Kris Wallace - One Month into Tough Mudder Training

Video of Kris one month into his Tough Mudder training.

This video shows the before and after effects of a tough month of hardcore weight and exercise training.  I will keep posting videos of his progress over the next few months leading up to the Tough Mudder competition.

Fun Times In the Land of the Mudder

After last week’s blog, I have been accused of being on the edge of a nervous breakdown, in need of an intervention and worst of all that I hate training. Having reread the last four blogs it does seem that I do not seem to be enjoying myself very much at all, and that my friends could not be further from the truth. I am loving the training, the blogging, the support and the feeling of doing something worthwhile for a change.

I wanted this week’s edition to reflect all the reasons I train and try to highlight all the positives it brings. I started throwing in stock phrases that the gym is like my church or it is my battleground. Cranking out four hundred words on how I love seeing what I can make this old body of mine can do. How I love the burn from cranking out that extra mile, bench that extra 20kg” yadda yadda yadda. After about 30mins of writing this ‘out of the packet Muscle and Fitness article’, I thought well that is all very nice but is it the truth?

In all honesty then why do I train? Why do I get up at 5.15am for a 6k run every other day? Why do I hit the gym and work out till my body burns?  Why do I head to the park every Saturday morning to let joggers stare at me as I swing like a deranged ape between the monkey bars? I looked in the mirror and asked, “so Big Man, why do you do it?” One word sprung to mind, one simple and clear word, “FUN”. I do this because it is my idea of fun. I love it pure and simple.

Fitness being fun? Have you lost your mind? Surly your blog has taught us anything it is all about pain, suffering, loathing and self-denial.

Let me tell you there is nothing better than hitting the street, park or gym to perform the feats of strength, stamina and stupidity (my three S patent pending). This my friends is how memories are made. For example, you may have heard last week was a bit rough. I say heard, more likely you had my indulgent whining inflicted on you via Facebook or Twitter. Suffice to say it was not great but hitting the park yesterday with two of my favourite people was amazing. We acted like fools, sweated (well I did), bleed (again well I did) and rolled in the mud. We played as we did when we were kids, and it was fantastic fun pure and simple. I nuked the stress and came away feeling all shinny and new.

It reminded me why I let the not so little brother sign me up for Tough Mudder in the first place. Not for some miss guided attempt to lose weight, not because I am some kind of fitness junky and love pain. Nope I started this journey to have fun and hang out with my family. To keep the Machine from getting lonely round the course and maybe keep up or even compete with him. To bring some amusements to the Genius and inspire his ambitions as a filmmaker. To give myself a goal and a bit of oomph for the first five months of the year. Finally and most importantly, to raise awareness of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and raise some cash to help in the  fight against it. Who knows, one day my kids might tell their friends that their Dad is one Tough Mudder just like their Grandad Kenny.

ADVISORY NOTICE: The above does not mean that Mrs W is pregnant or that we have started trying. Mum I promise I would tell you first before I put it in the blog (Maybe).

Training solo is almost as much fun. Where else can I spend two hours listening to my favourite tunes. Insulated away from the problems of the day I can burn up the stress by pushing myself to the limit, all the time drowning in a sea of endorphins and pump. I can walk (or limp) away chilled out and pumped and no one has to deal with my Hulk smash face. As the former Governor of California once said going to the gym is “it’s almost as good as Cumming”. Well ok not quite but it is still fun, and in my case a gym sesh lasts a whole lot longer. To tell the truth, even when I am training solo, it is not as if I am alone. For some reason it is the Machine and Genius voices I hear echoing in my head when I am cranking out that last set or pushing on for an extra mile. Now queue hours of piss take from the brothers regarding my level of sanity. But hey, this is my blog. My inner monolog that motivates and imitates their singsong mocking of “come on fatty” and “One more Big Man”. This gentle teasing sets a fire in me, pushing me to work harder, to go that extra mile. At the end of the day, what does any Big Brother want? I like every other older brother on the planet, just wants to impress the little gits and somehow make them proud of me. And it that means crawling through miles and miles of mud, fire and ice then so be it.

On to the stats

Stats 30 January 2012 (End of Month 1)

Weight 113.5kg yep no change sad face:(

Run time and distance none counted due to no running, all the cardio was done in the gym as they had hot showers.

