Something has to give

It would seem that I have been neglecting my blog - more than a month without a post. This doesn't mean that I haven't been writing, quite to the contrary I have had the pleasure of writing for a much larger audience than this humble blog would ever likely see.

In October 2012 I was contacted and asked if I would write reviews of the various obstacle races I was attending for Obstacle Racing Magazine (www.obstacleracing.com.au). Since then I have been focused on writing those reviews, sorting photographs and editing footage taken during my running of the events and turning all of the raw material into content for the first issue of the magazine and the website and Facebook page (facebook.com/obstacleracemag).

On top of The Stampede, Hidden Warrior and The Warrior Challenge: Viking reviews I was given the honor of writing a feature article entitled "Fitness and Weight Loss: Using OCR to get your groove back" in which I combined the weight loss stories of a mother of two from Connecticut and my own into an introduction to getting into Obstacle Racing.

All of these articles, with the exception of the as yet unpublished Warrior Challenge: Viking review can be found on the Obstacle Racing Magazine website within the free online version of the first issue.

The videos that I am producing can be found on my YouTube channel (youtube.com/benquinney).

So there you have it, I may have been neglecting this blog, but it is for a good reason. At least I think it is a good reason.

I promise to be back soon - I will post something soon about the workouts I have been doing on my holidays. I have been doing my best to break this body of mine - but it is still holding together.

Who knew I would ever have a trophy wall?

My trophy wall

As someone who previously avoided having to participate in sporting events, particularly team sports, I have never won any trophies so I have never had the need for a "trophy wall". Since running my first Obstacle Course Race that seems to have changed. Rather than collecting traditional trophies with little figures of people playing sport on them, (to date I have not even coming close to a podium finish to earn something similar) I have started collecting race bibs and photographs of myself running the courses, as taken by my loving wife and various professional on course photographers.

After sticking the race bib and photos from my first event on the wall I have developed an appreciation for why others might keep their "Participant" trophies or ribbons displayed in a prominent location within their home. Having my photos and the muddy race bibs that accompany them on display has a way of taking me right back to the mud and painful hills or sandbag carry pictured. Re-living the memories from past events helps remind me why I get up so early to train. They motivate me, and like an album full of family vacation photos, remind me of the fun I had out there in all that mud.

2012 has been a wonderful introduction for me to the sport of Obstacle Course Racing and the community that surrounds it. I am incredibly excited to see what 2013 will bring to the Australian Obstacle Course Racing calendar. The confirmed line up of events on the Victorian calendar so far includes Australia’s introduction to the Spartan race series (www.spartanrace.com.au) in March and some new local events like the Beach Bash series (www.beachbash.com.au). With this many new events on the docket I might have to move my trophy wall out of the lounge room and onto something a little bigger just to keep up.

If you haven’t already heard I will be helping McDonald Media Group (www.mcdonaldmedia.net.au) produce the world’s first magazine dedicated to OCR – “Obstacle Course Racing Magazine” (www.obstacleracing.com.au) and help them run an Obstacle Course Racing League in Australia (www.ocrl.com.au) so make sure to visit the respective websites and get involved, then go out and get muddy!

Toys in the pain factory

I have been playing with the panoramic feature of iOS6 today - and what better use than to show everyone my gym.

My gym

I love my gym - 24 x 7 access, never have to wait for any equipment, always playing good music and I get along with all the other members :)

I would still love to get some gym matting, bumper plates, some floor matting and some other strongman equipment but my little gym is really coming along.

Getting over getting sick

Image courtesy "The Hurley Bird Catches the Worm"

"Getting sick sucks!" Let me qualify that for those that may not know me personally. As someone who has never been seriously sick and who almost never gets even even a little bit sick I don't really have any first hand experience with how bad something as common as the flu can get, but I hear it can be awful.

Historically if I got a runny nose or a tickle in my throat I would continue to train lightly and in a couple of days I would be back to normal. This sort of mild sickness and rapid recovery has traditionally infuriated my friends and family to no end as they suffer for 5 to 7 days with pockets full of tissues dosed up cold and flu tablets stuck on the couch wrapped up under a blanket. But this last couple of weeks the tables have turned.

I went to bed feeling a little unwell one Sunday night and after a night of rotating fever induced intense cold and sweating my regular alarm went off at 5am so I automatically got up, as I always do. I generally have no trouble motivating myself to get into the gym or hit the road even at 5am, so if I find myself wanting to crawl back into bed I try and take a second to examine what is really going on. My legs, shoulders, biceps and back were all very achy even though the day before had been a rest day. How can this be the case? "Oh, I am sick" I muttered to myself in the dark quiet of a Monday morning.

