Miw-Sher's Tough Mudder Survival Journey

[Miw_Sher]

So there was this.

Then there was this.

And that ended with the thing in the picture you see attached.

As I realised that training for this thing is going to take more than 4-week challenge aims, I decided to open a long, ongoing thread about me trying to get to a level where I manage to get this without dying and hopefully without slowing down my fellow rebels too much. Doing this also alloys me to discuss training specifically and not have it get lost among all the other stuff that is going on in my life. More on my plans on the next post, so I can leave this page for status updates, stats and whatnot.
 

Character Sheet:

Name: Miw-Sher

Race: Goblin

Age: 25

Nationality: N/A

 

Starting Stats:

Weight: 62 kg
Max Push-Ups: 8 inclined

Max Pull-Ups: haha. you funny.

5k: N/A

10k: N/A

 

March Stats:

Weight: 59 kg
Max Push-Ups: 20 inclined

Max Pull-Ups: haha. you funny.

5k: 38'

Current Stats:

Weight: 61.7 kg
Max Push-Ups: 4

Max Pull-Ups: haha. you funny.

5k: 34'11

10k: N/A

 

[Mr.Six]

Like the thread and TM is one of my goals for the next couple years too!  Good luck and if I end up signing up locally I will let you know!!

[Miw_Sher]

So, my way of tackling things that scare me is reading up on them. From what I gathered I will be needing quite a bit of upper body strength, but especially endurance.

 

I also have a severe budget limitation and a health limitation. AKA - last year my knee started hurting out of the blue. Nobody ever figured out what was wrong with it because every test showed it was fine. I started exercising slowly again mid-December and stretching and now it doesn't seem to hurt anymore, even when squatting, going on very long walks uphill or downhill or short sprints. That is great, but it means I will have to do a lot of prevention work to avoid it happening again.

 

"Ok, Miw, that is all good to know but what are you going to about all that?"

So, Tough Mudder Ireland has its own 3-Month training plan out (thank you @Jarric and @DarK_RaideR for pointing it out), so if I can get myself to a place where I can follow a modified version of it by the time April comes around I yill be very happy. Overall, though, my main goals will be to get myself to a point where I can comfortably run 10k on a hilly terrain at a decent speed and improving my upper body strength. Oh and not screwing up my knee again.

As for the rest, my current training consists of Darebee's Foundation Light and a walking program, together with some knee rehab exercises. I'm wrapping up Foundation Light this week, and the walking program in two. Once that is done, I will move on to Darebee's Foundation complemented with Push-Ups and a walk-to-run program.  Then it should be end of February and I'll see what I should do in March. Then it will be April and it will be time to start the TM training anyhow. With fingers crossed I should be able to do the program doing assisted pull-ups instead of full ones.
 

So as a whole, a standard day will look like this:

Morning:

Wake-Up
Mobility Exercises + Foam Rolling

Walk/Run Training

Stretching

Evening:
Foam Rolling

Balance Exercise

Push-Up Challenge (Later Pull-Up Challenge)
Darebee Bodyweight Program

Knee Rehab: Strengthening OR Knee Rehab: Stretching

Stretch

 

The evening stuff looks like a lot, but I timed it and it clocks in at about 60 min of work.

The reason I'm not planning in a traditional weekly program with rest days is that Darebee already includes those in its programs as stretching days. Same with the running program. So in fact, I won't be doing both the morning and evening workout every day. The Darebee programs also mix bodyweight and cardio, so if this becomes too much I will just swap their cardio program with the running program.

Why Darebee?

• Cheap
• Can do their stuff at home in my underwear
• It goes with my goal of trying out all their programs
• I have a ton of other things going on so having pre-made programs I can just follow without thinking is a real plus.

 

So, yeah, there it goes. Let's see how this turns out.
 

*For future reference: a whole lot of bullsh*t that happened this summer. Enquire at own risk.

[Miw_Sher]

25 minutes ago, Mr.Six said:

Like the thread and TM is one of my goals for the next couple years too!  Good luck and if I end up signing up locally I will let you know!!

 

Best of luck! By locally, do you mean in the UK, or...?

[Jarric]

Sounds like you've got a good plan to start working towards this, I will of course be following along to offer my support

[Miw_Sher]

Just now, Jarric said:

Sounds like you've got a good plan to start working towards this, I will of course be following along to offer my support

 

I'm happy you think so! Just knoying I'm not going completely in the wrong direction is already a great motivator.

[Mr.Six]

1 hour ago, Miw_Sher said:

By locally, do you mean in the UK

 

I wish I could come run in the UK.  I should have made that more clear...  If I sign up for a Mudder here in Colorado, I'd like to reach out to you as an reference and someone to be accountable to.  Sorry, that's way more lame than trying to run in Ireland.

 

Side note:  I'm a huge fan of Darebee too.

[Miw_Sher]

11 hours ago, Mr.Six said:

 

I wish I could come run in the UK.  I should have made that more clear...  If I sign up for a Mudder here in Colorado, I'd like to reach out to you as an reference and someone to be accountable to.  Sorry, that's way more lame than trying to run in Ireland.

