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Getting Dirty in May I racked my brain for a theme but came up short. So I'm just gonna say it as it is. This challenge is about getting muddy, getting dirty and getting filthy and, hopefully, not dying in the meantime. So here is what is coming up this time round: Tough Mudder!! On Week 1 We have Tough Mudder. My team consists of the totally badass @Rhovaniel and I think we are both quite keen to tear up the course. But Tough Mudder is the Warmup because coming up on Week 3 we've got the 'biggest obstacle course race in the world' Rat Race Dirty Weekend! You might have heard a few of the Rangers talking about this one recently. It's been in the work for a whole year and will become an epic Ranger Meetup. OCR, beer festival, camping trip and after party with some of the finest Ranger's in the guild this side of the pond in attendance. We've got @Mr_Willes, @Rhovaniel, @Jarric, @iatetheyeti, @Charlie_Quinn and myself. This one event promises to be a massive heap of fun and excitement. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that I'm very, very excited about this race. To Round Things out Week 4 as a 'recovery' run. Nuclear Rush (incase you don't know, the magnificent flying ass on the right hand side is me) If I'm honest, this race is just insanity. I'm only doing it so that I don't end up running a hard 10k road race instead. It'll be interesting to see how my body copes with it. So as you can see I've got a lot of stuff coming up and a lot of it is going to beat me up and leave me staggering around. Because of this I'm going to take a break from my own convention and not promise a damned thing in regards to workouts. Instead this challenge is all about recovery. I'm going to try to maintain 4 runs a week because I still have a marathon coming up in the summer but I will skip runs if needed after Tough Mudder if I feel like I need the recovery time. I'm pretty stubborn about that so don't expect many skipped runs. I'm going to try to lift 4 times a week but I will skip sessions if I need to before and After Tough Mudder. My aim would be to do at least 2 per week but I'm very much playing it all by ear. So here are my actual goals Update Every Day Update the forum every day. Report on workouts, recovery and calorie intake for each given day. That'll simply help me from taking this challenge as an excuse to go haywire. Obviously there probably won't be much updating on the days that we're camping at RRDW. Do Something for Recovery Every Day There are no hard rules here. It can be anything. Stretching, yoga, a bath, meditation and even swapping out a run for a walk because I ran 20 miles the Saturday before. Just something to keep me mindful about recovery and report on what I'm doing. The idea is to make me actively focus on it a bit. That's it. I'm really excited for this challenge even if I'm being very nebulous about the whole thing.

Welcome Mud Lovers! This is a continuation of the Obstacle Racers, Assemble Group This is an open group for anyone who is interested, curious, or completely obsessed with all things OCR related! Feel free to ask questions, share tips on gear or obstacle technique, or just let us know about a recent or upcoming race. Nothing is off topic and everyone is welcome. In a slight change, we'll be adding trail running to the discussion too. For a lot of us, the obstacle racing season is winding down for the year, and trail running is a great way to train for OCR's in the quiet winter months.

OBSTACLE COURSE RACING (OCR) FANATICS Welcome! This group is for anyone who is training for an OCR, is interested in participating in an OCR in the future, or are just plain obsessed with obstacle racing! This is place for us to all talk incessantly about OCR, share tips on training, ask advice about gear obstacle technique, or even just let everyone know about your latest OCR or Mud Run. Pop your name and current challenge or battle log link on the sheet below so we can cheer each other on in our quest for OCR glory. Accountability Sheet

I know there are quite a few people on Nerd Fitness that enjoy Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) / mud runs and some that want to give one a try. There’s been some discussion on my challenge about some of us meeting up next year to do an OCR somewhere in Europe. At the moment, there is a bit of interest in meeting up in Amsterdam in April next year to do Toughest, an 8 kilometer OCR. So I thought I’d open this up and see if anyone else was interested in meeting up for some muddy obstacle fun! Toughest Amsterdam is taking place on the Saturday 15th April, so there’s a possibility of making this a weekend Nerd Fitness meetup. If some people don't want to do the race and just want to meet up (spectators / cheerleaders welcome), we can arrange an evening get together after the race or for the following day. All ideas welcome as I know nothing about Amsterdam (other than the obvious!) Please don’t be put off by the name if the event! It will be something that newbies will be able to complete, and we'll be an awesome team of unstoppable nerds! No one will get left behind. Of course, I’d love to get as many of us as possible together, so if there are any other obstacle races or interesting running events around Europe or in the UK that people would like to look at meeting up for instead, post them here and maybe we can do something that suits the majority. Though, if we could avoid anything around May, that would be really helpful for me! I really hope we can get a big group of us together for some muddy shenanigans!