Image stolen from Facebook

As someone all to familiar with making excuses when it comes to exercise and nutrition I am hyper vigilant of the times I give myself reasons to skip a workout. I often find myself in an internal debate over what is legitimate and what is me just being "weak". Thankfully these debates don't happen very often, but when they do I often lay on the guilt pretty thick even when I know the best thing I can do is rest and recover. I tell myself "I can push through this. I will feel all the better for it" and I am usually right, but sometimes I really need to accept that fact that I am genuinely sick.

I have the same problem at the other end of an illness too, "when should you start training again?". I find myself thinking "I am feeling better, I should get back into it tomorrow morning", but how soon is too soon? I don't think I am capable of waiting until I am completely recovered, I can barely hold off until I am "pretty good with a little cough or runny nose" before I start hitting the road and the weights but this seems to be a very personal decision. I know that if I start training again my body will tell me when it has nothing left to give so I will back off the intensity or just try and coast it home for the rest of the run, but I guess everyone has to find that balance for themselves.

Image courtesy The Stampede Melbourne

I had been nearly 2 weeks without training when I attended my first CrossFit class yesterday morning AND I NEARLY DIED! I went for a reasonably light run this morning and had NO STAMINA! The Stampede Melbourne is 16 days out and I am going to have to put in some hard work to bring my condition back up to what it was before I got sick if I want to hit the top 25%. I really am very glad that I dont get sick very often because being forced to take so many steps backward is no fun at all.

Training week roundup 15th - 21st September 2012

iPad WOD application

Friday night seems like the perfect night to look back on the weeks training, take stock and prepare to push hard again for the week ahead.

This week was a little bit lighter than usual because I had some additional work commitments that meant I couldn't run at lunch as much as I would have liked although I didn't have a rest day so I am not sure exactly where that leaves the balance for the week.

I tried a new CrossFit box Wednesday morning, CrossFit Merciless (website currently down try Facebook instead), and as of Thursday began following the workout programming of Merciless' head coach Peter Trapp. Thus far the program has been a really good challenge that has left me aching more than I have in a while.

Training for the week of 15th - 21st September 2012 looked like this:

---

Saturday 15th
10km run
53:00min

---

Sunday 16th
4 rounds 40-30-20-10 reps for time
Walking lunge steps
Push ups
Walking lunge steps
Sit ups
16:43min

---

Monday 17th
10 rounds for time
8 x push press @40kg
15 x burpees
10 x pull ups
10 x push ups
36:26min

---

Tuesday 18th
8km run
41:30min

---

Wednesday 19th (CrossFit Merciless)
Strength
Standing long jumps 3 x 5
Box jumps 3 x 5
One arm ball push ups 3 x 5 each side

Metcon
4 rounds for time
10 x deadhang underhand pull ups
15 x thrusters @40kg (scaled down from 50kg)
20m frog jumps
17:30min

Finisher
2 x Fat grip reverse curls to failure (26 then 16 reps)

---

Thursday 20th
Technique
Double unders
Pistols

Strength
3 x Hand stand push ups to failure

6 minute amrap
20 x double unders
10 x sit ups
6 rounds + 5 x double unders

---

Friday 21st
Strength
18kg turkish get up 3 x 5
15kg weighted push up 5 x 10

Metcon
40kg tabata back squats (56 reps)
30kg tabata push press (80 reps)
20kg tabata reverse arm curl (96 reps)
Tabata score: 242

Lunch run
3.5km run
20:00min

Desperately seeking Susan... the coach

Sometimes it is the big questions that keep us all awake at night like "Are we alone in the universe?" or "Will they ever make more Firefly episodes now that Joss Whedon can do no wrong?", but recently I have been asking big questions of myself like "Just how far can I push my body?". As someone new to sport in general let alone actually competing I have very little frame of reference other than elite professional athletes. "Can I do what they can do?".

Jason Khalipa 2012 CrossFit Games
Image source

I have never been athletic. I have no formal education in sports training, biology or movement science. Anything that I have learnt about sports training I have picked up from the couple of coaches I have had personal experience with, in addition to blogs, youtube, podcasts and various websites.