 

Side note:  I'm a huge fan of Darebee too.

 

Oh, no worries at all! I just never know where rebels are so I thought you might be in Europe.

I'd be happy to keep you accountable. Do drop me a line when that happens!

[DarK_RaideR]

Stalk ALL the Miw_Sher threads! Summon ALL the OCR people!

 

@Charlie_Quinn @EricMN @Slates @darkfoxx and I bet I'm forgetting too many others....

[Charlie_Quinn]

31 minutes ago, DarK_RaideR said:

Stalk ALL the Miw_Sher threads! Summon ALL the OCR people!

 

@Charlie_Quinn @EricMN @Slates @darkfoxx and I bet I'm forgetting too many others....

 

 

Sounds like a good plan Miw. Looking forward to following your journey. So sad I can't make it to the Tough Mudder meet up with you guys. 

[Miw_Sher]

Well, thanks everyone!

Today was a stretch-only/rest day. So nothing much to report.

[Miw_Sher]

Today was long walk day and flutter kicks day, though my schedule got messed up by a latte delivery. I managed to get everything done though and I finally have my foam roller. So cool.

Morning:

Mobility

Knee Workout
Stretch

 

Evening:

Foam Rolling

50 Minute Walk

Stretching

 

Darebee Foundation Light Day 29: Spread across the Day

I actually forgot to do balancing exercises. Meh.

 

The walk itself was meh. I averaged at 8:50 min/km which is quite good, but my rythm was all but steady. There were too many people standing in the way and just being weird about the fact that I was walking so fast. I would have gladly explained but it's rather difficult when you are speeding past people are double their speed. Meh.

[EricMN]

On 1/27/2017 at 9:28 AM, DarK_RaideR said:

Stalk ALL the Miw_Sher threads! Summon ALL the OCR people!

 

@Charlie_Quinn @EricMN @Slates @darkfoxx and I bet I'm forgetting too many others....

I felt the awakening in the Force. Solid training plan. I'll be following along

[Miw_Sher]

Thanks everyone for the support! It means a lot.

I did not check in yesterday, though I should have, because I finally wrapped up Foundation Light, marking the start of siriuz buziness. Overall though it was a pretty uneventful day.

So, today, the proper prgram starts with the last two weeks of the walking programm, and the first day of Foundation and Upper Body Challenge. I was really excited about this and wanted to kick it off in the best way possible.

 

So of course it started in the worst way it could.

 

I went to bed relatively early in the evening because I knew I had to get my running in before 8am due to some other mail delivery business. This one was actually kind of important due to me having to be physically there to sign to be able to receive the package. (The Saturday incident was more due to a point of personal pride.) In fact, the importance of receiving this package was furthre increased by the fact that it contains my laptop charger which I forgot in London. Which is vital for me to be able to work and already set my up 5 days.

 

Anyhow, I ended up waking up at midnight and was unable to fall asleep again before 4am. As a result, when my alarm rang, I could not get up, and basically only managed to force myself to get up at 9am, when I had to be awake to listen for the bell. Then I lazed in bed until 10am. At this point, I'm not a happy camper and wondering what has happened to my package.

I decide to get over it and do my bodyweight workout. I'm anxious so I skip foam rolling. Even though I have nothing to do, it feels like I am late and that I need to cut short on the workout. This does not make sense but anxiety.

 

The workout itself actually went very well. I did the required push-ups fairly easily, though I could not have done one more. I also managed to do Foundation at Level 2 which felt pretty great.

So in the end, my morning workout looks like this:

 

Morning:

Mobility Warmup

Balance Exercise

Upper Body Challenge - Day 1
Foundation - Day 1

Knee Rehab: Six O'Clock Workout

Stretch

 

At this point it's almost noon and my charger still isn't there. I decide to try and figure out where it is. Royal Mail tells me it got to Belgium on Friday and redirects me to bPost.
 

bPost tells me it's still overseas.

At this point, I'm really not happy. I'm annoyed, have no clue how I will manage and am very, very annoyed. The afternoon was meant to be spent shooting scenes for a movie we are working on, but still.

So the rest of the day I'm very unhappy and annoyed and can sort of feel depression creeping up on me. To add to it, the day is overall crappy with constant drizzling rain that makes sure you feel cold no matter what your wear, and the shooting goes on forever and by the time I am home it's past 18h00, dark, misty and still drizzling. I'm cold and I don't have any motivation to go run, so I can already see how my first training day is going to be half-assed and shitty.

Sell, ladies and gets, turns out I was wrong.

I got home, realised I had nothing to do and had winter running clothes. I put those on, and put my phone to charge, download a podcast and use the waiting time to do foam rolling. Then, I put on my running shoes and a silly neon-yellow thing you normally wear while biking, and go off for my walk.

Wohooooo !