Chin Ups 0. Yes a massive drop, but a shoulder injury during last Saturdays Park training left me with a sprained shoulder.

Days to Tough Mudder 104 days (GULP)

This week’s stats show that my weight loss and training in general have stalled a wee bit. Fear not I have a plan Mudders. In seven days, I depart for a three-week intensive fitness camp in Hong Kong. Yes, I am going to the birthplace of Bruce Lee, to seek enlightenment and inner strength. My goal is to drop a massive 7kg and come back meaner and leaner and a whole lot tougher before the next Wallace Brother challenge taping at the end of February. To help me in my quest I will be employing the legendary veteran of the ring Steve “the Hammer” Davis and the one and only MMA sensation Mr Inter-Nash as my personal trainers. So be prepared for some IP Man training vids and a couple of jet lagged induced mini blogs

Please remember this is all for a good cause so click the link and make a donation and together we can do our part in beating Cancer < http://myprojects.cancerresearchuk.org/fundraise/fundraising-pages/wallace-v-wallace-tough-mudder-challenge-2012>

Burn Out and Bummed Out

Evening Mudders. It’s Monday so it’s time for my summary blog of last week’s training.

Two words sum up last week, Burned Out. I hit the wall both physically and mentally.

Since the start of January, I have been training hard, cardio every week day morning, a weights work out 4 times a week in the evenings and my customised playground work out on Saturday. Please feel free check out the Wallace Mudder Facebook page if you have yet to see the truly shameful videos ( http://www.facebook.com/wallaceboystoughmudders).

So it’s fair to say that with work and training life was pretty hectic. This week it got a little more hectic and a lot more stress full. You see I recently, and rather foolishly went back on a four year old promise that I would never and I mean NEVER (Y2J tm.) go back and do any form of higher education.

I spent four years of my life getting professionally qualified, killed my social life studying and sat a host of exams. Yet I now find myself coming to the end of my 1st semester on my MSc course with my first exam
looming (in less than 48 hours so wish me luck). With the exam coming up work kindly gave me a few days off and I took a few days off to give myself a week to cram, and cram I did. My days become almost monk like. Train, eat, study, Train, eat, study, eat, study. The first two days flowed by I was a machine built for training and studying. Eating knowledge and crapping fraud theory. Well more like just crapping a lot but that’s a whole other blog about the effects of Promax Diet on ones bowels.

Day 3 was ok feeling a little tiered but ok. Day 4 everything hurt from top to bottom I was in pain, my muscles hurt my brain hurt. I managed to drag myself though the morning run, slog through the books but I could feel the studies we more going through the motions nothing was sticking, even the gym session was filled with poor form and a general lack of enthusiasm (it was a leg work out which did not help.). I crawled into bed at about 9pm, sore, stressed and generally in a very unpleasant mood.

Friday 5.30am the alarm sounded, the familiar drum beats of Halo by Soil filling the room, my previous response was to bound out of bed grab a protein shake and hit the road for my morning run. This did not happen. I hit the alarm turned over and slept.

I had no motivation for anything, studying went out the window. The gym opened and closed. I watched a lot of Mimi Ink and I began to sink into a nostalgic slump. I was going to fail. Fail my exam, give up on the tough mudder, fail my brother, fail my dad sigh but it was all too much. Yes friends I a 33 year old man regressed into a winy emo kid. I wined on Facebook about missed opportunities as I glugged down a large glass of wine that evening. Then the Machine posted this “Pull it together old man... No room for nostalgia amongst Tough Mudders (YEP you can rely on brothers to be sensitive!!)”. Can you say Wake Up call? Time to man the f*ck up peeps. Saturday I hit the books and hit the gym, Sunday I studied and hit the playground for some great filming and killer workout.

Sometimes we all need a kick in the ass! And little brother is built to kick ass, take names
and demand chicken burgers after 8 pints.

But,sometimes we also forget that rest is just as important as training be it physical or mental (or both). I have read about over training and its effect 100s of times in Men’s Health and Muscles and Fitness ( I think they publish the same article every February for March). I should of known better, I should have seen the
signs in myself but I didn’t. This week I have my exam and I am giving myself a slightly less hectic week and limiting my training to once a day (just for the week mind he he he ). A bit of a rest should help me come back stronger and fitter than ever. Hopefully after I nail the exam, I can get back to training hard-core, and if I am lucky this weekend with a visit from his Royal Highness Pete the Machine Wallace . Who still by the way needs to write a blog for his site hint, hint, hint. So next weeks blog will either by one about training
with the Machine or maybe just maybe if we all wish really, really hard and all the stars align be written by the Machine. I know, I know there goes my self-disillusion again.

