulders and not putting too much strain on the neck during bear crawls.
Later the email came out from GRHQ that they wanted the bricks wrapped individually so I revised the set up to this one.
Also pictured are the Petzl E+ headlamp as a back up (used princeton byte again as primary) 5.11 watch cap, windbreaker, board shorts, mechanix work gloves, road id, GR Tac Hat, 2xu compression top and shorts, NS6 shirt, REI airflight running tights, Clumbia Omni-Heat long sleeve top, Salomon XA 3D shoes, smartwool PhD socks, platypus big zip 60 oz, Radio Ruck, 6 bricks wrapped in bubble wrap and duct tape, secured with cinch straps, velcro strap all, dry bag, extra socks snacks. After seeing some facebook posts from 084 strongly emphasizing that we should hydrate before the challenge I decided to strap my Camelbak Hotshot to the outside of my pack, a tip learned from Brie and Seamus in 057.
All in all, my pack weighed about 45 lbs.
With overheating last time still fresh in my mind, I went fairly light on the layers. Mistake. Cold weather challenges are a whole other ball game. Most of the time here, when it's raining it tends to be slightly warmer with the cloud cover than on a clear day. This was not the case for our challenge. It was raining pretty steady throughout and around 40 degrees.
We started off in a parking lot by China Beach getting our bags outfitted and signing waivers. Once that was done and we were all gathered together after a rousing pre-game pep talk by a classmate, Jason abruptly took off at a run of around a 10 minute mile pace, pretty decent considering the packs we were carrying.
Last GRC with 057 I got my first taste of a mission based challenge when Lou tasked Alex and I to infiltrate 059 and steal their b*tch bag. We grabbed two other members of our class, snuck up behind them and scurried into line behind them as they were doing low crawls. We bided our time until the bag was eventually passed back to Alex. Before 059 knew what happened we hopped up and ran off into the park, trying not to look to suspicious and brought the bag back to Lou. Yup, good times. For us at least. I can only imagine what happened to 059 afterwards. When multiple GRCs are operating in the same area, beware.
This challenge we were given multiple missions throughout the night. We ran through the neighborhood until we got to about an 8' high metal fence. This was our first introduction as a class to mission based challenges. Jason told us we had 4 minutes to get the whole team over the fence and down to the beach. We gave people a leg up as they were climbing up and then switched from handing the bags over the fence to supporting the people with the bags because it was taking too long the other way. Once over the fence and down to the beach, our Welcome Party began.
Here we learned the importance of teamwork. For a good 3 hours we bear crawled, flutter kicked, lunged and went for refreshing cooling dips in the SF bay's 52 degree ocean water. Remember that picturesque video from the 036 post of us doing flutter kicks and pushups in the ocean at sunset with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background? This was 086.
Anytime we failed to work together as a team, Jason would give us sets of inchworm pushups to reinforce the importance of teamwork. For these we lined up on our stomachs with our feet on the shoulders of the person in front of us like in the below video.
Now I've done fireteam pushups and elevated pushups with my pack on before, but this was a bit of an eye opener. With the pack on my back and feet on my shoulders I could only press up about 2" or so off the sand.
I knew that keeping my body tight and legs as straight as possible would help. I played around with moving my feet forward and back, but nothing really seemed to help on this one. Jason gave us inchworms anytime there were gaps in our ranks. At one point he took away speaking privileges because we weren't sounding off loud enough, which made sticking together as a group that much harder. We developed a system of grabbing on to the ankle of the person in front of us when we wanted them to slow down or stop and tapping their foot when we wanted them to move again. All in all it worked out pretty well.
Once our welcome party was over and we headed to leave the beach, Jason told us we were leaving behind a downed pilot and pointed to a large lumpy log that looked like the twin of the one from 057. I have no idea where they find these suckers or if they ship them around the country to make sure all classes can share in the Good Livin'. Some members of the class hoisted the log up, while other members shouldered their packs for them. Jason turned to us again and instructed us to not leave behind the "co-pilot" a smaller log probably only weighing about 300 lbs. or so. Our second mission was to get the pilot and co-pilot to their extraction point in a specified amount of time. The larger log led and set the pace. Over time we developed a system where the people that weren't under a log would shoulder a pack and stand next to someone of our approximate same height who was under a log. This would allow us to swap out pretty smoothly when the log carriers were ready. This was especially important for the big log since it was so oddly shaped. A few times when I was under the log and someone in front or behind me would swap out I would either find myself carrying more weight, or hardly any weight at all do to the height differences. We would swap from bag carry to little log to bag carry to big log and back again.
