The Tough Bloke Challenge

Finally, for Kirsty...here's an update on the Tough Bloke Challenge.
To start, it was very fresh but clear day - probably about 8 degrees that morning. There were over 650 competitors in the event, which was divided into various age groups. I was a 'veteran' 30-45 group.
The course itself was winding through bush - it was set up on a scout park in appin, and they have many fixed obstacles, like climbing nets, ladders with tyres that you have to drop through into water, concrete pipes with freezing water, custard like freezing mud pits with loose slung barbed wire.... piles of tyres... rope swings...This was all set on a 7.1km course. You start off by running for about 3km into the bush - now, you know I am not a runner, so it was interesting to see how quickly I ran out of puff from starting off too fast etc etc - then you have to negotiate some hurdles - over and under, then run some more and the real obstacles start.
With the course, you can choose to not negotiate an obstacle, and this will give you 10 minutes penalty. Because my shoulders are not 100% (even less now) I chose to leave out two of the obstacles which I knew would just be a bit too much for my poor shoulders. I wish I'd left out the third and not really injured it even more.

The funniest thing was going through the mud - commando style. Sarah, one of my clients took one look at it and said, 'oh, this has to be worth 10 minutes surely'... I replied, 'this is why we came'!!! so in she plunged.... gotta love that :-)
But the hardest thing was then trying to get your muscles to work & run again when you emerged with 10kg more of mud on you...and it was freezing cold. I was really proud of both my clients, David - who 6 months before could barely do a pushup, and Sarah, a young Mum of 3, who negotiated every obstacle and came in 1hr 8 minutes. We all ran the course together to provide support for each other, which was badly needed at times!!!

I did realise two things though - 1. I am not tough ;p 2. I am not a bloke ;p but I tried it anyhow and got around okay! So it was a great achievement and a lot of fun.

I will definitely do it again provided I can rehab this shoulder okay. A month later and it's still sore - I've had massage & acupuncture to date and my acupuncturist is now worried it may be more serious than we thought - it's both heads of my bicep tendons that just freeze my shoulder. Last time I only injured the long head of the bicep tendon and that rehabbed quickly...