Normal people spend Saturday mornings in IKEA

I'm not sure when I realised it. It might have been as I slid down a huge hill into a rowing lake while being soaked by a sadistic fireman, or as I posted myself feet first through a giant inflatable. I'm not really sure. But whenever it was, I suddenly thought "if I was normal I'd be buying a purple coffee table in IKEA right now".

But hell, who wants to be normal, right?!

So instead of spending the morning deciding which size of yellow spatula to buy, I went and covered myself in mud and bruises at the Men's Health Survival of the Fittest race in Nottingham. The race is one of a series of 3 around Britain over successive weekends. The format of each race is the same, but the uniquely sadistic obstacles each race includes are dependent on the topography of the city. So in Nottingham the lovely race organisers use the Holme Pierrepont National Watersports Centre, the muddy riverbanks and the stairs in the Nottingham Forest football ground. In order to cover all these, the race is slightly longer than Cardiff or Edinburgh at 11.5km.


Runners are set off in waves of 250, with coloured wristbands denoting your wave. You pick up your wristband and your race t-shirt the day before and all runners must wear their t-shirts on the day. Colette and I were in Wave 8 and lined up with our dayglo pink wristbands and shiny white t-shirts (WTF?!?! Seriously, white!?!?!) with about 4 other women and 244 testosterone filled, gung-ho guys. As you can see, we were rather nervous, but very clean and shiny.

We set off at 11.45am and immediately hit the Hay Bale Wall. 8ft of hay bales made into a wall. You get the picture. A couple of miles later there was a bit of parkour, involving running along planks (arrrr Jim Lad), jumping off platforms and hoisting each other over walls, then it was off down the Trent to the first of the mud - the Army Assault Course. Huge, slippery, climbing frames, monkey bars and a seriously muddy cargo net. The mud didn't last long though. It was a quick dash past some very confused looking kayakers and senior citizens walking their dogs and then into the rowing lake firstly via a muddy bank and then via a massive hill slide (with the assistance of Nottinghamshire Fire Brigade). A breath-taking (literally) swim across to another muddy riverbank (are you getting the gist of this yet?) found us on our way back home.

Obviously the home route wasn't going to be easy, and I needed Colette half dragging me along for parts of it. Obstacles on the return included the Men’s Health at Work (clambering over safety barriers, another scare-filled climbing frame and a massive slippery slope to head up), the Urban Jungle (running up and over skate halfpipes, shimmying under park benches, through cars and more bike barriers to try to get over), the inflatables (posting yourself through a large red inflatable... weird) and finally up, down, up, down through Nottingham Forest’s Riverside Stand.
By this time, the finish is in sight (behind the infamous 8 foot MH Wall of Fame). With the assistance of about 3 guys pushing my enormous butt I just about managed to scale the damn thing, then helped haul Colette to the top as well. Scariest thing of the whole race? Jumping off the top of that thing onto a crashmat which make my duvet look plush.

10foot later and we were over the line! I'm a Survivor, I'm gonna make it, I will survive, Keep on survivin'. Don't think my t-shirt will be ever be white again though.

Race report - Survival of the Fittest
Time: 1:31:29 (creditable)
Organisation: Can't fault it... but then it is by Rat Race, so its bound to be slick.
Course: Awesome, crazy, sadistic.
Would I do it again? I'm saying no, but you know what I'm like. Expect me to be out for a PB next year.
After effects: 3 showers later I was still a bit pongy. Oh yeah, and even my mum can't get my t-shirt clean.

Here's mud in your eye (and your ear, your toe, your nostril....)

Tweets, Beats and a lack of sweets

Me again!

Errrm Dobby... you remember? ... the idiot doing marathons and burpees and mud and stuff?

Yes! That Dobby!

No, no, I haven't been ignoring you, I've been busy. Or lazy. Honest. What?? What crazy-ass stuff have I been doing now? Well nice of you to ask...