Unfortunately we missed our first extraction pick up time by a few minutes and had to shoulder the logs again for round two. We were able to pick up the pace by swapping out more frequently under the log the second time and made our second extraction time which I believe was close to the Japanese Tea Gardens of Golden Gate Park. We were given our next mission point and time limit, with the added challenge of being covert. So basically, any time we saw headlights in the distance all 29 of us would go scurrying and diving headlong into the bushes. I think it was around this time that I began shivering pretty badly, but of course didn't want to 'fess up to it. One of my classmates let Jason know at a stop and we found another classmate with an extra jacket. That jacket made all the difference in the world. I might've been on the verge of a decent case of hypothermia without it.
We made our way through the city towards towards our next stop which I believe was Haight Ashbury. As we were running, Jason told me and three other people that we had had equipment failures and that the straps were no longer working on our packs. I grabbed the pack by the top handle, slung it over my shoulder and did my best to keep up with the pace the group was setting. Before long Jason told me I was hit by a sniper and was now a casualty because I didn't ask for help. Here I let my ego get in the way. As a challenge vet the last thing I wanted was to be the weak link, or to hold the team up. Now because of the this, I had to be buddy carried to our destination. The truth is these are long challenges, and we all have our moments where we feel not quite as strong as other times during the challenge. In these cases it's better to be proactive, because it's a lot easier for the team to shoulder 45 lbs, the weight of my pack, than 210 lbs, the weight of me plus my pack. This also proved true as we had more equipment failures and strapless bags throughout the night. We found that if we rotated the strapless bags and our team weight (weighing probably around 60 lbs) every block, before people would get burned out, we were able to keep a much quicker pace to our objective.
Mentally this was a tough lesson for me. Because of the time limit, I couldn't take on the team weight or extra bags as much as I would've liked and still kept pace. Here I had a turning point. I could stay being all rankled or surly at being the first casualty, or I could figure out how to best support the team. As the challenge wore on, I focused on developing teamwork and communication strategies, taking the extra bags when I could or finding folks that could when I was barely keeping pace, and checking on those around me to make sure they had enough food and water. That was another little surprise for this challenge. Jason told us at the beginning that they only water that we would have during this challenge was what we brought with us and any we could get from water hoses that we found along the way. Ya ever tried to find a water hose out in the open in SF? Not as easy as it sounds.
There were a ton of other stops along the way to such historic landmarks as Lombard Street and Coit tower, but of course we had to cross the Golden Gate Bridge. Once we were in Chrissy Field, Jason gave us 90 minutes to get across the bridge and back. This was well into the wee hours of the challenge. All of us were dead tired and running on fumes, but this seemed like a doable pace. We set out together and alternated between a fast walk and a shuffle run to make time. Once across the bridge Jason informed us that we had one last mission. We now had an hour to get back across the bridge and get to our final objective of Baker Beach. This was a pretty aggressive objective, especially since we were probably a good 12 hours into the challenge at this point. It took us 37 minutes to get across the bridge the first time. If we didn't make our final objective time, then the challenge would end farther up the coast at North Beach 5-6 miles away. I committed myself to giving it my all to make it our objective, but if we made it, we made it, if not we would keep going. I didn't really entertain the thought of this being the end. We would simply keep working until we were told we were done.
