Totally Tough

Tough Mudder is on the horizon and I have the information you need... the layout of the course and exactly what we'll be putting ourselves through. You? You get to rest at home and laugh at the idea (and later the pictures) of us putting ourselves through hell (+mud) for our favourite charity, Chanctonbury Community PlayScheme.

But of course you can help. Share our page on Facebook, link us on Twitter  and please donate to our Just Giving page: https://www.justgiving.com/teams/CCPS

On to the course! To remind you, there are 21 obstacles across just under 12 miles.

Tough Mudder London South 2013 course map

Obstacles

 1. Kiss of Mud  

After nearly a mile run comes crawling/ sliding under barbed wire in a delicious water/mud mix.

2. Glory Blades
Let's leap over a 10' wall. Easy.

3. Walk the Plank

Jumping off a really, really high platform into water. I hope there's water. With my fear of heights, I just can't wait to leap into nothing and get freezing cold and wet. Looks like there's a bit of a swim afterwards, too.

4. Log Jammin'
Also known as the Log Bog Jog, it is constructed of - surprisingly - logs, balanced across each other so you have to go over and under them. I've seen a lot of photos where there is barbed wire on the top of the lowest ones, forcing you to get down in the mud to get under them.

5. Dirty Ballerina
After 2.5miles of the course, suddenly the ground opens up in big, dirty holes. Guess what? Climbing in and out of them is not an option, we have to leap from edge to edge, trying not to fall into the muddy water in between. And, as the day goes on, the walls with crumble and slide into the water, making the gaps wider and the jumps more difficult.

6. Human Gecko

I'm really glad that Sarah, Kariss and I have become obsessed with Boulder Brighton and have spent the last few weeks climbing in every spare moment. Because this obstacle looks fun! Not sure why the water is green though? #infection

7. Arctic Enema

You know the score. It's freezing. We have to be fully submerged. It looks like this!

8. Kiss of Mud #2

As with the first obstacle but this time we'll have travelled 3.5miles so I think we will be gagging for a lie down. Happily, our spectators will probably be able to take some photos of us squirming through the mud. Can't wait.

9. Boa Constrictor

This doesn't look so bad in photos but the videos show that the clearance between the top of the tunnel and the top of the water is tiny. Hello claustrophobia and fear of drowning.

10. Funky Monkey

See those guys swinging free across the monkey bars as if it's easy and natural? See that woman clinging on for dear life just right of the centre? Want to bet which one I'll be?

11. Mud Mile

I was hoping that the Matterly Bowl people wouldn't want Tough Mudder carving big lumps out of the ground to create this obstacle. Sadly they have and, as someone who has been running up and down beaches for fun, this is going to hurt. A lot.

12. Hold Your Wood

Unsurprisingly, this is a section accross which we have to carry a lump of wood. No saying what the terrain is going to be like though, as they've said this can be uphill or through water or the ubiquitous mud.

13. Fire Walker

Run through fire. Or jump over fire. Or, and this is exciting, jump across fire and into water. Exciting, why? Because you get the joy of potentially being burnt with the effort of jumping and of course the chance to get totally soaked. Again.

14. Island Hopping

So excited for this one! I'll be reliving Total Wipeout - hope I get across!

15. Trench Warfare

Another one for the fans of claustrophobia. I was quite worried about this one as the wooden boards across the top of the trenches mean the tunnels probably won't collapse on us. Probably.

16. Electric Eel

They obviously think we will need a lie-down by this point in the course (over 7 miles) because this is the second obstacle in a row where we'll be laying on our stomach.

But this time we will be getting electrocuted. As you do.

17. Hero Carry

I couldn't find out what this obstacle is but the chances are it involves carrying more logs (or Kenny!). I'm voting we all join together for this  -----> 

I won't cope by myself!

18. Hero Walls

Big walls. Really, really big walls. Hoping to stand on someones shoulders, to be honest!

