Guess who's back...

Hello, do you remember me?

I entertained you last year with my mission to complete World’s Toughest Mudder, held in Las Vegas in November. I trained hard all year, I participated in many OCRs and I became an ultra-runner. The result of which paid off and I smashed out 50 miles at the event.

It’s been seven months since then… What have I been doing? I imagine you might think I’ve been training hard and becoming even more strong. Working on those pull ups and getting the miles in. Well, that was the plan, of course. But it’s not worked out quite like that.

After WTM I took about 6 weeks off strenuous exercise in order to recoup, then in Jan I started back up again, and for a while I did quite well at increasing my exercise levels and getting right back into it. But somewhere along the way I lost my focus. Not because my goals had changed or I decided to take it easy for a change (fat chance of that); instead I became increasingly unhappy with my living situation and work life balance. My commute takes up 2.5 hours of my life every day, and because I live in London I’ve found it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. I can either pay to do all these fun things, or I can save money. I can’t do both, and it’s begun to wear on me. I’d heard of other people moving up north to be near the Lakes or mountains to aid in their training, and I wished that could be me too.

Well, I decided enough was enough and I started looking for work. It’s been a long ol’ process, but I’ve finally been offered a job and I’ll be moving to Warrington. It’s 1 hour from the Peak District and 1.5 hours from Snowdon. I’m not living on the doorstep to the mountains as I would like, but it’s a darn sight closer than where I am currently, and my main aims of cutting my commute and saving money have been met.

These past few months have not been fun. When you lose your motivation, it can be very hard to get it back. I’ve been depressed for months, and whilst I’ve not stopped exercising completely, I’ve cut back tremendously. Despite my training not being to the standard I would like, I’ve still managed to complete some difficult races, and proved to myself that I can still do it. The main race being that of Europe’s Toughest Mudder. In the same vein as WTM, this is an 8 hour overnight race. I needed to get 25 miles in order to get ‘Contender’ status for WTM this year, and for this race I teamed up with a friend I met at WTM. We ran the whole course together and completely smashed it. I was the hardest thing I’ve done in a long time, and it took a lot of my energy to recover from.

The amazing thing that’s come from ETM is that I now have a new team mate. We have decided to enter WTM in the team category rather than as individuals, and I’m super excited about it. I’ve never had a proper training buddy before, and although we don’t live near each other, we can push each other and motivate each other to perform well. I’m under pressure to get back in tip top condition, and I love it (this is the good type of pressure).

I’ve just got to get through the next month of my life. Working my notice period, finding a new place to live, actually moving house, and then settling in. When all that is done I can focus again on doing what I love. Making the best version of me that I can.

I’m going to give you weekly updates on how my training progresses, what exercises I start doing and when, and why I’m doing it that way. I’ll also talk about the food I’m going to eat, and what I do to let my body recover.

I’m just a normal person who wants to get fit and strong. I want to do things that “girls” can’t do. I want to prove that “girls” can do these things if you put your mind to it. But more importantly, I want to be happy. See you in a month xxx