We set out again alternating fast walks with shuffle runs, back across the bridge. As we made it down to the beach, one of my classmates that was carrying an extra ruck called out for someone to swap out with him. I looked around and saw everyone else was hurting just as much as I was, so I offered to take it for as long as I could and still keep pace. A little while thereafter, Jason became trigger happy and started "sniping" people right and left. I was once again one of the casualties and had to be buddy carried. My classmates gave an incredible effort to get us all down the beach. At one point when we were swapping carriers I asked Jason if we could swap casualties. Buddy carries, also known as firefighter carries, are a point of professional pride for me. These were one way I knew I could help out the team. As much as I got carried through the challenge, I wanted to give back to the team and help out. But Jason replied no, and as he said many times throughout the challenge "Hey, it's not fair, but life's not fair." As we were staggering down the beach under the buddy carries, Jason called out for a 50/50 buddy carry as a group down to the surf. Here it took a bit to get us all together, but somehow we managed it. At this point I grabbed my battle buddy and carried him to the surf (this time not asking if I had been revived yet). It might've been a fairly relatively short distance down to the surf, but it was a small way to give back to the team.
Looking back at the challenge, this wasn't about making us feel good about what we could do well. When Jason called for leaders to lead us to the next objective, he specifically called for people that hadn't led before. Then he made sure the team knew (usually reinforced by inchworms or equipment failures) that leadership was a group effort and we were expected to fully support and help our leaders. This was about challenging and pushing us specifically in the areas where we weren't as good and drawing upon the team to help us through those areas.
GRC Class 086, I thank each and every one of you for determination through the roughly 13 long hours and all the pain that came with those hours, for your effort and for your support. I hope to see you at the next one.
Today was an easy day focusing mainly on grip and core strength
Bouldering v0-v1 6 climbs
Fingertip pushups
Wall 1x20
Tabletop 2x5
15' Rope Climbs no feet x 5
Bar hangs 4x1 min
This was a pretty grip intensive day. In the future I'm going to split up the rope climbs and bar hangs. Rope climbs after climbing and bar hangs after my workouts at work.
Today's workout was as follows
2x20 m bear crawls
Calf stretches throughout the day
15 24 kg kettlebell swings performed after each call x8 calls
7 sets of
7 double 12 kg bottoms up cleans
7 double 12 kg bottoms up presses
7:39
We had a call after the first three rounds which were completed in 3:01. I finished up the last 4 sets when we got back to the station
3 min wall sit
My shoulders are feeling better and better each day. 12 kg presses are relative light for me, but turning them bottoms up adds in a whole new dimension to this exercise, especially doubles. My shoulders and grip are feeling stronger and stronger each day.
Today I got ahold of the Convict Conditioning 2 ebook and couldn't wait to incorporate the exercises and information into my routine. My workout was as follows.
Calf raises
3x15 straight leg each leg
4x100 bent leg double raises
supersetted with 7x5 pistols to chair with eyes closed ea leg
Sometimes when I get excited about things I jump into things right away. This was the case with calf raises. In college I used to do 3x50 bent single leg calf raises morning and night. This helped me to get ready for my summer job hiking all over the mountains as a wildland firefighter and contributed to increasing my vertical jump. So I figured I'd jump right to the straight leg singles. After reading a bit further in between sets, the book said to stay with a step as long as it was still giving a benefit. I switched over to double bent leg raises and found they were indeed a bit tougher than expected. I'll stick with these as long as they give a good burn.
Since the Z-Health Essentials of Elite Performance course, I've been incorporating more movements into my routine with my eyes closed. Moving in this fashion forces my stabilizer muscles, proprioception and sense of balance to work all that much harder. World's Toughest Mudder is a 24 hour event. In addition to the "normal" physical demands of this event, sleep deprivation and the dark night time conditions will play a factor. Therefore, I plan to work my balance, vision and proprioception in an effort to hep counteract this.
For a while now I've been climbing to work my grip strength and ability to scale whatever obstacles they might throw at us. So of course I fell in love with the chapter on grip strength. This chapter broke grip training down into a astonishingly simple progression. It mentioned that climbers have some of the best grip strength around from working their grip while hanging. From climbing I'm used to hanging off of grips much more difficult than pull up bars. Still though, the last 5 seconds of each hang had my forearms quivering.
At the station before getting off work in the morning
.25 mile warm-up 15% grade 3.0 speed
8 min tabata run
15% grade 5.0-6.0 speed
Then, once I got home
Joaquin Miller Park stairs x3
2:34, 2;33, 2:25
Total of 702 stairs or roughly 35 flights of stairs up and down completed in 17:14
Indoor Rock climbing
v0-v3
4 no foot rope climbs 15'
This workout was pain free for both my knees and shins. I'll start adding in more hill climbs and jogs into my program. World's Toughest Mudder may be on a flat course, but GRC SF is bound to take full advantage of all the hills. Plus this will help to build up my calves and suspension to be better able to handle the mileage of both events.
