Can the utterly average become an "Ultra Beast"?

November 2013 Spartan Ultra Beast - 42km obstacle course

As a 34 year old father and husband I look back on photographs from my adolescence and barely recognise the young man looking back at me, not because I look drastically different but because I have grown to become an entirely different person. 

When I compare photographs from then and now many things are obvious: 

• I can grow more facial hair now (still not a full manly beard though)
• I have obviously been lifting more weights
• I have a few more wrinkles 
• A few grey hairs have begun popping up here and there

but those physical differences are not the things that define me as a different person, the biggest changes of all have been those of the mind. I dare say if I were to meet my younger self today I would struggle to maintain a conversation with him. I have become such a different person that I doubt we would have anything in common to talk about.

Prior to enrolling at my local university in 2001, at the ripe old age of 23, I don't remember ever planning for anything. At most I may have spent 5 minutes wondering where my friends and I might get together to drink on the next Friday and Saturday nights, but even that was generally left until 5 minutes before we headed out the door.

Year 2000 Ben wouldn't carry much of a conversation

Maybe it was a coincidence, maybe it was just the right timing, but I feel as though I opened my eyes, and my mind for the very first time during the 3 years I spent at university from 2001 to 2004. The time spent being exposed to new ideas and being introduced to new people with interesting opinions and perspectives really helped me discover an intelectual self that I had previously never known. 

This intellectual awakening opened my eyes to all manner of new interests like board games and computer programming and gave me an all new appreciation for an old love, video games. Although I was now working out my mind like I had never before I was physically more sedentary than ever. Hours upon hours spent sitting in class, studying, writing code and playing video games combined with poor diet resulted in an obvious side effect - weight gain.

In typical "geek" fashion I sat at my computer, ate pizza and drank soft drink without a care in the world. In the years since starting university I morphed into someone I no longer recognised in the mirror - meet "Fat Ben".

Year 2010 Fat Ben would have eaten all your pizza

It really is amazing how much can change in just 3 short years. From 2007 to 2010 I experienced most of the serious life changing events most people go through in decades: 

• I lost my beloved mother to emphysema at the meagre age of 52 - a woman who had alway been there for me no matter what stupid thing I was doing. 
• I married the love of my life, on Halloween night.
• We bought a house in the suburbs complete with a white picket fence and 
• We welcomed a beautiful little girl to the world (now 3 years old).

It is the combination of all these changes that became my catalyst to change, that gave me the drive to finally do something about my general health and to lose almost 25kgs. With the everlasting guidance and support of my beautiful wife we both made some serious changes to our diet and lifestyles and lost almost 70kg between us.

Exercise is obviously a vital part of any successful weight-loss plan and although I started my journey in February 2011 in my lounge room, jumping up and down in front of my XBox the "run of the mill" workout program it presented soon became boring and I found myself looking for something more challenging. 

I spent a further 9 months building my basic fitness and learning what it meant to "work out" with a personal trainer until I saw a video advertising this thing called "Tough Mudder" that was coming to Melbourne in March 2012.

"Now that looks like a challenge! How cool do those obstacles look! Could I do that? Could I run 20km? Oh crap, am I actually contemplating doing it?... Where do I sign up?"

At that stage I had never ran more than the length of a residential block. Sure I used to skateboard all day long when I was a teenager, but running just seemed so... boring! But if running was what I had to do to get from one obstacle to the next - then I figured I had better learn to run! 

So began my obsession with obstacle racing.

Tired and sore after Tough Mudder 2012

I began running at the end of my regular workouts, initially aiming to run continuously for 5 - 10 minutes, or in reality, as far as I could until I either ended up bent over gasping for air or until it felt like my hip flexors would rip in half rather than lift my legs just one more time, but this soon changed. After a while I found that I could run for 10 minutes without stopping and began incorporating days where I ran for increasingly longer periods into my weekly workout schedule. My eventual goal was to work my way up to the full Tough Mudder course length of 20km but with only 3 months my plan was a little ambitious.

I initially ran the 6km Tough Bloke Challenge in early March 2012 as preparation for my first Tough Mudder and having never ran more than 8km in training I puffed and panted my way through the Phillip Island course in 3 and a half hours but had a fantastic time crawling through the mud, clambering over the walls and even screaming through electroshock therapy.

Since then I have completed every Victorian event on the 2012/2013 calendar:

• March 2012 - Tough Bloke Challenge
• March 2012 - Tough Mudder Melbourne
• August 2012 - Winter Warrior Challenge
• October 2012 - The Stampede Melbourne
• November 2012 - The Hidden Warrior
• November 2012 - The Samurai Challenge
• January 2013 - Tough Mudder Melbourne
• February 2013 - Black Hawk Challenge
• March 2013 - Spartan Sprint Melbourne
• March 2013 - Mad Cow Mud Run
• March 2013 - Tough Bloke Challenge

I even went as far as creating my own "Obstacle Racing community" - the Mud Squad, Australia's only complete obstacle racing calendar and home of the Obstacle Racing League of Australia's leader board.

Each event I have completed to date has presented a new challenges: the winding mountain tracks of the Winter Warrior and Samurai Challenges, the blistering heat of the Mad Cow Mud Run, the distance of the Tough Mudder and the physically challenging obstacles of the Spartan Sprint. To date I have always felt confident standing at the start line of each event that I would successfully complete the course laid out in front of me, the only question that remained in my mind was how quickly I could do it, but Spartan Race have plans on changing that.

In 2013 Spartan Race have introduced a special event to the Australian Obstacle Racing calendar - the "Ultra Beast", a marathon length (42km) obstacle course complete with Spartan's infamous 30 burpee penalty for each obstacle failure. The event is considered so tough that they have limited it to 600 places  and those interested have to take part in an application process in the hopes of being accepted and given the privilege testing themselves further than most would consider possible.

So how do you train for an event like the Ultra Beast?

Training hard - 170kg dead lift

Everyone subscribes to a different training methodology depending on how their body responds. Some concentrate purely on the running while most recognise that some amount of upper body strength will be beneficial when having to climb ropes or to pull yourself over walls. Personally I believe that the combination of General Physical Preparedness (GPP) that CrossFit provides and some run training will deliver the best overall results for me. Being someone who has always been naturally strong with a mesomorph body type I am never going to be a 60kg runner so a combination of weight training, high intensity workouts and running may not get me a podium finish, but I am hoping it will enable me muscle my way through just about anything an event organiser can throw at me.

At present I train 6 days a week, 5 days strength and CrossFit with a longer run or some hill sprints on Sunday mornings. I am currently stronger and faster than I have ever been, I continue to improve, frequently hitting one or more personal bests almost every week but will that be enough for the Ultra Beast?

If my application is accepted I have about 7 months to find out - Spartan Ultra Beast - Sydney Australia - November 2nd & 3rd 2013