This weekend I’m heading down to Badminton for Tough Mudder South West.
And this time it isn’t just one run.
I’ll be taking on the 15K followed by the 5K, giving me a total of around 20 kilometres of Tough Mudder courses on Saturday.
I’ve also realised that The Gentlemen TV series was filmed at Badminton, so I may have to see if I can get an appropriate photo while I’m there. Priorities and all that.
Training Focus
This week is deliberately different.
Rather than trying to cram in more fitness at the last minute, I’m focusing on arriving at Saturday with my legs as fresh and mobile as possible.
That means fewer miles on the bike, generally lower resistance, a little more emphasis on cadence, some lighter strength work and, most importantly, considerably more stretching.
One of the biggest takeaways from my first Tough Mudder 15K at Yorkshire was how tight my quads and calves became afterwards.
Stamina itself wasn’t really the problem.
Tough Mudder isn’t 15 kilometres of continuous running. The running is broken up by obstacles, queues, walking sections and generally taking things at a sensible pace. That makes it a very different experience from simply going out and trying to run 15K continuously.
The issue was the legs.
I’d never run anything approaching that distance before and, looking back, I also don’t think I’d done enough stretching or mobility work either before the event or during the training leading up to it.
So this time I’m trying something different.
Stretch every day.
Keep the legs moving without smashing them on the bike.
And make Friday evening and Saturday morning predominantly about mobility rather than fitness.
Whether it makes a difference remains to be seen.
That’s what all of this is about at the moment: try something, see what happens, learn from it and adjust again.
Training tonight consisted of 1 hour 30 minutes of cycling followed by a 20-minute full-body stretch class.
A relatively short session by my usual standards.
It felt slightly strange stopping there and part of me wondered whether taking things this easy was actually a good idea.
But there isn’t much fitness to be gained five days before an event. There is, however, plenty that can be lost by arriving at the start line with tired legs.
At least that’s the theory.
I’m already starting to feel lazy with these shorter evening sessions.
I began with a 20-minute Full Body Stretch with Hannah Corbin before getting onto the bike for a mixture of 20 and 30-minute classes with Jess King, Hannah, Denis, Jess again, and finally a cool-down with Denis.
Total session: 2 hours 5 minutes.
Still considerably more controlled than some of my normal training, but enough to keep everything moving.
The stretching is becoming the important part of the week rather than something tagged onto the end if I have time.
That is probably a lesson I should have learned before Yorkshire.
A very short session tonight, although training wasn’t the only thing competing for my attention.
Most of the evening was spent pulling all my gear together for the weekend.
I’d also received the first properly branded Tough Smudge clothing and discovered a small technical issue with the QR codes, so I wanted to make sure everything was sorted before travelling.
Actual training consisted of the now-familiar 20-minute Full Body Stretch with Hannah Corbin followed by a 45-minute Sweat Steady ride with Jess King.
I am deliberately trying to save my legs this week.
Although, inevitably, I’m now wondering whether I’ve taken things a little too easy.
This is going to be another part of the learning process.
I know how to train hard.
Learning when not to train hard may prove just as important.
Still continuing to take things relatively easy.
This evening I stayed with Jess King and completed three 30-minute Sweat Steady rides, followed by a five-minute Cool Down and then a short stretch.
That’s still a decent amount of time on the bike, but I kept the resistance under control and concentrated more on keeping the cadence up.
The goal wasn’t to build fitness.
It was simply to keep the legs turning over without creating unnecessary fatigue this close to Saturday.
At this point, whatever fitness I’m taking to South West has already been built.
The job now is not to ruin it.
Friday
Travel day.
The drive from Yorkshire down to Gloucestershire took a little under four hours and seemed to involve spending most of the journey looking at temperatures around 30°C.
Not exactly ideal preparation for a Tough Mudder weekend.
Once I’d arrived, I stopped at Sainsbury’s to stock up on some protein and, perhaps more importantly, a few treats for after Saturday’s events.
You’ve got to have something to look forward to.
After checking into the Travelodge and getting everything organised for the morning, there was absolutely no intention of doing a hard training session.
Instead, tonight was almost entirely about mobility.
I worked through 50 minutes of Peloton stretching classes, consisting of 20 minutes of full-body stretching and another 30 minutes focused specifically on the lower body.
No cycling.
No big effort.
No last-minute attempt to squeeze in some extra fitness.
Just stretching the legs out and trying to make sure I arrive at Badminton tomorrow morning feeling as loose and fresh as possible.
After the problems I had with tight quads and calves following Yorkshire, this is probably the biggest deliberate change I’ve made to my event preparation.
Tomorrow we’ll find out whether it has worked.
No training today.
It’s event day.
Although describing a 15K Tough Mudder followed by another 5K Tough Mudder as “no training” is probably stretching the definition slightly.
Everything this week has been about arriving at this morning ready to go.
The cycling is done.
The stretching is done.
The kit is packed.
There is nothing more to gain from training now.
Time to see whether the preparation has made a difference.
15K first.
Then back to the start line for the 5K.
Twenty kilometres.
Two runs.
One day.
Let’s get muddy.
The Takeaway
Looking back at the week, this has probably been my first proper attempt at a taper, even if I didn’t necessarily think of it in those terms when I started.
My instinct is normally to train.
And if I’m worried that I haven’t done enough, my instinct is to train more.
This week required almost the opposite approach.
Keep moving, but reduce the workload.
Stretch more.
Don’t chase personal bests.
Don’t try to build fitness that can’t possibly be built four days before an event.
And trust the work that has already been done.
Yorkshire taught me that completing the event is only one part of the process. How I prepare beforehand and how I recover afterwards matter too.
South West is the first opportunity to put some of those lessons into practice.
The real test won’t simply be whether I can complete the 15K and 5K.
It will be how the body feels afterwards.
Training experiment number one: taper, stretch, race, recover and see what happens.