Getting Started

A young lady asked me the other day how to start training for her first mud run.  I suggested that she spend the next three months working up to doing "the Murph".  And then I didn't hear back from her.  A few days later I asked her if this was just too intimidating.  "Not really.  But never getting on a course for practice before the real thing, that scares me," she said.  So the question for you all is this, do you need to train on a course before you actually do a mud run?

Well, here's the facts as I know them.  There are only a few handfuls of permanent courses in the USA.  So the odds of you living near one of them to train on are pretty low.  On the other hand, new courses are springing up all the time and there are hundreds of races to choose from around the country.  My own estimate is that probably 80% of the people who show up to mud runs have never trained on a course and probably have not trained at all for the event.

So my answer is to those of you who will train before you do an OCR.  First things first.  Do you need to train on a course?  No.  You probably don't have one near you.  But, even if you live in a city, you probably do have a bunch of playgrounds around.  These are perfect training places.  Be a kid again and get on the monkey bars.  Do pullups, traverses, grip strength work.  I do playground runs every week.  There are five of them in my town, each spaced about a half mile apart.  This is great OCR simulation.  Run to a playground, do a few sets of hard exercise, repeat.  Have fun with it.  Mix up the workouts.  I can work every body part on a playground.

I have a friend, an elite OCR runner, who lives up in Brooklyn.  This is exactly how he trains.  He steps it up with some of his own inventions that he keeps in the trunk of his car.  He brings his training with him.  A tire, a rope, a big rock, a weighted vest, a sandbell.  Most of this stuff he got from a junkyard or the trash.  Another buddy of mine built his own mini obstacle course in his backyard.    When I was working up in Brooklyn, Fort Greene was my training place.  A big hill, a playground, and lots of natural obstacles all over the place.  Climb trees, jump over rocks, carry big heavy logs cut by the groundskeepers.  Be creative.

The bottom line is you don't need a gym to train in for a mud run.  You don't need a course.  But you do need a plan and a stick-to-it drive.  I suggest a minimum of 90 days training to get prepared.  Run.  A lot.  Do pullups, pushups, muscle-ups, and crunches.  A lot.  What's a lot?

When I started training my wife, she was intimidated by doing any pushups or pullups.  Then one day after a few months, we went outside to my little gym, and we did a simple pushup/pullup routine.  A half hour later we were done.  She had done over 100 of each.  It didn't even register with her until I told her the number.  She was shocked.  She really could do it.  And so can you.