Proper hydration definitely helped out a bunch here. We went out 4 times after midnight last night but i still had enough energy to get in a pretty decent workout.
Today was a busy day at work so I was only able to get in a few GTG sets. I performed the pistols with eyes closed to further work my stabilizer muscles and balance. Instead of incline pushups my first shift I've started doing assisted wall dips. To do this I do wall dips with my hands on a weight bench, knees bent and feet on the floor.
This is one of the exercises from American Parkour that I've been incorporating into my workouts. The distance in World's Toughest Mudder is only part of the equation. There's 30 as of yet unknown obstacles to contend with for each lap. Parkour is the art of moving through one's environment and obstacles as efficiently as possible so this seemed like a good way to prepare for the Mudder. The wall dips should help with scaling and getting over walls should there be any on the course.
My routine for the day was as follows
GTG x4 sets
5 ea leg blind pistols to weight bench
10 assisted wall dips
Once again my turn to cook in the firehouse. In a single company house the cooking rotation cycles through much quicker than a double house. Because of this I've had to learn a few more recipes for work. This time around I had a craving for an old family favorite, black-eyed peas and collard greens. Anyone that's ever had the privilege of being around my mom's house on New Year's can tell you what any amazing dish this is. I cooked a simpler version of this dish for the firehouse. I used whole foods black eyed pea and collard green soup recipe.
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/380
and added in some dried bay leaves. In hindsight, it probably could've used a capful of apple cider vinegar to enhance the flavor, but still tasted pretty good. For those of you using the slow carb diet, this recipe was a staple for me in the time that I used the diet.
I paired it with ChefMd's mustard almond chicken.
http://chefmd.com/recipe_display.php?id=87
This recipe is incredibly easy and everyone always raves about it.
The black eyed peas can also be served over rice or quinoa.
Today at work was super busy. I higher classed as captain for the first 6 hours of the shift. In that time we ran 9 calls. It was my turn to cook again so that took up a good chunk of the day as well. Between that and running more calls, by the time I got a chance to take a break, it was already 1030 at night. I was pretty tempted to skip my workout for the day and just call it a rest day, but then I figured at the very least I could get my GTG kettlebell swings in before going to bed. My workout for the day was
11 sets of 35 24kg kettlebell swings (one set for each call up until that point)
At the very least, I worked up a decent sweat and got my heart rate up.
The first section of this book is devoted to grip strength. For my first workout of the day I substituted 1 min bar hangs for pull ups. My workout for the day was as follows.
6 sets of GTG 20 incline pushups and 15 tucks
3 rounds
25 swiss ball sit ups
25 supermans
15 24kg kettlebell swings
15 8kg bottoms up floor press
1 min bar hang
3 x 1 mile sprint on exercise bike w/ 1 min rest
3:25, 3:05, 3:20
The 1 minute bar hangs were a surprising challenge. The last 5 seconds of each round really began to light up my forearms. From a rock climber's stand point the grip strength progressions in this book are surprisingly simple and intuitive. I'm pretty excited to see how my forearms and grip respond to this program.
Yesterday morning my client called to say he was running a few minutes late. I primarily train out of Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland. One of the great things about this park besides all the trees, fountains and amazing views, is during the Great Depression the Works Projects Administration (WPA) built an amphitheater in the park. Leading up to the back of the amphitheater are 234 stairs of awesomeness. Since I train clients at the base of these stairs, a quick sprint to the top seemed like a great use of time while waiting for my client. Two minutes and 34 seconds later I realized it's time to adjust my training and ramp things up again.
In the last Norcal Tough Mudder my climbing skills served me well on several obstacles. I've got a hunch this, a decent cardio and recovery component, and a healthy dose of grip strength will be the case for the upcoming World's Toughest Mudder. I incorporated both of these into today's workout.
