The O(MG) Course

So I’ve been humming and hawing about doing this Endurance Course called the O-Course. It’s touted as Canada’s first and only Obstacle Training Course based on US Marine Fitness courses. People I’ve talked to liken it to training for Spartan Race, Warrior Dash and the Tough Mudder. More have come back and said it’s harder than Spartan Race and Warrior Dash. It was developed by the folks at Fit Factory Fitness. Tony A runs it and I refer to him in a post from over a year ago when I tried to make it through one of his fitness classes with my wife. Re-cap… wife was fine; I couldn’t speak for 45 minutes for fear of hurling. This guy gives Freddie Kruger nightmares.

I signed up earlier this week, feeling pretty good about myself. The CrossFit workouts were hard in middle of the week and really burned my legs out. I was on the fence about going to the O-Course on Saturday morning… I went to bed super early and I think the anxiety got to me. I was up at 4am; 5am and 6am… you get the picture. At 7am, I finally made the decision I was going to go. The Course starts at 9am, but they ask you to show up at 8am for registration. My wife and two boys went with me.

I started off with signing-in at the indoor soccer dome also known as “the Barracks” and tucked my change of clothes and water bottle behind the short bleachers. Then I started stretching a little. The kids occupied themselves by also stretching (showing off their kid-like flexibility) and running from one end of the field to the other. While I was stretching, other people were coming in… you could tell some were veterans of this course and others were first-timers like me. Some had headbands they picked up from completing Tough Mudder the previous weekend. While we were warming up, the O-Course Team was finishing setting things up for the morning.

We’re all ask to go pick out our rifle… which was actually a 4lb length of 4×4 wooden fence post. Cooper (my 8 year old) picked one out for me. If you do the course 4 times, you get to keep it… like a badge of honor; otherwise you have to return it. You can decorate it, you can make it heavier but you cannot add handles or subtract weight.

At 9am sharp, we started. Tony got on a platform and gave us some basic instructions and reminded us why we were here. How we made the decisions to step away from the Playstations (Xbox 360 in my case) and cartoons to show up… and how we train harder than the actual fight is going to be. The instructors and folks keeping people in line all had “Show up. Man Up” t-shirts. He went over some basic ground rules covering safety and respect. I got the sense that some people get offended when the trainers get in their face about their efforts. I’m fine with it…. whatever gets me over the finish line. We formed up in columns and rows. And then it began… 45 minutes of holding that 4lb piece of wood over our heads, in front of us and then overhead again. We did presses with them; we did squats and held them straight ahead… we did push-ups when someone failed. A few people chatted at the back of the class… we paid for it in the form of 25 push-ups per infraction. It felt like a CrossFit class with a massive focus on arms and core. We must have done a total of 150 push-ups in that 45 minutes… on top of the squats and presses… my arms have never burned like that.  Mercifully, it was over after 45 minutes and we were given a water break and we were on to the next phase. At this point I wondered if anyone would notice me sneaking away… I figured that the hard part was over. It wasn’t.

At the start, no problem holding these “rifles’ overhead

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tony going over the rules.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now it’s starting to hurt. How can 4lbs hurt so much!

I’m guessing there were 150 people in attendance and we all went and grabbed our water bottles prior to starting the next act. Vega was here giving out some Endurance Gel and I grabbed a raspberry flavored one… it wasn’t that awesome… but they had other flavors and I’d try another flavor the next time. We all filed out of the soccer dome and congregated in the parking lot for instructions on the run. I’m guessing the run was around 5km and we had 6 stations where we stopped and did some fitness work. Five of the stations were in the water (Cherry Beach).  It went a little like this:

1. Run from parking lot to Cherry Beach
2. Get in the water and do 50 V-Ups
3. Run through the sand to the next station… in the water do 26 push-ups
4. Stay in the water (rifles overhead) and make your way to the next station (was a long walk)… in the water do 26 squats
5. Run through the sand to the run course
6. Run to water station… guessing 1.5KM on winding run path
7. Turn at station and run back
8. Detour to outdoor soccer field (Cherry Beach) where we run to the far side and come back but need to do 26 push-ups, feet on ledge before we continue
9. Back to the beach and repeat steps 5,4 and 3 in that order
10. Run back to the parking lot and drop off the “rifle”
11. Start the obstacle course….and complete 16 different obstacles… won’t go through all of them but you can see several in action if you go to the O Course website. They have some videos of people doing the course. The worst ones involved dragging, carrying or lifting very heavy things through sand and back.

