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.


My work colleague and ex-army bloke Martin very kindly agreed to put us through our paces in some army-style circuit training scheduled for just after New Year. Having seen us, however, he decided that checking we could actually run would be no bad thing. Sadly for me the best night for everyone else was wednesday so, having spent the day eating flapjacks, cake and chocolate, I rolled up to the school hall to start our fitness test. Actually, I can't really complain that we were put to the test on my birthday as the other trainees were preparing for a Christmas Fayre in aid of CCPS and the Luke Cory Trust- they did a fantastic job, especially the glamorous Hannah.

Anyway, the first thing Martin had us attempt was the "Bleep Test". For those of you who didn't have to do this in your teens it consists of running 20 metre stretches to the exciting sound of a CD going "blaaart" every few seconds. Every time the track bleeps you have to run and cross the marker line, ready to ran back to your start position on the next tone. The time between the melodic blaarts gradually decreases as time passes. 

So, having had the task explained to us in very simple terms by our surprisingly scary colleague, we started the test. Soon all you could hear (apart from Martin barking orders and, occasionally, encouragement) was the sound of us wheezing, panting and gasping and the slapping of our trainers echoing across the hall.  Personally, the vast amounts of cake I had eaten that day immediately started to bounce up and down and make me feel sick! Surprisingly, none of us fell over or passed out and Martin says we did better than he expected. I'm pretty sure we all felt worse than expected!

Having looked up our scores (we all made level 9) just now, we really did do ok! 

For some reason the scoring is level/repetitions so scoring level 9/at least 2 repetitions in the Female 21-30 category gives you a rating of good. Those who took part were aged between 21and 30, male and female.

After this (and quite a lot of panting and staring at each others pink faces and, oddly, bright red arms) Martin made us do one minute of sit-ups, hold the plank yoga position - Sarah managed a personal best and team best of 1min17secs! - followed by as many press-ups as we could complete and rounded off by one minute of jump-ups. 
Immediately after this we all lay down for quite a while, especially as one of the benches we had used for the jump-ups had broken under our vigorous jumping and excessive weight!

Luckily, Martin let us stop there and we all ran away to the pub to drown our exercise-sorrows (and celebrate my birthday!). Fortunately it was after school hours so not many of our colleagues nor the pupils were there to watch us fail; I need more practice before I am happy to perform in public! We are very grateful to Martin for the time and work he has put in for us but my stomach muscles were definately rebelling the next day!

Wondering about the candy and the christmas trees? Mouthwatering pictures coming very shortly in Pt2.

Also, apologies for lack of video for last saturdays sea-swim, another tough mudder trainee needs to upload it for me as it's too big!