Just how much crap can you put up with?(AKA Death Race training)

I hate when my feet are cold.  I despise the sensation.  If it's cold, I will avoid getting them wet at all costs.  I take this seriously.  I own Gore-Tex socks(GEAR!) for this specific purpose.  Yet, when I was instructed to remove my shoes and socks and repeatedly soak my legs and feet in 32F water, I didn't think twice.  I even went as far as to put my damp socks back on and then ran several miles with numb feet(they felt lumpy)...all because I wasn't the one pushing myself to do so.  But I did it, and I didn't flinch.  Had I been out on my own, I'm pretty certain I'd have called it quits after an hour, but I carried on with some brutes for 12 on Saturday.

I don't feel like calling it a "Death Race Training Camp" is appropriate, it's more of a test of endurance.  The first one I attended was 23 hours long, and emphasized strength and endurance, while Saturday's camp emphasized mental strength, it tested your breaking point.  It's run by Bruce and Jeff, brothers, affectionately known as the Tire Guys for their ridiculous attempt at competing in the Spartan Races Beast in Killington VT but taking it a step further than simply running like everyone else; with them they brought a 300lb truck tire.  This weeks "camp" was only 12 hours(6am-6pm), but promised to be every bit as brutal as the last. On to Saturday's crapfest, here's the skinny( with me, Mario, Mark, Anthonly, Paul and Jess were just as masochistic to follow the Tire Guys orders)-

• 12 hour Camp with ~5 min breaks every 2 hours(they pretty much held to this)
• I arrived late, had to carry a bag of cement and a ladder ~1/3? mile and do 100 push ups