When it comes to my physical training and sporting performance, as with most things in my life, I am completely self taught. I take inspiration in my training programming from my own personal experience, WOD's from CrossFit.com and my local box CrossFitCBD. While I am limited by the equipment that I have in my home gym I try and set myself an obstacle course centric program more tailored toward endurance work than strength training or CrossFit specific movements.

My diet is predominately Paleo, consisting of mainly lean meats and vegetables, little grains and fruit and almost no refined sugars. I cycle between eating enough calories for muscle building and recovery and an intermittent fasting routine for reducing my body fat percentage. As with my training program, when it comes to diet and nutrition I am self taught. I have learnt a lot from asking lots of questions of a couple of friends with formal education in dietetics but the rest comes from television, podcasts and blogs.

Paleo Diet
Image source

Sometimes it is very difficult to know what to believe when it comes to diet and training advice online. Everyone has an agenda, everyone has a product or a program they want to sell you and the sports science waters have been muddied with so much "bro science" that it is difficult to spot legitimate science from the rest of the unscientific nonsense. I guess that is the way of the world, but it makes it really difficult to educate yourself on these topics.

As a self learner I have become accustomed to being able to find reasonably reliable information on almost any topic on the internet, and for free! While it is difficult to find free weight loss information, it is out there if you know where to look. However to date I have been unable to find almost any sports nutrition information from anywhere that I would consider a trusted source. For every article or blog post I read on low carb, protein heavy diets or supplementing to improve performance and recovery I can find equal number or more articles presenting the exact opposite opinion.

Does this sort of general information not exist? Does every athlete needs a customised diet and training plan? Are we really all special little sporting snowflakes?

Do you need professional help?
Image source

Recently I have had a question rattling around in my head. "Do you really need a sports nutritionist and a coach to perform at an elite level?" I am starting to suspect that you really might. Take my current 10km personal best of 50min 23seconds for example. For example at the Winter Warrior Challenge in August the male winner completed the 12km course in 45 minutes. How do I get from 50min 23seconds down to 45 minutes? I have been improving by a few seconds each time I run a 10km, but 5 minutes is a lot of time to make up.

Is running faster or lifting more all about practice or could I see some major improvements by having a coach instruct me on technique? When I look at professional or world class athletes they all seem to have coaches, I presume they also have someone helping them with their diet. Are these professionals necessary or can you achieve the same results by yourself?

Can you get coaching on a suburban household budget? Is there some kind of athletic coaching handout scheme?

Training: Pushing the Intensity

Every story has a beginning

114kg starting point

When I first started training with Your Shape I was an overweight, out of shape 32 year who quickly found that every exercise in this "game" was tremendously difficult. "How is this a game?" i thought. Lunges and squats hurt my legs, shadow boxing seemed to hurt everywhere, you name it - it hurt me somewhere new every time!

At first I was constantly sore from the previous workout, but over time that changes. Soon you stop feeling sore after every workout, your body quickly adapts to this new routine, and what once left you sore for days soon no longer hurts much at all.

I think I must have misunderstood one of the fundamental components of training and competition from an early age. I always thought that you trained so that you could compete more easily on the day, that the increased level of fitness meant that you wouldn't have to work so hard to run the race or play the game. What I now understand is, in fact, the exact opposite. We train so that we can push ourselves even harder when it matters most, on game day or during the big race.

Twisting the dials

Jillian taught me a lot

What I have learnt from the numerous sources that I have watched, listened to and read during my fitness journey thus far is that you always need to be pushing the intensity, always striving to make things more difficult in training.

In that light here are some of the simple ways I have learnt to increase the difficulty of any exercise or a workout:

• do it longer
• do it faster
• add weight
• unbalance yourself

If you were running, try running for a longer distance, run at a quicker pace, wear a weighted vest. If you are doing CrossFit or weights you could do more repetitions, complete the workout quicker, wear the same weight vest or do some of your exercises using gymnastics rings or a balance ball to force you to both stabilise yourself and perform the usual movement.

A tough road

10km personal best

Keeping the intensity up and really pushing yourself is difficult. I personally find it really tough to give 100% during my training. When I push myself really hard I tend to hit that uncomfortable spot, that point where your lungs start to really hurt and I don't push any further. What I need to do is push past that uncomfortable spot and into a painful place and learn to live there in the "pain zone"!