Bouldering 5 v2s
1 15' no foot rope climb
50 burpees 6:23
This is the first time in a long time that I've done burpees (partly because of my shoulder and partly because of the pukey feeling they tend to cause. But hey, that type of metabolic conditioning is just what I need these days). I have my volleyball kids do these all the time because they truly are a great all around full body exercise. Plus volleyball players have to be able to both get to the ground and get up from the ground quickly. I followed this with a rowing machine workout to further work my conditioning and recovery rate. Distances per round are shown after the row duration.
21, 15, 9 double 8kg kettlebell bottoms up thrusters and kettlebell swings in 4:34
4 x .75 miles on spin bike on the 2 min
30 double 8kg kettlebell cleans and push presses
Even though my shoulder is feeling better I'm still going light with the overhead movements. I'm focusing instead on the speed and control of the movements to get a good workout. I'm loving how the double bottoms up movements put my brain through all sorts of happy mental gymnastics to keep both the weights balanced especially during the more dynamic movements. I would however, caution against doing these until you have a very stable base in single bottoms up kettlebell movements and to start out light. It's all fun and games until someone takes a kettlebell to the noggin.
GTG (Grease the Groove)
7 sets of 12 TRX Rows with my feet below the anchor
3 x .8 miles on the 2:30 on the exercise bike
7 sets of 5 rest 1 min between sets
Double 12kg kettlebell clean, press, squat, push press, squat
Completed in 11:35
My legs were still a bit sore from the previous workout and today was also going to be a decently heavy leg day, so I skipped the leg portion of the GTG and focused solely on the rows. The kettlebell complex work is taken directly from Geoff Neuport's kettlebell muscle. Since I'm still going light with the upper body movements, one of the things that I really like about Geoff's program is that it focuses more on the speed of the bells to generate force and build muscle more than the weight of the bells.
This is the heaviest I've lifted overhead and most pull ups I've done in months due to a mild rotator cuff strain. All of the movements were pain free and felt good. The jerks with the 24kg bell actually felt way too easy. I've done jerks with a 36kg bell around this time last year at the RKC II, but expected to lose quite a bit of strength after mainly doing overhead lifts with 8kg bells. The toughest lift in this sequence was the BU push presses. I think this was the first time I've done this exercise. It forced me to engage my grip and mind all that much more to keep both the bells in a safe and stable pressing pattern.
I'd put my pull up max somewhere around 7 or 8 right now, which isn't too shabby considering I haven't been training pull ups at all, mainly using GTG TRX rows.
Later that afternoon I met up with a prospective Goruck Tough classmate and went for a run on the beach. The tide was in so the sand was a bit firmer for parts of it. Still, having a workout buddy made the run more enjoyable and pushed my pace a little bit faster than I normally run on sand.
We covered 2.4 miles in 32 minutes.
One of the best realizations about this run was that I didn't have any shin or foot pain like the last time I trained for the San Francisco Goruck challenge.
Today I performed 6 GTG sets of 25 incline pushups and 20 knee tucks.
The knee tucks that I do are a variation of the Convict Conditioning ones. I do these ones either flat on the ground or on a bench, without my feet touching down in between reps.
My main workout was as follows
Morning
10x5 double 16kg KB front squats on minute
8x7 double 16kg KB deadlifts on minute
Afternoon
7 rounds for time
6 12kg double KB snatches
10 jumping pull ups
Completed in 7:51
Jumping pull ups are a surprising exercise; they get the heart rate up in a hurry and if you do enough of them the arms will definitely get a nice burn.
In an effort to increase my leg strength, in particular my internal quads, and muscular endurance I've been doing more biking. It's been a great low impact exercise. Today's workout centered primarily around a spin class followed by some weight and interval training. It was as follows
1 hour spin class
8x3 12kg Bottoms Up Floor Presses ea arm
20:10 tabata row 8 rounds
Towards the end of the spin class we did standing isolations where we focused on keeping our upper bodies as still as possible. These were a great leg burn. I chose to do the floor presses BU to work my grip strength and shoulder stabilizer muscles. The Concept II rower is one of my favorite forms of cardio training. It's low impact and works the whole body.
My WTM cap arrived today. Sometimes having a tangible reminder of what I'm working towards gives me that little extra push. Today was a good day of working out.