Yay states time:

Stats 23 January 2012
Weight 113.5 Kg No change not surprised I have been eating way to many Promax flapjacks while studying opps, but the’re sooo good.

Run time and distance 6.5km 40mins (Still no walking but it came very very close on Thursday
morning )

Chin Ups 7 whoo so pleased with this on Thursday in the gym then only got 5 when we filmed on Sunday see that my friends is negative returns due to lack of rest lol.

Days to Tough Mudder 111 days

O and Ps
please sponsor us < http://myprojects.cancerresearchuk.org/fundraise/fundraising-pages/wallace-v-wallace-tough-mudder-challenge-2012>

Lost Weekend

As training week number two neared its end, I decided that I needed to take the training to a new level and move outside of my comfort zone. Not that comfortable is how I would describe the past 14 days. A sadomasochistic explosion of self-flagellations through fitness training perhaps better describes the first 2 weeks of January better. However, I digress. In an effort to spice up my training, I grabbed a pen and sat down to work out what I was missing in my current training regimen. How do you prepare for a 12-mile assault course with obstacles designed by a twisted former member of the SAS?

Regular early morning running (well jogging) cardio; Check;

Weight training; Check;,

Climbing, Hanging or any sort of practice in moving my own fat ass against gravity. Wait a minute, alarm bells rang. No, No and thrice No. I have no idea if I can hang from monkey bars and swing my way over pits full of freezing water. Am I strong enough to pull my (increased) bulk up and over a wall?

But how to train? I could pay a personal trainer £45 to show me how to practice these moves in a gym, or fork out the £30 to have a go at an actual assault course in Windsor. Heck no! This is January and like most of the world who over indulged over Christmas we are counting every penny and there is no way the Boss (Mrs W) would let me waste (as she puts it) good money when there are practical things to pay for like road tax, groceries and the rent.  However, I realised that I passed the solutions on my morning runs. The Local Park Playground. It had everything, monkey bars, hang rings, swings, climbing frames the lot. After a little research on the Tough Mudder site and you tube I had planned my playground work out.

On a freezing cold Saturday morning just before sun rise along with my personal support team and film crew aka Mrs Wallace we headed to the park. The reason for the early start was twofold, to avoid worrying parents and small children as I swung about and to minimize the risk of any teenage girls seeing me and pointing and laughing (Yes I have a deep seated fear of teenage girls, they are just so mean).

And so began 45 minutes of pure hell! Squats on the wobble boards sent my abs and legs into spasm. Legs and arms were torn and stretched as I combat crawled over the frozen ground. My shoulders screamed as I hung for 1-minute intervals from the climbing frame, the sight of which actually stopped a couple of joggers in their tracks. My back ached and burned as I heaved my bulk up four sets of five pull ups on the rings (yes shamefully I only get a max five sad face). Internal organs felt like they ruptured as I held vertical (well 60 degree) planks from the swing.

Finally the Monkey Bars. Hanging inches from the ground, I swung with all the grace of a mal-coordinated Orangutan. Every swing sent shudders of pain through my arms. The frozen steel sending shockwaves through my fingers as I gripped for dear life.. On the third turn, I fell, or to be more accurate I crumpled. A playground toy that my six year old nephew you had scurried across backwards and forwards on only a few months earlier had brought me to my knees. Monkey bars, from hells hart I stab at thee, with my last breath I spit at thee, how I hate you.

I lay there panting and gasping for air I managed to sputter out to Mrs Wallace “at least it should make a nice video for the blog” Sheepishly she replied “actually the battery ran out just after we started, you must of forgot to charge it. But, we can get some great clips next week when you do it again”. Again nooooooooo, well ok we need the footage sigh.