When my legs or arms or shoulders are hurting and I feel like I am breathing fire, that is where I have to stay. At that point my body is screaming at me to back it off just a little, just to the point that it can start to recover and allow me to catch my breath. My body always wins, at least for a moment, until I notice I have slowed down just a little. Then I have to try and push back into the pain in little surges, I push and then my intensity falls against my will, so I push it again. Up and then it falls little, up and then it falls again.

From what I understand this is how you progress; this is how you lift a little more, run a little faster, keep going a little longer, be a little better. While it is always a thrill to get a new record time over a certain distance or lift more than you have before for a certain movement, when you are in the middle of that pain it sure is tough!

Gym equipment wish list

Gymnastics rings
These arrived today, they were my fathers day present for 2012. They are ideal for dips and ring rows. Ultimately I want to be able to do ring muscle ups.

Cost: approximately $40

9kg medicine ball

I am looking to buy a medicine ball from someone on ebay next pay. The 9kg (20lb) is the standard weight for 10ft wall balls in a CrossFit workout.

Cost: approximately $45

Pull up bar
I have drawn up some plans to make the rig out of 50mm galvanized pipe bolted to the wall and floor of the shed. Pull up bars are incredibly versatile for lots of upper body and gymnastic work.

Cost: unknown

3 in 1 20"/24"/28" box jump
This is the design used in the 2012 Reebok CrossFit Games. I have some rough plans for building one of these out of 3/4" ply wood. Box jumps and any number of variations are great for building explosive power in the legs.

Cost: unknown

Tractor tyre
I plan to find a rural tyre outlet and ask if they have any second hand tractor tyres or if they could source one for me. I honestly have no idea what it would cost to buy. Flipping tyres is great fun and a killer whole body workout, the tyre is also good to hit with a sledge hammer.

Cost: unknown

Rubber floor matting
In an ideal world I would like to cover the entire floor of my gym in these rubber floor tiles, but in reality I would be happy to tile a smaller section where I usually use the barbell. These mats are also great at making ground exercises like burpees and push ups a little more comfortable.

Cost: expensive

Training: How much is enough?

Hercules, Hercules!
Before I ran my first obstacle course or did my first CrossFit class I thought that training 5 days a week was a Herculean effort on my part, and so did everyone I know. Whenever my training regime came up in conversation with friends or work colleagues the athletically disinclined among them would say "I don't know how you do it!" or  "I wish I had your motivation", and for a while I hurt, everything hurt, but my body adapted.

Time to train

The perspective on training changes however, once you start talking with other athletes. An athlete understands that in order to perform well you have to train, generally the more you train, the better you perform. If you practice your chosen sport or activity over and over and over again, you will get better at it. So I trained 6 or sometimes 7 days a week, 30 - 45 minutes each day doing weights, cardio or a combination of the two. Other days I ran as far as I could in the 45 minutes I had in the mornings before I had to get ready to take my daughter to childcare, then head off to work myself. I kept running, kept doing weights and I performed better, running further, suffering less afterwards, I just got better overall. Sure I hurt for a while with the increase in training, but again my body adapted.

10km run

After talking with my CrossFit instructor (Chris from CrossFitCBD) recently I decided to step the training up again. 5 - 6 days a week - 2 workouts a day totalling between 1 and 1^1/2  hours a day. For 3 or 4 of those days I split the workouts into roughly 20 minute blocks:

• High intensity CrossFit style workout
• Traditional strength based weight training
• Running with high intensity sprint splits

I usually do the CrossFit and strength training back to back early in the morning and get a run in during my lunch break. The other 2 days are distance days, usually around 10km depending on the length of the next event I want to compete in.

Oh how we change

5.20am is lifting time

In the early days when my body hurt I would try and push through it, making my body do what I wanted through sheer force of will. I think you need that willpower and determination just to get the ball rolling, just to get out of bed at 5 in the morning and put your shoes on and get into the gym. Getting started was always the hardest part. Eventually even that changed, now I have trouble sleeping past 5.30am (even on a Sunday), and I tend to get a little irritated when I haven't done a workout - even on my rest days. I find now that I have to "listen" to my body, and through experience I have learnt the difference between the ache after a good workout and the pain that tells me I need to give certain body parts some time to repair. Sometimes listening to my body, rather than telling it what to do can be frustrating and I feel like a hippie thinking it, let alone saying it out loud.

