Sunday Funday

Rough Terrain Run in Aid of St Michael’s Hospice

10-02-2019

This Sunday we attended the Rough Terrain Run in aid of St Michael’s Hospice, a Sussex based charity providing palliative care and bereavement support across Hastings and Rother. Warwick didn’t run this one through fear of injuring himself before the triathlon season, so I took on the mud with my mum who began running last summer. Warwick did, however, provide support by keeping my post-run clothes warm, taking photos and standing around in the cold whilst we were out having fun – at least he had a good laugh watching me attempt the warm-up!

The event began with a motivational warm-up involving star jumps, squats, and touching various body parts to the muddy ground to ensure we were ready to tackle the next 5km. Once the warm-up was complete, the countdown began and we were off up the first slippery slope.

Signs of mud beginning to show!  

The run took us through fields and woodland with a number of obstacles dotted throughout. The first few fields offered low beams, frames to climb over, cargo nets and tunnels before we were sent into the woods for a brief respite from the obstacles before the biggest challenge of the course; the wall!

The wall was surrounded by a number of people, shouting encouragement at those trying to scale it with just a single knotted rope for assistance. A number of different approaches were seen, from throwing your smaller friend as high up as you could in the hope that they could reach the top, to running at it flat out. In the end the majority of people, including myself, opted to help each other out, climbing as far up as they could manage before getting a push from the person behind and scrambling down the net on the other side.

Following the wall there was an open section of running through deep puddles and sticky mud, before another cargo and climbing net. The last two fields saw see-saws (think dog agility!) climbing frames and tunnels before a brief uphill slope to the finish line.

Caked in mud and very happy, we crossed the line and received our medals.

Very glad I had a couple of layers on. That mud was cold!

Although it was by no means my fastest run, it may have been the most enjoyable. It has, however, shown that I need to work on my strength and conditioning – my abs still ache two days on!

It costs £12,000 a day to run St Michael’s Hospice, so all donations from events like this are extremely important to help them provide the life changing services they currently do. For more information on the charity, upcoming events and how you can help please visit http://www.stmichaelshospice.org/

Thank you for reading and Keep Tri-ing,

Jodie + Warwick 😊