Indoor rock climbing
Total of 15 boulder problems 9 v0, 5 v1, 1 v2 all on sights (climb 1st attempt without previous knowledge of the climb)
1500m row 6:17
30 BU KB cleans w/ double 16kg bells
2.2 mile run on soft sand 34 minutes.
During the last Tough Mudder Norcal my climbing experience helped out on a good number of the obstacles. Most notably on the Funky Monkey monkey bars. The pics are from my second time through this obstacle just for fun.
As I was going through someone yelled out to keep the arms bent. I can only guess they've been watching a steady dose of American Ninja Warrior. True, for that application bent arms will help, but for monkey bars it makes the obstacle a whole lot harder than it needs to be. When rock climbing if the arms are kept straight during most climbs, then the weight will be on the bones instead of the muscles. I kept my arms straight, body relaxed, and swung from one bar to the next. Next time you're at a playground watch how the kids do it. Do they fight the monkey bars keeping their little arms bent the whole time, or do they swing effortlessly from one bar to the next. Kids are some of the best teachers when it comes to ergonomics and movement.
I haven't been on the rowing machine in a while so this was an easy warm up ro focusing on form and fluidity. The wheel was set at resistance level 7.
The bottom's up cleans did a great job of working my grip and lats. Without knowing what the obstacles on the WTM will be, I have a gut feeling that grip strength will play a significant role.
The soft sand run was a great workout and served to remind me that the bay area is an incredible playground that I need to take advantage of more often. Running on sand is great for several reasons - it does a great job of working my stabilizer muscles and proprioception, it reinforces foot strikes directly below the body and strong push offs, and it forces me to increase my stride rate to increase speed because longer strides are fairly ineffective on soft sand.
After finishing up a 72 hour shift at work with multiple calls after midnight, I was a little beat. I got this workout in in the morning before getting off shift.
2 x 1 mile on the exercise bike on the 3 minute
Max TRX pushups with hands in the handles 30, rest 1 minute, max TRX rows w/ feet 2' from the anchor 40, rest 1 min, max air squats 100.
On all my max efforts I only count the reps with good form. As soon as my form starts to deteriorate or I feel any pain (muscle burn doesn't as pain) I stop. Even though I could probably squeak out a few more shaky reps, that's not the movement pattern that I want to train or ingrain into my muscle memory.
GTG
6 sets of 15 TRX rows & 20 yd side shuffle steps each side
20 24kg KB swings after each call x8 calls
The jumping pull ups seem easy in the beginning, but they do a great job of working the legs and get my heart rate up in a hurry. 20 swings is a relatively low number until it's 0400 and our 3 call after midnight. Then I was usually pretty thankful that it was only 20 swings.
Last year shortly after I completed my first Tough Mudder they announced the World's Toughest Mudder competition. On a whim I put in an application for a wild card spot. After nearly a year with no word from the Tough Mudder folks and just a few months until the WTM, I figured that I probably wasn't going to get a wild card slot this year. Then, a few days before this year's Nor Cal Tough Mudder my number came up for the wild card slot. I jumped up and down a bit, spun around in a few circles, told all my friends, signed up, and then very shortly afterward wondered what on earth I had gotten myself into this time.
Despite having a highly anaerobic body type and a long standing history of not really liking endurance events, over the past year between Goruck Challenges and Tough Mudders, I've kept signing up for more and more such events. After this year's Tough Mudder, I wondered even more what I had gotten into.
Still though, before all of these events, I've had my pre-game jitters and though this is definitely the biggest challenge event wise that I have faced, it's still just a challenge. The event format is a 10 mile course with 30 obstacles and 24 hours to complete as many laps of that 10 mile course as possible. I've always wanted to do a 24 hour adventure race because my shift at work is 24 hours. The course is also in New Jersey in the middle of December. That will be it's own special challenge.
To train for it, I'm sticking with the program that's worked for me for 2 Goruck Challenges and a Tough Mudder, a modified version of Tim Ferriss' "5k to 50k in 12 weeks" from his book The 4-Hour Work Week. For the last few events I've had usually about a month to get ready for them. This time I've got just a little bit less than 3 months, which should allow me to get through close to the whole program. The modifications I'm making to the program this time around are substituting, biking, jump roping and the versa climber for the running portions, using primarily kettlebells, my TRX and other bodyweight exercises for the strength portions, and adding in runs on soft sand 3 or more times per week.