19. Cage Crawl

Another obstacle without a lot to go on but I found this picture. So I guess it's swimming or crawling in a trench with so little head-room that most people seem to do this on their backs. They really like combing the fears of drowning and claustrophobia!

But we get to dry out with around 2 miles of uninterrupted running. Yay!

20. Everest

Sadly, not the climb that we nick-named Everest at Boulder Brighton, instead a greased half-pipe. No flipping clue how we can get over this. Especially as we will be totally knackered, having run, crawled, swum and slithered 11.5miles by this point. Human chain, perhaps?

21. Electroshock Therapy

To finish we get to charge across a very short stretch. A little bit more running, maybe I can muster up the energy to do that... if it didn't involve being electrocuted!

And that's all!

Time for a drink and a well deserved rest (and the masses of food I'm going to pack in the car!)

Come on TeamCCPS, we can do this!

Don't forget to sponsor us: https://www.justgiving.com/teams/CCPS

Sheepishly shuffling back to Blogger

No relevance to the rest of the post - a wall in
Germany that makes music in the rain.  I
want to visit here please!

Hi. Clearly, my first sentence has to be an apology for quite how long it has been since my last blog post. Hopefully, some of you have been following my Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr or JustGiving pages, all of which have been updated with much more frequency than this poor, abandoned little blog. But for anyone who hasn't had a update since (ouch) Feb 28th, I am sorry.

I am not sorry about how much work I have been doing because training is going well, both group training and individual. So in this post I will give a fairly brief overview of how things are going and what we've been up to.








Group Training 
Remember my colleague who agreed to be our PT to prepare us for Tough Mudder? Mr

Tough Mudder training - fitness check up

Remember this guy?

This is the fearsome Martin, fitness instructor, P.E. champ, all round good egg, previously of the 26th Regiment Royal Artillery, and was first introduced to you back in December when he put us through our paces in a combined Bleep Test and exercise / torture session. Since then he has been tracking our fitness (remember Kenny complaining about our fitness plan?) and has reappeared like a scary energiser bunny to whisk us back to the gym to check our progress. 

*For 'gym' read 'school hall'; we're doing this on a budget, people!

Of course, having spent two months learning how to do press-ups, working on our sit-ups and counting every step we take, we're clearly in tip-top peak physical condition, right?

Shoddy and Kariss get lunging.

After all, we work in a school and everyone knows that running around after small children is hard work. It's certainly my excuse for eating so many biscuits. So immediately after

Zombies, Run - the review

If you remember way back in January, I set out to try a couple of apps to see if they would help improve my fitness, motivation and inability to put down the cake. Finally I have time to let you know how that went. First, Zombies, Run:

I downloaded the Zombies, Run 5K edition for the bargain price of 69p (now £1.49, sorry!); 

quite a big step for me as I have never bothered to pay for an app before as I find that there are a great many good free ones so I am not affected by not having whichever paid apps are trending this week. However, something about Zombies, Run spoke to me and, throwing caution to the wind, spent my 69p on it. 

Having played it for a few weeks, 5K really does seem to be a training app in the best

CCPS - Chanctonbury Community Playscheme for special needs children

1977:  thirty-five years ago, near Chanctonbury Ring in West Sussex. In a quiet corner of a quiet town, a very special group of people realised that there was - and still is - a desperate need for fun, safe respite care for people with special needs. As this group was primarily made up of mothers who had children with mental and physical disabilities, they knew exactly what their children and others like them needed. These people went on to start the summer holiday play scheme known as CCPS. 

The children and volunteers
play parachute games in
the drama room.

Since that day, many other people have joined the organisation, mostly as volunteers and often devoting many, many years to working with children with special needs. The charity has grown from strength to strength and now runs for four weeks every summer holiday for approximately 70 children every day.


These children, who range in age from 5 to 19 years old, have a diverse range of complex needs. These include well-known conditions like Autism, Cerebral Palsy, ADHD or Downs Syndrome as well individuals with Profound Multiple Learning Difficulties or

Kenny's gone crazy!

So... Kenny Park wants to lay in the snow!