1. Chopping wood.  We were all splitting chopped wood, meanwhile they'd ask random participants to attempt to climb a tree, or pull some cement blocks attached to a rope up to a pulley.  My failure here was my grip strength and weight since the blocks would literally lift me off the ground when I went to regrip! As for the tree climbing, Jeff pointed out to me how ambiguous his request was, he merely asked us to touch a point in the tree, he didn't specifically tell us to climb it, so upon repeating that fact to me, he asks me how I'm going to touch it...and I responded "Ladder?" Good work Jeff, I ended up paying for that gift later on..
2. Run to the beach at the park without packs.  Self explanatory.  Probably 2-3 miles.
3. Fun in the sand! Here's where we were treated with our first dose of cold water for the day. We're told to remove our socks and stand in the frozen, abrasive sand while they explain our next objective.  This one was rather inventive, with the help of Bruce's kids, they'd buried plastic bags in the sand, each bag contained 1 Lego.  We had 5 minutes to dig, after the 5 minutes was up, we'd spend 1 minute standing in the water up to our knees.  The first time in was probably the worst.  I found a bag in the second round, but finding one didn't mean immediate relief, no, once you had your Lego, you still had some numbing pain in store.  First 1 minute in, come out, rest, 45 seconds in, rest, semi dry your feet, 30 seconds, and then of course 15...the painful part was coming out and walking on your frozen footsies, partially drying them, only to repeat the freezing process.  Bruce, Jeff, good show.
4. I'm told to put my shoes back on and run the beach 5 times(maybe 1/4 mile one way?) After about 2.5 times, Bruce grabs me and we do some hops up some stairs, hops down the stairs, then some box-esque jumping up onto benches, probably 20+, we did those down and back.
5. Next was something I'd never even considered doing, a Plank Crawl( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzYeaK3d9D0 Imagine that, but without the silly foot pads, and on frozen sand).  Jeff tells me I need do a plank crawl for the entire beach...all that I said about frozen feet on abrasive sand was now about to apply to my elbows.  My feet had more or less warmed up at this point, but my elbows, my poor elbows, they didn't know what they were in for.  Even with my jacket, the cold hard sand was slowly numbing my arms, but what was more evident was the burn in my legs and shoulders.  About 2/3 of the way through, Jeff had let another participant bear crawl due to our obvious deficiency with the plank movement, so I hammered that out and prepared myself for more abuse.
6. Next they instructed me(unfortunately there were some poor souls still searching for Legos and standing in water) to carry a large barrel down the beach, only caveat was that I had to hold it in front of me, instructions I would later find out he didn't give to everyone else! After that, it was a tire-yolk carry.  Think of a bar with little hooks, and some ATV tires hanging off the hooks...whenever you set it down, they'd fall off the hooks.  Jeff instructs me to carry it over my head, arms fully extended, another instruction I seemed to be the only one to get! Thanks Jeff! Did it, and graduated to doing tire flips down what was slowly becoming my most favoritist patch of beach ever.  After tire flips, they had an even bigger tire with a chain attached, as I began to drag it, the final Lego was recovered, and we got to move on. For a moment, I had relief.
7. But it was only a moment.  Next we were all given an object.  There was a 4 ft tractor tire, buckets filled with water, a pallet, a half circle block of cement, wheelbarrow with two cement balls in it, the tire yolk, and a red cart with a cinder block on it.   I was given the tire. For the first part of what I'll call a "hike" through the park, the wheelbarrow(Anthony) was probably the worst off.  The Tire Bros led us bushwhacking.  Somehow in February, they found the healthiest, thickest patch of thorn bushes I'd ever seen.  They stabbed my legs, hands, and even impaled the tire, which would later impale my hands when I went to push the damn thing.  What was great about this camp was the pace.  Even though all but one had emerged from the woods, we didn't just sit and wait, no, it was jumping jacks with our packs on until Anthony made it out.  After that, we moved along, me and Mr. Tire taking up the rear. This continued for a while, through brush, streams that smelled like sewage and dead fish(the tire actually had fish scales on it at one point, felt great on my bleeding hands!).
8. I know I'm forgetting something, but we switched objects, and kept going through the woods.  Mark and I swapped, so I got to tow the awesome red cart with 4'' wheels, a cart designed for a shop floor, not the undisturbed floor of the leaf covered, stick strewn floor of the forest.  It did feel like an improvement over the tire though... So, through the woods, up a ridiculously steep hill, and down to a swampy stream bed.  This was fun for Paul(wheelbarrow) and I.  Others were asked to walk down this stream bed keeping ~4ish feet from the shore.  Since the cart and wheelbarrow wouldn't really work here, we got to walk our wheeled friends down to the end, then walk back and carry our secondary objects(mine being a cinder block) down the length of the stream bed like everyone else.  I couldn't begin to estimate the damage that cart did to the sapling population on Saturday.  I bow my head in environmentalist shame. :(
9. We moved onward, guess what we didn't get to do next? You guessed it, we DIDN'T get to remain dry.  At the edge of a pond, we're instructed to walk across to the other shore, to go through the water, basically riding the edge of the ice that had formed.  Once on the other side we grab rocks(I swear Bruce said 1 at a time at first) and bring them back to stack them.  The stack needed to reach "3 ft", but our measuring stick was just that, a stick, might have been more, might have been less. The great thing about this pond was the surface below...it wasn't much of one.  There were a few rocks, but for the most part, we were stepping through leaves, mud, algae, and probably dead things.  As we walked through it more, it became more and more loose, foot holes got deeper, and more unpredictable.  Impressively, none of us fell.  Numb feet/legs and all, no one fell in.  Mark and I stacked ours first, and were instructed to attempt to climb a tree...we couldn't.  And because of that, we got to bring our rocks back to the other side.  The path through the water was worse and worse.  You'd spend an increasing amount of time crossing each time due to the unevenness of the surface.  The added soaking time didn't bode well for those of us that got back first...Now, I'm all for resting at this point, but sitting, with the light breeze present, and soaking wet legs was not conducive to avoiding hypothermia, yet sitting, was exactly what Jeff asked us to do.  And we had to do it until everyone was finished.  How Mark sat so still, I do not know.
10. More trekking, and finally, we emerge at a field, where we actually rested for the longest period of time(probably at around 2-3pm at this point).  Here while we waited for Mark and his tire to bring up the rear, we refueled(i know, I missed one or two of the breaks we had, but they were so short they weren't easy to remember).  I ate some of my coconut balls(recipe below), and a few of the dark chocolates.  Up to this point, I'd probably only soaked myself up to my upper thigh, I was getting comfortable with having damp legs in near freezing temperatures, but of course, comfort is relative. The next task required a pad and pen.  We had to copy to the best of our artistic ability, a Lego puzzle in 3 minutes.  To recreate it, we needed the Lego we'd dug up that morning, as well as a pile of Legos resting safely in the wheelbarrow...which was not so safely floating in an oversized "puddle" just 100ft away.  I went in first to grab it, since Jeff said it was only waist deep...three steps in, I'm at my waist, still 5 feet from the slowly sinking wheelbarrow.  I take one more step...and I'm up to my chest.  In my mind I was just thinking "did that really just happen? Really???"  I brought the wheelbarrow closer for the rest, touched it again, and it disappeared...it sank, but luckily, the Legos mostly floated.  I don't think any of us had time to accurately draw the puzzle, so we all stood in the water(or sat) and attempted to build what little we could.  Because everyone was taking so long, we were allowed another look, 4 minutes this time, but Jeff and Bruce took our Legos while we got another glimpse.  I'm not sure why, but Jeff took my bag and said "Come get it" and proceeded to run, and dive into the water...I was actually confused...self preservation told me not to submerge myself again, I guess I wasn't listening? I took a step toward him further than I had before, and was submerged up to above my chest...attempted to keep my arms dry though and took the pieces from him.  The attempt was short lived when I tripped on my way to shore and had to drop my entire left arm into the water up to my shoulder to keep my head from going under.  As I mentioned, comfort was relative.  At this point, the water felt better than the air, when I got out after someone solved the puzzle(they were 'nice' and let 1 solution be good enough for everyone) I started shivering, uncontrollably.  My head was shaking to the point that it was affecting my vision.  Jeff and Bruce told us to sit in the field while they brought the things back to the support vehicle ~200 yards away.  Once back we'd get to change...how nice of them.  Well, we huddled, I shivered, they finally came back, only to tell us "you can change your tops".  I think I was the only one who had to.
11. Next was another run, to a stream.  We're told to walk up through the middle of the stream, then climb a waterfall and wait at the top(road).  Climbing the waterfall at first looked ridiculous(only 15ft, but still...it's a WATERFALL), and I wasn't excited to be completely soaked, but luckily Bruce lent a helping hand, and pulled us up from the side so the only thing that got wet was our already waterlogged lower body.  Which we'd again submerge on the other side of the road where they had us walk in waist deep water for about 50 ft.  And then we ran some more.  It was definitely an interesting feeling having the sensation return to my toes after so long being numb...at first the running warmed my calves, then my heels, then suddenly my feet didn't feel like lumpy stones, and I was able to notice the pound of sand grinding between my toes.
     