My first day of WTM training September 22, 2011 went as follows
At the station before getting off work
Good Mornings 2x8 w/ 180 sec rest w/ 45lb bar
Jump rope 150, 120, 90, 60, 30 + sit-ups 50, 40, 30, 20, 10 (superset)
total time 11:03 minutes
Then later in the day I went over to Alameda beach and ran as far as I could on the soft sand in 7:30 minutes, turned around and ran back. The run back to 15 seconds less than the run out. I cover .8 miles.
I wore Vincere beach volleyball sand socks to give my feet a little bit of protection. My feet and arches definitely got in a good workout during this run, as did the rest of me. One of my complaints with the treadmill is that my glutes and hammies don't feel as though they are working as hard as during a normal run, because the push off is easier than a run on ground. On the sand though, the push off definitely required more effort as well as lateral stabilization.
Overall, even though this was less than 1/2 hour of total work for the day, it felt like a good start to the program.
Yesterday was my turn to cook at the station again. Since I'm at a single company house now with less crew members, it means I have to cook more often and learn a few more recipes. Since we have our wonderful bay area summer weather with temps in the 90's these days, I decided to go with a crisp and refreshing meal for dinner. Using the Whole Foods app on my ipod I found the following recipes
Watermelon and Feta Salad with Mint
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/653
and
Quinoa Primavera with Chicken, Spring Peas and Asparagas
For the Watermelon salad I left out he tomatoes and cubed the watermelon. I substituted cous cous for the quinoa because we had a box on hand at the station. I also left the chicken, cous cous and veggies in separate dishes to accommodate for me being veggie and another crew member on the paleo diet. Cooking for 5 at the firehouse I multiplied each of the ingredients by 1 1/2. This proved to be unnecessary for the balsamic reduction with plenty left over. 1 cup of balsamic would have been more than enough. Total time for both recipes (minus the calls that we ran while I was cooking) was about 1/2 an hour for each dish. The balsamic reduction can be omitted all together saving about 15 minutes on the watermelon salad. The dishes came out quite tasty with lots of good flavors and folks going back for seconds and thirds.
Sometimes I really love my life. The past week has been one of those times. Within the space of barely over a week I participated in a Goruck Challenge with Class 057 in New York, ran Tough Mudder Norcal on the other side of the country in Tahoe, California and worked two 24 hour shifts at the firehouse running multiple calls after midnight, in between those two events. I went from one event at sea level to the next with climbs reaching peaks at over 9,000 feet high.
I had been assembling a small group of folks to run the Mudder with for a while, since these experiences are much better shared. One by one they all had to drop for one reason or another. I had found three more teammates through the Goruck Tough facebook group and was looking forward to doing the event with them with a buddy carry or two thrown in for fun. I checked facebook one last time before heading up to tahoe to confirm our groups 10 am start time. By then Joel from class 036 (and numerous other GRCs) who had gone on Saturday, had posted that this was the toughest tough mudder course he had been through. Joel has been through quite a few of these things so to hear that definitely caused a butterfly or two. Then I remembered that with all the challenges over the past year - last year's Tough Mudder Norcal and then two GRCs - I had butterflies with those too, but got through them all the same. This was simply my old friend the pre-game jitters. I'd get through this just as with the past challenges.
Once in Tahoe I lost all comms; no cell phone, wifi or landline, no way with communicating with my team. I figured this would simply be an exercise in resourcefulness and another little challenge for the event. Once at Squaw Valley I donned my Radio Ruck and GR Tac hat hoping someone from the team would spot me as I did laps around the registration area looking for them. When that didn't work I stood in the middle of the area and scanned the crowd for them. I didn't find my fellow GRTs but I did run into two friends from the East Bay. As we hiked up the hill for our 10 am start I still kept an eye out for the GRTs. Still no luck. As my new team and I charged up the hill at the start, I realized I had forgotten to tell them to wait by the obstacle if we were to get split up. There was a huge bottleneck of folks at the second obstacle, the mud crawl. Before I knew it, they were already up the next hill while I was still waiting to make my through mud. Last year's Kiss of mud obstacle was more gravel than mud. This time through I was able to float most of the way through before having to crawl the last little bit. The water was cold, but nowhere near as cold as the 38 degree pond during last year's. We continued up another hill until we got to a large tank filled with murky water. A plywood board and barbwire spanned across the tank, forcing us to dunk completely underneath it and surface on the other side. Again, cold, but not that bad.