September - Tweets, Beats and a lack of sweets.

You may recall that September was my Month of Half-Marathons (if you were born when I last did a blog post anyway), and what a month it was.

I'll get this out of the way early on, so you can tut and sigh and say 'serves you right' and all that. My training over the summer consisted of one 10k race, one 5k Race for Life with the flatmate and several British Military Fitness classes. That is all. No running. You are now up to speed with why pain is involved so heavily in the following.

It started with the Rodley Run, a lovely (but painful) 13.1 miles meander by the Leeds/Liverpool canal. it's organised by my twitter buddy @nimblerunner and there were only about 100 of us taking part. You can walk it, bike it or run it. The flatmate and Mr Flatmate decided to bike it, while Hughesy and I ran it.

The course starts under a bridge just outside Leeds. And this is where we found Stephen (Nimblerunner), with a clipboard, a worried expression and Suzanne Shaw. I hadn't seen Stephen since the kilomathon and it was lovely to meet up again, even if only for a quick hello. He even introduced me to Suzanne (what a lovely lady).

Mr and Mrs Flatmate headed straight off on the bikes at the start and Hughesy soon left me for dead as he legged it off into the distance closely followed by my 'save me a burger' scream. But being left alone for the run was actually quite nice. The event is so small that everyone chats, and you run with first one person, then another. I even spent the last few miles walk/running with a lovely lady called Jill who was suffering as much as I was. We crossed the line together with big grins on our faces and hearty back slaps for helping each other along.

Race report - Rodley Run:
Time: 2:38 (eeek!)
Organisation: Excellent
Course: lovely, mostly flat (beware 5 Locks!) and not too crowded.
Would I do it again? Oh yes.
After effects: Walking downstairs backwards for 2 days.




Run two was the long-awaited Run to the Beat in London. I was looking forward to not only running this race, but also meeting up with loads of my Twitter buddies who have been so brilliant, encouraging, funny and inspirational over the past year. A few of us were staying in the same hotel the night before and more were meeting up for a pasta party at Canary Wharf as well.

It ended up with 20 of us signing Happy Birthday to @jamesthekat while he blew candles out on the best Pacman cake I have ever seen. Huge respect to @TARDIS900 for his excellent skills with an oven and many packets of jelly tots and I mean it - adopt me Michael.

The next morning we donned special Tweet to the Beat t-shirts designed by the ever-bouncy @raywise and headed off through the tube-cancelling chaos to the O2 Arena. To say it was cold is an understatement (as the photo above will attest to). Most of the crew set off (over 45 mins late) from pen 2, including @nuddypants and @runningfairy trying to run/stalk the luscious #902... God help him if he ever goes to another race with any of us. He'll be bundled into the back of a van and delivered to @runningfairy before he's passed the 3rd mile post.

Hughesy and @jamesthekat legged it past me from pen 3 10mins later. I saw @TARDIS900 disappear in pen 4 soon after. I however, got right royally stuck at the back of pen 5 and crossed the line 39 mins after the gun, freezing cold and with literally 12 people behind me. As a result I did nothing but pass people the whole way round and hardly ever got overtaken. Race tip: it's very good for the ego when you start in the last 20 and finish in the last 1400. Go me.

All the twitterers did wonderfully well with special mention to @raywise for a storming 1:30 (were do you get the energy Mr Bouncy?!?) and @ScotLassRuns who despite recovering from a serious back injury managed the whole race in a cracking 2:16.

Race report - Run to the Beat:
Time: 2:20:51 (PB!)
Organisation: Delayed start, confusing pens and not enough music for a music marathon.
Course: Boring and the race profile is just a plain lie.
Would I do it again? Probably not.
After effects: Exhausted, but very happy.

So there you go, all my September races accounted for.

What's next? Well I've joined a running club and this Saturday I get to nearly kill myself at Men's Health Survival of the Fittest in Nottingham. But more about them when I've got something to tell.

Here's mud in your eye.