Do you remember way back when we started this gig I said that we'd do stupid things to raise our profile and to get people to donate? Well, we're still game for anything you can throw at us (maybe literally but let's wait until it get's warmer, yeah?) but you haven't been coming up with many ideas lately. After the success of our sea swim in December - check out the video - we need something to do in January. Because the fitness regime and continuous press-ups aren't nearly enough.

Like this only laying down.
And in swimwear.
And not at all fun. Uh oh.

So, as the latest part of our (torture) training, Kenny reckons we need some more practice at being very very cold. He has suggested that we get into swimming costumes and lie in the snow. I personally think he has gone totally crazy but I'm willing to support him in both this test and the possible trip to the hospital afterwards; for hypothermia or for craziness, whichever comes first. 

The only problem is... we need an incentive. Kenny says he'll do it for £30 but the more you give, the more people will join the freezing fun. And by 'fun' I clearly mean 'screaming, shivering, cursing and hopping around in near-hypothermic pain'.

Luckily for me and our fundraising attempts we've had a bit of a thaw down here in sunny Worthing: temperatures reached a tropical 3 degrees today so we'll have to wait for the next snowfall before we can go snowdrift-swimming.

You better jump on this bandwagon quickly (or suggest different activities here) because we're fast running out of January and snow is predicted later this week.

Keep an eye on the total here: http://www.justgiving.com/Kenny-Park 

Only 139 days left

Ice and Zombies

I have a confession. As the snow has come, my ability to get off the sofa has gone. As I speak, I am snuggled in the living room in multiple pairs of pyjamas, leg-warmers, dressing-gown and blankets: yes, even though it is 4pm on a sunday. 

My only possible excuse is that I was going to go for a run but, you know, it's slippery out there, what with all that snow and ice. Nobody mention yesterday's thaw, please. So since Friday (snow-day, day-off, yippee!) I haven't completed my Martin-training - not that I can do 40 press-ups on the trot anyway - and I haven't got anyway near 12,000 steps. Quite possibly hovering near 1,200. A day. Pitiful! I did, however, play Heavy Rain till 3am last night - a dark, film-noir-esque detective story with a lot of fighting in it.


So how to get out of this rut? I'm going to try a couple of apps over the next week to see if they motivate me to move. The first, MyFitnessPal, I've used before and found to be quite successful at reminding me what I'm eating (and what I shouldn't be eating!) and helping me to keep within a calorie limit.

The second, Zombies, Run, promises to be a story-led running app, which will motivate me to get out there and keep moving. A previous app (Zombie Run, it's a bit confusing), pitted you against a GPS map full of zombies you had to avoid to win. I found it very entertaining but the fact that I had to run while continuously checking the map on my phone disrupted my pace although the zombies wanting to eat my brains meant I had to take different routes to get home which was fun. The other problem with this app was the fact that it was better suited to running from one point to the other rather than round the block or neighbourhood which is what I (and I assume, many of you) do. Anyway, I hope that Zombies, Run will combat these niggling issues by having instructions given through the headphones and no strict necessity to check your phone every couple of minutes.

They're after you. No they really are.

So that's the plan! Watching what I eat with MyFitnessPal and if you see me running down the road like a crazy it's because some Zombies are chasing me!

I'll let you know how I get on, let me know if you have any good fitness apps or training tips here or by email and don't forget that there are many ways to follow us: Facebook, Twitter  and, of course, JustGiving! 

Only 140 days left! Thats only 20 weeks!!

Kenny explains it all

"Plank" position
image source unknown

Back in December our friend Martin devised a new fitness plan for us following on from the bleep test. (My phone autocorrected this to "sleep test" which I think we would have all been a lot happier with). Sarah, Elli and I (because we work with Martin) have been given targets in press ups, sit ups, walking and plank position. Every day we need to do 15 press ups, 20 sit ups, at least 8000 steps and one minute of the yoga plank position. Easy, right?