Here I am right around 3 miles in. There was a sign on the side of the trail that read "WARRIOR DASH FINISH LINE. But this is Tough Mudder and you've only just begun."
We continued up the hill and over a few more obstacles until we got to a second dunk tank. I thought it was a little odd that they would repeat the same obstacle. Turns out they didn't. Sure it looked the same from the outside, but not until I climbed up the ladder to hop in did I realize they had poured bags of ice into this one. There was so much ice in the tank that after I ducked under the plywood I couldn't physically walk through the ice. I had to sort of breast stroke my way through until I could get a hand on the far edge of the tank pulling myself and climbing over the ice.
I've never understood those folks that do the polar bear events. Never had any inkling of a desire to join them, yet here I was.
After hiking a short ways I ran into another bottleneck of folks at the Everest obstacle. This obstacle looked very similar to half of a skateboarding half pipe or the warped wall from ninja warrior. Here I met the best ad hoc teammates I could ask for in Nathan and Katie. We struck up a conversation while waiting in line shivering and all decided to run the rest of the course together. One of the things that Tough Mudder emphasizes is teamwork among all participants, not just amongst your own team. People formed a human ladder at the bottom of the wall while people at the top of the wall would extend out there hands to help pull people up and over. I decided that once at the top I wanted to help 6 people over the wall, because 6 is a good round number. Once at the topI was having so much fun helping people over that I stayed for probably closer to 30 people. Every time someone that was struggling with the wall would make it over the crowd would erupt into cheers and clapping. As I finally stood up to continue on, someone else eagerly took my spot. I figured Nathan and Katie were probably miles ahead by now, so I'd go it alone once again. At the bottom Katie smiled and asked if I was ready to go again. They had been doing the same thing for just as long.
We set out together along the trail coming across fun obstacles like these monkey bars over more murky water.
Another fun obstacle was this year's boa constrictor. The boa constrictor obstacle is made up of corrugated tubes similar to the ones we use for low profile training for firefighting. This year someone had the bright idea to have them slope down into and out of a pool of more cold murky water. As I got up to the obstacle there were lines on both sides, but the middle was free. I figured I'd just hop through the middle one instead of waiting around. After inching my way through the first tube, I soon found out why the middle tubes were free. The water was deeper in the middle so I had to hold my breath and almost completely submerge my head as I crawled through the first part of the second tube. This was definitely not for the claustrophobic.
A few more miles in, Nate asked a few questions about the GRCs and wanted to take a turn with the pack. We started trading off every mile or two. Here, out of all the folks in the Tough Mudder, I had managed to cross paths with someone else that felt more comfortable hiking with a pack than without.
We came across numerous folks that were hurting out in the heat and altitude. Once again all three of us were on the same page. We stopped and asked them all if they were alright and offered gu's, hammer gels and water to those that needed it. For all three of us, this was less about racing and more about the shared experience. I can tell you their company and conversation made a world of difference. Last year's Tough Mudder was around 7 miles and took me around 2-2 1/2 hours to complete. This one was 11+ miles and took 6 1/2. Sure, we definitely could have shaved a bunch of time off if we hadn't stopped to help others out, but then we wouldn't have had this great experience together.
Katie and Nate, I thank you both for a great time and hope to do more GRCs and Mudders with you in the future.
More pics can be found at the NS6 Facebook page link on the right.
High Vis RIT
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Matt Leonard from Montgomery County (MD) Fire Rescue Station 3 submitted
this high vis idea! Matt was going over the RIT pack and thought of all the
impo...
and we begin again....
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I'm back for a wee bit! With the holidays approaching and life in the fast
lane with my two beautiful and growing children, I thought I had better pop
in h...