Around a year ago, after a little persuasion from a few people on here, I signed up for Rat Race Dirty Weekend. A 20 mile obstacle course race with some of the biggest, craziest obstacles you can imagine. Worlds longest monkey bars, anyone? Or how about an obstacle four shipping containers high followed by a slip and slide? I can't believe that how quickly it's come around and that in less than 3 weeks I'll be attempting these nutty obstacles and so much more. Thankfully, I'm not running this race alone or competitively. I'll be doing a "fun" lap with the Mudstacle crew, who I'm certain will look after me and help me round this epic course. But because I'm a glutton for punishment, I'm not just doing Dirty Weekend in the next few weeks. This is my schedule for April and May: 22nd April - W.A.R (OCR) 1st May - 10k trail run 5th May - Dirty Weekend 14th May - Nuclear Race 12km 21st May - Tough Mudder So yeah, I've got events before and straight after the biggest run of my life. As @Maigahane has just said in her challenge, you don't have to be crazy to be a Ranger, but it certainly helps. Main Challenge Goal: Stay In One Piece, Don't Die After a normal 10-12km OCR, I'm usually recovered in two or three days but I'm not sure what 20 miles of running, obstacles and an after party is going to do to me. I've got 7 days between Dirty Weekend and Nuclear Race, and Nuclear Race and Tough Mudder, so my main focus is recovery. Foam Rolling: Minimum 10 minutes a day Stretching: Warm ups before every activity. At least 10 minutes after an activity & mini stretches during the day Recovery Runs: Go out for at least 2 miles at recovery pace within 2 days of an event Other Goals: To be decided weekly As I don't know how I'm going to feel after each event, I'm going to take each week in turn and set goals as needed each week. If I'm feeling capable, those goals might be running or strength training related. If I'm completely destroyed, they'll be additional recovery goals such as yoga. Bring on the Madness!

So my Mum has just asked me if I would like to go and have one of those cellulite wrap things done, where you have mud smeared all over you, they then wrap you in Cling Wrap or Sandwhich Wrap and leave you trussed up for an hour, then unwrap you, but you have to go back for several treatments before you see results. I said no. I sincerely believe it to be a waste of money. Cellulite is something at a cellular level, mud and plastic wrap does not make sense to me. I said to her perhaps she wants to rid herself of all the bread, pastry, potato, carrot and flavoured yoghurt and see how that goes for two weeks. Her biggest problem, the only vegetables she eats come from out of a bag in the freezer and she does not eat salads at all. Just wanted to know if anyone has had these treatments, do they work? Are they just charlatans? Is it a miracle cure for cellulite?

My last 6 week challenge kind of kerploded with real life and busy-ness and school and work and all sorts of stuff. Started off great, petered out around the end. Kinda the story of my life. However, as January-February proved, I work VERY good with hard, solid deadlines. And there is a big deadline coming up soon: June 13th. (Also, I feel like a massive idiot, since I thought I had four weeks to train for this, and I have THREE weeks because they moved the date. Aaaargh.) It's a little over 8km, with tons of obstacles (and, of course, mud). My last race was a 5k, and I came in 9th out of 54 competitors, which is pretty awesome for me. The obstacles are a bit of a problem, though, since my upper body strength isn't all that great, and my sprinting cardio needs a lot of work. Consequently, I've changed my gym routine to: pull-downs, wall-assisted handstands, and sprinting laps. This sucks, and my shoulders and arms and back are killing me, BUT I am hoping it will pay off! The other big thing is diet. This is the most muscle I've ever had on my body before, BUT... it's also a lot of fat, and I bounced back almost 20 lbs after my fight. And not the good 20 lbs. The squishy 20 lbs. So with three weeks to go, it's back to Dolce-esque eating for me (lean meat and vegetables ahoy!) to try and reduce my excess. So here is just where I'm going to post what fitness activities I did today, what I ate, and my check-in weights to see what progress I've made there. Day 1 - Saturday, May 23rd 45 minutes at the pool while my daughter was in swim class. Laps, stretching, sauna. Ate a three-egg and piri-piri omlette, and then 1/3 of my daughter's burger and a Diet Coke at the Farmer's Market. Now on to more water! Arm soreness level: 6 out of 10.

Zombie Escape @ Panic Point When: Saturday September 9th, 2015 Where: 2808 Cedar Creek Rd, Youngsville NC Race website: http://www.raleighmudrun.com/zombie-5k/ I've already signed up to do this with one friends but it would be awesome to meet up with some friends from NF who might be interested too! The race looks awesome! 500,000 gallons of water, 4 zombie pits, 18 obstacles, and a 5k. What more could us fit nerds dream of? Anyone Interested?!

Camp Titan: Radioactive When: Saturday, August 2, 2014 Time: Start at 9:00 am Where: Buck Hill Ski Resort 15400 Buck Hill Road Burnsville, MN 55306 Registration opens February 15, 2014 This is a three mile challenge run with water, mud and obstacles that will have you running up and down Buck Hill. Last year they went up and down it 6 time. It looks like it will be a blast and would love to get a group of nerds together to do this. If you want more info about it, here is the link to their site: Camp Titan Let me know if you are wanting to join, I can register us as a team.