One Tough Mudder

I am knackered.  What a weekend!

Yesterday I did a 51km bike ride - an annual event for the village where I teach to raise money for the community shop.  Took it quite easy compared to previous years, got very wet in the rain and came 17th.  Caught up with a few faces I'd not seen in a while - loved it.  My favourite of the ones I've done by a long way.

Then it was up at 7am this morning to drive over to Cheshire for my first ever Tough Mudder.  If you've not heard of them, they comprise of a 5 or 10 mile run (we did the 5) littered with obstacles with mud being the main element.  Some were easy, some were hard, a couple were very painful and one was down right impossible.  The last one consisted of a steep incline that culminated in a vertical section that you had to run up and leap the hands of the people at the top.  It defeated me, as I repeatedly slapped belly-first on the slope and slid down in a mixture of blood and mud I admitted defeat.  The only minor downer on an otherwise top adventure.

It was a team thing rather than a race so it was me, Mrs H, Mrs H's colleague, my mate Tom from uni, his girlfriend and a colleague of hers.  For a group where not everyone had met before, we started together, helped each other round in extreme circumstances and finished together.  There were points where we were literally up to our necks in mud, and the 2m backwards drop into a mud pool knocked the wind out of me.

We have only just got back at 19:00 :-/

I am cut, bruised, aching, sore, broken and smiling.