 

So my evening workout was:

 

Foam Rolling

Warm-Up

20 Minute Walk

Stretch

 

So that was a story of how a really crappy day ended in a huge win.

[DarK_RaideR]

Way to turn it around!

[Charlie_Quinn]

Good work on getting out despite the foul weather.

[Miw_Sher]

Today continued with another big win. I have this thing about running in the dark. I always wanted to be the crazy runner who runs before dawn and after sunset (a already qualify as crazy rain and snow runner), but something always put me off, which became a bit obstacle to running in winter. I already kind of overcame that yesterday, but when I woke up this morning i still had that UGH feeling looking outside.

Anyhow, today, I finally got myeslf to go outside despite it still being absolute darkness. So yay!

 

Though I did forget to foam roll in the process of talking my brain into going out. But still better than skippign the workout completely.

 

Evening workout also went very well, though exhausting.

 

Morning Workout:

Mobility Exercises
Warm-Up

40 Minute Brisk Walk

Stretch

 

Upper Body Challenge - Day 2 (throughout the day)

 

Evening Workout:

Mobility Warmup

Balance Drill: Starmaster Workout (1 min per leg)
Foundation - Day 2 (With 1lb weights added for arms)

Knee Rehab: Iron Bar Workout (Sequence ", 10 reps)

Stretch

 

(It occurred to me that I should mention that I have been adapting the workouts to better suit knee rehab, I will make sure to specify what modifications I am making in the future)

[DarK_RaideR]

15 hours ago, Miw_Sher said:

Anyhow, today, I finally got myeslf to go outside despite it still being absolute darkness. So yay!

That mentality of pushing yourself when you feel like giving up will come in quite handy at the Mudder

[Miw_Sher]

4 hours ago, DarK_RaideR said:

That mentality of pushing yourself when you feel like giving up will come in quite handy at the Mudder

 

Being a stubborn bitch is my strength and downfall.

[Miw_Sher]

Update on 01/02 Workout - Day 3

 

Morning Workout:

Mobility Exercises

No Walking, but did some extra!long Foam Rolling and Stretching Instead

 

Evening Workout:

Mobility Warmup

Balance Drill: Starmaster Workout (1 min per leg)

Upper Body Challenge - Day 2
Foundation - Day 3 (With 1lb weights added for arms)

Knee Rehab: Iron Bar Workout (Sequence 1, 10 reps, they hurt)

Stretch

[Miw_Sher]

02/02 Workout - Day 4

I still had to argue with my brain for about 45 minutes about going out int he dark and cold. It seems like darkness is my running arch-enemy. The run was slightly more enjoyable though, so I think that's improving after all.
 

Morning Workout:

Mobility Exercises
Warm-Up

40 Minute Brisk Walk

Stretch

 

Forgot foam rolling again. I'm starting to Sense a pattern.

 

Upper Body Challenge - Day 4 (throughout the day)

 

Evening Workout:

Foam Rolling
Foundation - Day 4

No Knee rehab it being a stretching day, so I did a 15 min Yoga session instead.

Stretch (areas that still needed to be targeted after Yoga)

Then I accidentally microwaved a spoon and decided to call it a day.

[Jarric]

19 hours ago, Miw_Sher said:

I still had to argue with my brain for about 45 minutes about going out int he dark and cold. It seems like darkness is my running arch-enemy.

 

The more often you do it the less of an argument you'll have with yourself. And on the plus side the days are only getting longer between now and the mudder.

 

19 hours ago, Miw_Sher said:

Then I accidentally microwaved a spoon and decided to call it a day.

 

Was it in food or...?

[Miw_Sher]

3 hours ago, Jarric said:

 

The more often you do it the less of an argument you'll have with yourself. And on the plus side the days are only getting longer between now and the mudder.

 

Was it in food or...?

 

Yeah; I am so thankful for the summer coming.

And the spoon was in a tea cup. I have since discovered that it is actually good practice to put a spoon in a cup of water when you microwave it. The things you learn...

[Miw_Sher]

Morning Workout:

Mobility Exercises

Foam Rolling

No Walking, took it slow today, though it felt like I should have done something during the entire daw.

 

Evening Workout:

Foam Rolling

Mobility Warmup

Balance Drill: Starmaster Workout (1 min per leg)

Upper Body Challenge - Day 5
Foundation - Day 5

Knee Rehab: Six O'Clock Workout (5 reps x 5 sets)

Stretch

[Miw_Sher]

I messed up today, which lead to me doing only the core of my workout, which is:

 

Upper Body Challenge - Day 6
Foundation - Day 6

(Both throughout the day)

 

Evening:

50 Minutes Walk

I pushed my walk to the afternoon because I wanted to tackle the trail I want to use to train in the future, and also to use it as a study break. That ended up being part of the screw up, but I also realised that there is no way i can run that trail in the dark. It is a mess of stones, woods and mud and not lit, so I'll have to wait until the days get longer I fear. Or work it into the weekends when I have a more flexible timeline (which is probably what I'll end up doing).