Tough Mudder

I'm crazy.  I mean, my husband the soldier wants to run in the Tough Mudder which is cool for him.  I mean, he's a soldier, he can do that kind of stuff.  But when he asked me last week to do it with him, I said sure honey!  That's where the crazy comes in!

The point of Tough Mudder isn't to finish first, which is good because I won't, it's just to finish with your teammates.  Tough Mudder is an 11ish mile race with several obstacles along the way.  Obstacles like monkey bars, jumping into freezing cold water, slugging through waist-deep mud, carrying logs up a mountain, tunneling through pipes filled with water (hello claustrophobia), running through fields of live wires carrying up to 10,000 volts of electricity, etc.  WHO SAYS I'M NOT CRAZY?  Here's some pictures of PA's Tough Mudder this year.

What can I say?  I'm actually excited about this!  For the first time in 11 years I'm at a weight that I can actually work out and breathe in.  Thanks to the migraine medication I'm on, I'm down to almost 120 pounds.  I'm actually able to exercise and move around and I'm loving it.  Not that I need to exercise and lose more weight, I'm just ready to strength train.

My son happens to be working on a boy scout project where he has to run 1/4 mile every day and do as many push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups that he can in one sitting.  I've decided that I'll be joining him in this project.  Today I had my husband teach me how to do a pull-up.  It wasn't pretty.  I can hold on to the bar if I stand on my toes, so it's not easy for me to get started.  I tried to pull myself up and my husband grabbed my legs and pushed me the rest of the way.  We did that twice.  He then pulled out a short stool to get me a little higher and had me jump up and slowly lower myself down.  This will at least start building up muscle in my arms so I can do them properly on my own at some point.

Thankfully, we're not planning on doing the Tough Mudder until 2014, so I have time to train.  This is because of my husband's deployment.  The Tough Mudder in PA is held in April and we missed the one this year, he'll be gone for the one next year, so we're shooting for participating in 2014.  We're hoping to get some soldiers to compete with us as well as some friends from church.  The more people the better because the more help you have with some of the obstacles, like climbing over walls, the better.  I'll blog from time to time on my progress.