So how much training is enough? Honestly I have no idea; it seems that there is no real limit. I occasionally read stories about professional athletes who train 6+ hours a day and I turn just a tiny shade of green with envy. Training like a professional athlete sounds very rewarding, but has to take quite a toll on your body. These athletes and their coaches must have their work cut out for them just trying to prevent injuries from over training let alone the unavoidable injuries cause by accidents. I often wonder if my body could handle that level of punishment. Thus far I have been very lucky, whenever I push harder after a short time my body just adapts and then performs as desired.

Optimism
I genuinely wonder how far I can push my body. Can I reach the goals I am now setting myself? Can I run a 45 minute 10km? Can I learn to do unassisted handstand push ups? Can I do gymnastic ring muscle ups?

I would like to think so, but I suspect it is going to take some time, and a whole lot of sweat.

CrossFit?... What is CrossFit?

What is CrossFit?

CrossFit Games 2012

I first heard about CrossFit in October or November 2011 from Brenton, my personal trainer at the time, while discussing training possibilities for the days that I wasn't seeing him. He mentioned that he thought CrossFit would be a good fit for me.

"CrossFit? ... What is CrossFit?"

Brenton described the CrossFit games as a series of insane gymnastic and weightlifting events given to the fittest people on the planet without any prior warning about the workouts and movements that they would have to perform in each event.

He was right, that sounded like just the sort of event I would enjoy!

CrossFit online and in my garage

Leaving it all on the garage floor

After being shown some YouTube videos on Brenton's phone at the gym that morning I was hooked. I spent a number of hours learning about WODs (Workouts Of the Day). Just like at the CrossFit Games I was surprised to find that these workouts were handed out to regular CrossFitters online, and in CrossFit Boxes all around the world without any warning, and could quite literally be anything! Now that was exciting... and a little scary. Challenge accepted!

After that I changed my morning workouts from what was an assortment of boxing, body weight exercises and traditional basic weight lifting movements like bench press, back squat and dead lift to a more CrossFit inspired selection of movements. My new workouts introduced the idea of an AMRAP (As Many Rounds As Possible) workout. These timed workouts gave me something to measure my performance against, they gave me the ability to set a performance level bench mark, allowing me to gauge any improvements made in subsequent workouts.

As a person who likes logical things like numbers that can easily be quantified, measured and compared I find keeping track of my workout performance is exactly what I needed to help me push myself each and every time I am in the gym. For me the desire to better myself, to beat my personal best on a workout is a powerful motivator that has me leaving sweaty puddles on my garage floor.

Finding my CrossFit home - CrossFitCBD

CrossFitCBD

It seemed so straight forward. From their online presence the CrossFit community appears to be huge! I will just find my closest CrossFit box and head along to a WOD, right? Sadly in Melbourne Australia it is not that easy. There are currently only a few of CrossFit boxes in all of regional Melbourne, and none of them are in my side of the city.

As a husband and a dad with a full time job I spend most of my time in the gym between 5 and 6 AM, and from what I could see it seems that even the most hardcore CrossFit box is not running classes at that time of the morning. With my family's current work/life configuration I have one flexible morning thanks to the fact that my beautiful wife stays home with our daughter on Wednesdays. If I was going to make this work I would have to find a box that could cater to my very limited availability.

CrossFitCBD was precisely what I was looking for; located in Melbourne's CBD, no need to sign up to costly or lengthy gym memberships and they run a 6.45AM WOD every weekday. So every Wednesday morning CrossFitCBD owner and instructor Chris tortures us with "the unknown and the unknowable", but that is exactly why my fellow CrossFitters are there!

CrossFit vs Obstacle Courses
I find that I question my training regime constantly. I am always looking to improve or change things up to maximize the performance increases the training delivers. After falling in love with CrossFit as a workout methodology it brings up a question for me - "Is simultaneously training for CrossFit and obstacle course racing a good idea?".

Obstacle course racing is an endurance sport, there is a lot of distance running with an obstacle every so often. CrossFit is all about functional movements and general fitness. If you look at the 2012 CrossFit games it is abundantly clear that the level of overall fitness you can reach with CrossFit is extreme, but is that a level I can obtain while working and continuing to be a "family man"?

Should CrossFit training and Obstacle Course running be mutually exclusive?

Call me naive if you will, but I am going to try and do it all at once.

Hold on to your butts it might be an interesting ride!

An ambitious goal / A long road

I am a husband to a beautiful wife, a father to a gorgeous little girl,
a geek and a gamer - but can I be an athlete?