Pick up heavy item and move it!

The water was a nice break since it was super-hot out… good chance to get cooled off.  I suck at running but the main focus was to just keep putting one foot ahead of the other. I looked up the distance on Google Maps and it looks like the run portion was roughly 4 miles or 6.5km. Now I know what that feels like.

I finished the Run and Obstacles in 1 hour and 40-45 minutes or so… that put me in the middle of the pack. Not bad since I was hoping to not come in last… which I changed to “just finish” after the run.

All in all it was a great course. I understand that the organizers will continue to add stuff and make it tougher. It’s going to run all year, although it’ll be interesting to see what they do in the wintertime. I fully expect them to turn this into an epic event next year with prizes and add it to the schedule of Obstacle/Endurance races out there.

I won’t lie and say I can’t wait for the next one… because I can wait. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done physically. My muscles were aching mightily. I had dirt in my ears. I felt like I was made of rubber. I’m glad I did it but I’m in no hurry to rush back. I’ll definitely try it again. Maybe as part of a Spartan Race, Warrior Dash, “O” Course trifecta. Next time, I hope I’m in even better shape and will shoot for a time to beat.

You say Tabata… I say Tabata

Friday is Fit Test Round #2. My time to beat is 12:27… I’m gunning for sub 11 minutes if I can. This marks week 8 of 5-day-a-week CrossFit BootCamp… and I’ve signed up for another 30 days. I expect that at the end of this 90 day run, I’ll be as fit as I’ve been in 15 years… and have something to build on.

So I downloaded a very cool app called Tabata Pro Timer for my iPad. Sometimes I like to do a quick workout at home and Tabatas are around 16 minutes so it’s perfect for a weekend pick-me-up… granted, its 16 minutes of hell… but it goes by quick. At the gym there is always someone timing us but when you’re alone and your kids would rather play on the Wii… you’re kind of left to your own devices. This thing lets you set up your own sets, times and also lets you pick a playlist to use while working out. I like that it counts down the last few seconds before you finish a set and then counts down the last few sets of the rest period. The rest period tends to go by quickly and at first I thought the app had a flaw… turns out that I hate the sets.

A good home Tabata workout would be something like; sit-ups, squats, push-ups and bur-pees. If I was at the gym, I’d swap out Bur-pees for Pull-Ups. I’ll get one in on the weekend, early as the boys are distracted with Lego Batman 2.

So my son is obsessed with American Ninja Warrior. I recall PVR-ing it for him last year when they had the finals in Japan. This year G4TV and NBC are airing it on Monday nights and I PVR it for him so he can watch it the next day. He just turned 6 and can’t get enough of it. He and his brother (8 years old) just came back from a 10 day visit to New Brunswick where they split time with their grandparents. His grandfather built him a salmon ladder and he practiced on it every day. He also ended up doing tons of work on the monkey bars at nearby playground. His hands came back with cracked skin from the blistering. I was quite proud of him tearing up his hands doing some pretty physical stuff. He’s turned the inside of our home into something of an obstacle course and I often find him dangling from the stairs or a high window sill as he works on his grip strength. Maybe one day he’ll become the first Canadian Ninja Warrior! I’ll sign up for Canadian Ninja Wannabe.

Not avoiding a stats update… just didn’t take them down today. Will have one for you this weekend when I post my Fit Test #2 results.