This progresses to 12000 steps, 20 press ups, 25 sit ups and 2 minutes plank in the second week, and by the third week we (super-humans that we are) will be doing 25 press ups, 30 sit ups, 12,000 steps and three minutes of the plank!

Finally! The infamous sea swim...

As promised - only 15 days after the fact - here is a video of our brave attempt to swim in the sea. Well sit in the sea. And, in my case, crawling desperately!

Candy, Christmas Trees and Training Torture Pt1

A lot has happened this week. It was my birthday on wednesday, we put up our christmas tree and, as always, jumped at the opportunity for a little Tough Mudder training. I also managed to run over my mobile but that's another story.

Swim in the Sea - Shock to the System!

I think you can guess that here at TeamCCPS we have been more concerned with preparing for Christmas than preparing for Tough Mudder. However, as I'm sure you recall, the lovely Liam was the first person to sponsor us 50 whole pounds and so won the chance to choose the time and date on which we would swim in the sea. 

This seemed like a brilliant plan in October but this morning the world had other plans and sent us a light sprinkling of frost - several of the team had trouble standing upright on the icy paths and I had to de-ice my car outside AND in before I could get to Worthing pier.

Spam and Custard - My favourite training tools

Some days I find it hard just to motivate myself to get off the sofa. Yesterday was one of those days but I managed to goad myself into doing some exercises with a little help from Kariss (she took the laptop away), a mug of custard and a twix. I know that doesn't sound like a good basis for increasing my fitness but last night I managed to do 55 press-ups! Given that my previous personal best was two sets of 10 followed by a long time lying on the floor groaning while being unable to do anything useful with my arms, I was very pleased with the result.

But how did I manage it?

With a little help from Twitter and a surprisingly useful piece of spam.

Monkeying Around

Signing up for Tough Mudder has started a journey for me. Not only the start of training and trying to build myself up to the point where I can complete the event without ending up as a large puddle of sweat slowly seeping into the mud but also a journey of learning how to use Blogger, Twitter, YouTube and now iMovie!

Hell I spent a long time on the following video. I do not think the program is intuitive or easy to pick up: I was gaffing around with this for a couple of hours. The final result is ok though - let me know what you think.


The Background
A few of us decided to get together for a run and a go at the monkey bars at the local park (one of us - Sam - turned up late and ended up loitering in a play-park for a wee while...!), and of course we filmed it for your amusement.

Yes, we're aware that we're really, really bad at monkey bars.

Watch the video on YouTube

Only 210 days left to increase that upper body strength, girls!

Married 'Mudders' - more mad members

Next up for our list of recruits willing to not only beat the mammoth challenge (12 miles, 20 obstacles, many heart stopping moments - remember?), but also to embarrass themselves online for your edification and support are our married members - Chris and Vikki.

Chris and Vikki have been involved with Chanctonbury Community Playscheme for a really, really, really long time. They have family links with CCPS going way back to it's origins and Chris was (I think) a co-ordinator when I started and I have been volunteering with CCPS for 11 years; this makes him two things: 1. dedicated and 2. ancient!

So how will they fair at Tough Mudder 2013? Here are their vital statistics - you decide!

Days remaining: 213  

Here come the boys...

• Men. Some might say the hairier gender are prone to over-confidence and rushing in to situations without thinking. I don't know anyone like that, do you?

• 

  17:44

  Leon H

  Cheers mate just convinced Paul to join in didn't take much just waved a chocolate bar in front of him

• 

  18:04

  Paul H

  I am just going to rock up and get on with it with no training like the great south run, but let remember the people who said they would do the great south run and who didn't turn up for it Chris (let's hope you go through with it this time) and my mum said I am normal.
• 

  18:06

  Chris

  We love u Paul
• 

  18:07

  Leon H

  So absolutely no training Paul not even with all those marines you work with?
• 

  18:07

  Elli

  You're gonna hurt after!!
• 

  18:07

  Shoddy

  Good luck with that Paul!!
• 

  18:08

  Paul H

  That's just everyday work mate not training

  
  

  The bigger the ego, the harder they fall. See you in the mud, Paul!