Name: Ben Quinney
Age: 34
Athletic background: None
Short term goal: Top 25% Hidden Warrior December 1st 2012
Long term goal: Reach a competitive level in Australian obstacle course racing and compete in the 2014 CrossFit open.
Question: Is 34 too old to start training with the hopes of becoming a competitive athlete?

Some background for the uninitiated
To be fair, when I say "Athletic background: None", that is not entirely true - well not now. I played a little bit of basketball when I was much younger, I used to skateboard until about the time I was able to drive a car and I did some mountain boarding until our daughter was born - but I was never very good at any of them.

2009 - Approx 115kg

I started seeing a personal trainer back in 2006 but never really got my diet under control, so while I was getting stronger all the time I was not losing any weight or looking or feeling any better about myself.

Inspired by a television weight loss show in February 2011 I set myself a goal - to workout for 100 consecutive days. I started doing a workout every morning using Yourshape Fitness Evolved while taking photos and tracking my weight every day. While my overall fitness improved tremendously after 100 days my weight still wasn't moving very quickly.

Results at last!
It was an iOS app that finally made the difference with my diet. myfitnesspal allowed me to set a calorie goal and easily track my food by using the camera on my iPhone as a barcode scanner and an extensive database of nutritional information from almost every food product I put in front of it. Once I learned what food "cost" in terms of calories I was able to track my calorie consumption accurately I went from around 110kg in June 2011, to 100kg in November 2011 then all the way down to 89.9kg in May 2012.

My home gym

In April 2011 I enlisted the services of Brenton, my old personal trainer again, and started spending a lot more time in the gym in my garage. I increased the regularity of my workouts with weights from once a week to five. In September 2011 I got my squat rack (right) and was then able to put more work into squats and bench press. It was about this time that I first heard about Tough Mudder - Tough Mudder changed my outlook on everything!!

Obstacle course racing
After reading the recommended fitness capabilities of Tough Mudder  I realised that if I was going to have any chance of finishing the 20km Tough Mudder course what I really needed to be able to do was RUN! I started trying to run for 10 minutes, then 15, eventually working my way up to about an hour. In February 2012 I came across the Tough Bloke Challenge and it seemed the ideal warm up event for Tough Mudder. In my maiden obstacle course race I came in 217th place out of 2220 with a time of 39min 39sec. Impressive yes? Well I thought so!

Tough Mudder Phillip Island was a fantastic day - I had my daughter, my wife and her mother and father supporting me, eagerly awaiting my arrival at the finish line. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful location. The course was excellent, a wonderful atmosphere and a varied selection of obstacles. The 20km distance was a challenge - but nothing compared to having to wait FOREVER in bottlenecks where the participants got held up waiting for those in front of them to go over, under or through the next set of obstacles.

Sadly, for me, the waiting on the course took some of the joy out of the event. I hadn't been able to push as hard as I wanted, to push as hard as I could. I finished the course with a rough time of 3hrs 30mins - but at least 45 minutes of that was spent just standing around. As a side note I am already booked into the first time slot (8am) of the first day for Tough Mudder Melbourne 2013 with my 61 year old father, but that is a story for another day.

The hunt for more obstacles
After Tough Mudder I developed an almost hyper awareness, a spider sense if you will for the announcements of upcoming obstacle courses. By "spider sense" I of course mean that I started madly following as many people, events and organisations as I could in the various social media outlets. It seems as though I must have caught the front of what has become an obstacle course tsunami as new events and courses are being announced all the time.

At this stage my 2012 & 2013 obstacle course calendars looks like this, with a number of events still yet to announce dates:

2012

Event	Date	Place	Time
Tough Bloke Challenge	3rd March	217th	39:39
Tough Mudder	31st March	Not tracked	3:30:00
Winter Warrior Challenge	4th August	24th	1:12:00
The Stampede Melbourne	27th October
The Hidden Warrior	1st December

2013

Event	Date	Place	Time
Tough Mudder	19th January
Spartan Race	2nd March
Tough Bloke Challenge	23rd March

TBA
Beach Bash 2013

With so many obstacle courses on the calendar for 2012 and even more expected in 2013 it will take some very serious commitment from, not only me, but my loving family if I am going to attend and be competitive in most, if not all of them.

What does it take to be competitive?
So from the very small sample size that I have (3 events), it would seem, to me at least, that I am not a long way off being able to regularly finish in the top 25% while training 5 or 6 days per week without any specific purpose or direction.

So what sort of training would it take to be in the running for a podium finish?

Am I even physically capable?

Have I left it all too late?