12. My feet were once again feet.  I shouldn't have thought that thought, since as soon as I saw where were headed(the beach...again) I knew that meant more h2o, and I could tell we still had at least an hour to 6pm.  We get to the beach, do a few buddy carries, and are once again instructed to remove our shoes and socks.  We're each given a section of 2x4 on which SPARTAN is written.  Each letter has between 5-8 dots on it.  Here's where part of the gear list, 100 1.5'' screws and a screwdriver came in handy.  We were to use the screwdriver to drive the screws all the way into the wood.  One letter on land, then one letter while in the water up to your knees.  Paul, being the most intelligent of us, brought an electric screwdriver since they didn't say it had to be manual.  They were also nice enough to let us start the screws on land before finishing them in the water.  Amazingly, no one dropped a screwdriver.  This was the event that saw two people nearly drop.  Paul's feet were white and had no feeling, he was also shivering, Anthony was almost at the same point, so they both warmed up in the car during this "obstacle", though not after giving the challenge a good try.  Originally Jeff said we'd have to keep hopping in and out of the water until we'd also removed the screws, but as daylight dwindled, they changed their minds.  The brothers stopped us just as I'd finished driving the first screw into the last letter.  Still need to finish that little arts and crafts project....
13. Last one! a run back.  Same run as the run to the beach.  We all stuck together, which was awesome.  Even Paul and Anthony pushed through after nearly losing to the cold, they came back and finished strong.  We got back about 10 to 6, and with the remaining time we unpacked the support vehicle, then did jumping jacks for 1 minute until the clock read 6:00pm.  

That was my Saturday.  I came home and slept after that.  Oddly enough, even after all that frigid water, I can't bring myself to take a cold shower.  Today, I was going to run, but instead, decided to rest my joints, maybe crossfit tonight?! 

Ok, not enough food talk....Here's what I made for the camp

Coconut balls-

5 Dates

5-10 apricots

4 Tbsps coconut oil

3/4c Macadamia nuts

1/2 cup pumpkin seeds

1/2 cup Almonds

3/4 cup cashews

To taste- coca powder, ground coffee, shredded coconut
-Blend it all together and roll it into balls.  Place them in the fridge, then bag em when you're ready!


And for lunch this week!
STEW!
Home made Chicken bone broth
4-5lbs Chuck Roast
4 Carrots
2 medium sweet potatoes
1 large onion

MMMMMM gelatin! Ok...long post, will make the next one shorter with lots of swearing.

How much fat did you eat today?