A shadow of my former self

26.2

Two years ago a group of friends persuaded me to join them doing total warrior. “It will be fun “they said .

At the time I was going to the gym a couple of times a week to do circuits and thought why not it can’t be that bad!

How wrong was I .

It started with a loop of hills up and down a field probably 5/6 times. After the 3rd time up I was seriously regretting agreeing to do it. My legs felt like lead, my lungs were on fire and my heart was pounding out of my chest.

I managed to jog the downs and walk the ups only to enter the next field and have what felt like a 2 mile run ahead of me with large round bales to climb just for good measure. I could have just turned and said ‘carry on‘to my friends, let them finish the course and head back to the car.

But I didn’t I kept going! I struggled! Not with everything as my strength helped on some of the obstacles, but the runs between them almost beat me.

After we finished and got cleaned up I made the decision to change. I didn’t want to be this 40 something dad who struggled to run around with his kids.

I increased my training schedule and included some running in it, and although at the time I had no aspirations to run a marathon, I did want to be able to do another obstacle course race in the future.

Fast forward to now and we are 2/3rds of our way through our training plan for Manchester marathon and have an 18 mile run on Sunday.

We’ve volunteered to marshal at a local ultra marathon on Saturday so it’s going to be a busy weekend for us! and although 18 miles will be the furthest either of us have ever run we continue to push ourselves and believe in the plan.

If you’re thinking of taking on an event be it an obstacle course race or a marathon, get a plan in place and stick to it.