Men's Health Survival of the fittest

It's Monday, I have some rather interesting bruising inside my legs and on my knees and arms. Can only mean one thing. I did an OCR. I travelled from where I live to Wembley Stadium to take part in men's health survival of the fittest, but first was the task of registration and actually finding it. I was of course running a little late and ended up running from the tube station to the empty wickes building, apologies to those that may have seen a crazy woman with a black and yellow bobble hat, bright pink socks and a nuclear dryrobe flailing in the wind behind her, that would be me. Puffed out, I found where I was going and commenced my registration shift with a fellow Mudd Queen (those names again). Becky and I got organised, sorted through the remaining racers and generally just chatted about races we had done and how cold it was going to be, we drank lots of tea, ate lots of biscuits and then I got chatting to a couple of racers that had done the day race and was doing the night. They brought me Nandos. With our shift up, we had to dash to the start line dumping our bags at the bag drop on the way. Oh my god it was bloody freezing. I was wearing, normal three quarter length leggings, pink 2xu compression socks, skins long sleeve compression top with a sondico short sleeve top over the top and my Sands tech vest. I was going to freeze, literally could not believe I was going to go race in this, but then I was at Wembley.

Both myself and Becky were in the penultimate wave of the season, the wave was actually very small. Maybe 100 of us, that was it. The first obstacle was the trusty hay bales. Always guaranteed to break up waves, I can't believe how much these puffed me out and it certainly beat a couple of people who were struggling to get over it. There was then a sandbag carry (too easy) a few walls, monkey bars (which I failed at!!) and a lot of running. I liked that they used the vast number of stairs as part of the course to ensure the legs took a bit of a battering. We hadn't really come across any water still and it got me thinking that maybe they'd taken it out until I saw a slide on a slope. As I got closer there was a small queue but nothing major. We had both really warmed up by now and stopped worrying about how cold it was. My only issue with this slide was that it wasn't quite steep enough and definitely not enough lubrication. I threw myself down thinking I'd fly down the slide and kinda just stopped! I got wet but bad wet like only half of my body was wet, not all over saturated wet.  There was more running, more walls and ropes as well as a cone carry, a water stop which I weirdly didn't need as the water was far too cold. More steps, more concrete and more running. We were then beginning to head back to the start line again. This is when I saw the bloody huge great big stacked containers. I'm not too great with heights and this was massive, forboding and scary, I had forgotten how cold I was. There was a small group of guys helping the girls up as it was a near on impossible task to get up onto these containers and to make matters worse you then had to get back down the other side. Then back up again to this container type stacked pyramid. This was higher but somehow didn't seem as bad because of the ladders and such helping you back down again. We then had a gigantic pillow to jump into from a height (what is it with race directors loving heights!). I'd be lying if I said I didn't freak out up there. I did, totally. I saw another friendly face (the lovely Adam from judgement day) and buried my head into his chest and had a little moment. I had to jump off this platform onto a huge inflatable pillow which was probably only about seven or eight foot high but I struggled to jump. Poor Becky was waiting for me at the bottom and refused to leave, assuring me that she would wait. She was shivering bless her. After much hesitation I did finally jump, there was lots of whooping and clapping from above and below me as I rolled myself off this inflatable pillow. A few more obstacles left, including the travelator and the big slide. The travelator took two attempts but I did finally get up and the slide was probably the best obstacle there. I chucked down loads of fairy liquid, let go and absolutely flew down. Was so much fun I forgot how cold the water was. 

Men's health got a lot of stick for queues throughout the day and I can totally see why they did but as a night race it was absolutely perfect, we queued for nothing, it was quiet and peaceful and the very fact I was running around the outside of Wembley stadium made it all the more special and I felt so proud to be running for Sands that night.

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