After months of physical preparation and plenty of mental preparation, the tough bloke challenge was held last Saturday. But my final hours of preparation were spent in a rather different way than expected. See photos below…

Unfortunately my 2 year old decided to bring home a gastro bug from Playgroup which hit her pretty hard. Poor little thing!  Now I am all for sharing as a family, but this is something she could have kept to herself!

By Friday afternoon, I was doubled over on the floor alternating between extreme cold shivers where I couldn’t get warm no matter how many clothes I put on only to go immediately into a hot sweat followed by vomiting and you can guess what else. This cycle went on for about 6 hours.

By early Friday evening, my 7 month old was throwing up almost on the exact same time schedule as me and by 10pm, my wife decided she would get in on the act.

Oh what a night!

So unfortunately the Tough Bloke Challenge was not to be for me this year. I always believe things happen for a reason, so no matter how disappointed I am that all of my preparation was to amount to nothing, I can only assume it was for a good reason.

The dilemma now is what to do next year. You see I actually wasn’t looking forward to the race. Hence the mental preparation. Don’t get me wrong, I am up for any challenge and the more physical it is the better. But I am not and have never claimed to be an all star runner. When I signed up for Tough Bloke Challenge, I had all sorts of thoughts as to what it would be, but the final race brief points out it is a 5km run and 1km of obstacles. To me that is almost a running race. We have trained in recent weeks on the obstacle course and had an absolute blast. I would love to have one of those courses in my backyard! 1 hour of stuff like that would be an awesome tough bloke challenge and worthy of the name.

But, I do have a bit of a problem pitting my tough blokedness against someone elses running abilities.

Having said that, Nelius (see my next entry or click here for the full story) did say it was tough and he enjoyed it and he is sore today and there were a few more extra obstacles in there than were expected.

So back to my dilemma. Do I just call it quits and say well I didn’t want to do it this year anyway so that’s that and never know how it was or where I would have come.

Or

Do I do it next year knowing I didn’t want to do it this year and am mighty angry that my preparation was for nothing and atleast know what it was like and get a ranking against other tough blokes out there?

I think we all know I will put my hand up for it again next year!!!

PS. What is it with my stomach and big events? 2 years ago taken to hospital for food poisoning 5 days before walking the 100km oxfam trailwalker…

PPS. If you are ever wondering how much water you can lose in 6 hours. On Thursday night I weighed 72.6kgs. When I finally got to bed on Friday night I weighted 69kgs. Yes, 3.6kgs in that short period of time!

PPS. An upshot to this is that my colon is now clean and it was a lot less invasive than a colonic!

PPPS. Sorry about the photo of the bowl of sick, I just though I would paint the picture for you and if you are looking for someone to blame, blame my wife, she took it! And sorry about the pyjamas too!

Nelius Murphy, is he a man or a machine…

As the only representative of the Fitta Bodies Crew, Nelius took on the tough bloke challenge.

5km’s of extreme trail running mixed in with obstacles like crawling through underground pipes filled with muddy water, a mud pit covered in barbed wire,  climbing over hundreds of old tyres, scaling over army nets etc etc etc

Not only did he take it on, he came 10th overall out of over 600 people in a time of 36 mins!!!!!

What a legend!

He said it was much tougher than he had expected and he had a blast although he was a no show at training today, something about sore legs or something soft like that…

From what he told me, it was the up and down hills in the bush that got him along with the extra 3 – 4 kg’s you are carrying when you come out of the mud pit to finish the run.

A very special thanks has to go to Darrin Penola who made the trip down there to be Nelius’s only support crew and to take with him some warm soup and bread for after the event. Darrin took loads of photos as well so you can all get a feel for the action. Thanks mate!

Here’s a few photos and all the rest are up here on our Facebook page. You don’t have to be a member of Facebook to view the photos.

Last week I got sent another awesome article about processed food consumption. Please take a few mins to have a read, it is well worth it and may get you thinking a bit about your own diet.
I am loving these article, it is making my writing job a whole lot easier!

Big Food and You – http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/wellbeing/big-food-and-you-rules-for-a-healthy-life-20100701-zp5p.html