World's Toughest Mudder Training Day 1

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.

http://nuffsaid6.blogspot.com/2011/09/definitely-one-tough-mudder-tough.html


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.



http://toughmudder.com/events/worlds-toughest-mudder-series-finals/

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.