Quick plug, please remember myself and Pete are going through all this pain to complete in the Tough Mudder and more importantly raise some cash for Cancer Research and Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. So please check out the fund raising page and let your friends know to. http://myprojects.cancerresearchuk.org/fundraise/fundraising-pages/wallace-v-wallace-tough-mudder-challenge-2012

Finally it time for my weekly shaming. Remember as the biggest loser say the second week is the hardest J

Stats 16 January 2012
Weight 113.5 Kg not a lot will have to do more me thinks.
Run time and distance 6.5km 41mins (Still no walking but
it got close this morning )
Chin Ups 5 I will hit 6 by the end of week 3 I am sure.
Days to Tough Mudder 118 days

Reality Bites.

Reality Bites.

Self-deception, those little white lies we tell ourselves to help us get through the day. You know the ones, we all say them; I am still a 32 waist it’s just the jeans that shrunk; 30 is the new 20; I swear this is my last fag ever; the list goes on and on. But then truth kicks in the door, call you a fat troll, sticks a pack of twenty B+H in your mouth and makes you do the wiggle dance down the high street in front of a pack of laughing
school girls.

And where has the mixed metaphor filled spew of psychobabble sprung from you may ask dear reader? Well last week I had my own run in with self-deception and it all started with last week’s blog. I knew I had put a little weight on over Christmas, but hey, I told myself it’s only a couple of pounds. A wee bit of junk for my trunk. Nothing that I could not shift in a week or so in January with a bit of hard work. Then as part of the Blog I thought it would be a great (idea) to post my weight to help motivated me into morning runs and workouts. It turns out that it was not so much a wee bit of junk but a whole attic full. I had put on in just 3 weeks a whopping 11kgs, that’s 1.7 stone or a small child. Give that the gym was closed do not think it is muscle. I had gone from a lean, mean, chiselled and jacked (what was that about little white lies) 105kg to a decidedly softer 116Kgs. So how did I react? Not well to be honest? There were a few tears, I am a Wallace after all and we are a pretty vain lot. I told myself another little white lie to help me get by.  “Everyone puts on this sort of weight over Christmas, Its normal I am sure it will come off just as quick”. This little bit of untruth was flattened the next day when I popped into the gym in Covent Garden for a lunch time work out, and was confronted with a scene of such homo-eroticism that a 20 screen multiplex showing
nothing but Spartacus and the 300 could not compare. The changing rooms were awash with nothing but six packs and bulging biceps that would make a men’s health cover model (or even a runner up hey Pete!) weep.

I came to the conclusion that in the words of the great Rowdy Roddy Pipper “it time for a reality check”. I
am 33 years of age, the worse shape I have been in for 10 years, over-weight, asthmatic with a beautiful wife who makes the most amazing muffins and cakes. So what to do what to do, should I give up on Tough Mudder and resign myself to a life of ass to couch and stuffing my face with delicious blueberry and white chocolate muffins?

Hell No! In less than 24 hours of setting up last week’s blog we had over £250 donated to Cancer Research, friends rallied around and sent messages of love and support for the silly Wallace Boys.. It was the messages from you all last week that got my lazy ass out of bed for 5am runs. It was your messages that helped motivated me to evening gym sessions and then back up for runs the next morning. So thank you all, I refuse to let you down. I will get fitter. I will get stronger. I will get in shape. I will finish the Tough Mudder course, and I will finish in front of Pete “the Machine” Wallace (ok reaching there). Oh and it helps that Mrs Wallace ensures that the extra poundage means there is just more of me to love.

Next week once the Machine gets back from his 4 days training in the Alps (apparently it all went a little
Rocky 4) we should have a Post from the other younger fitter Wallace brother for your reading pleasure.
Anyhow here are the big guys stats after 1 week of training

Stats 9 January 2012
Weight 114 Kg
Run time and distance 5.5km 32mins (managed to jog it all
this morning no walking yay)
Chin Ups 5
unassisted
Days to Tough Mudder 125

New Year New Pain

Ok so here we are 2012, I am another year older and more than a few pounds heavier. I should be slipping into a comfortable middle age rut of babies, cakes, evening beers and a nice bit of middle age spread.

Instead of this picture of bliss, I have spent the last day of the Christmas holidays dragging my asthmatic 17 stone frame on a 5.5KM run followed by an hour of power work out. There was much sweating, grunting and weeping when to my shame I was overtaken by a pensioner out for a morning jog. Now why would I put myself through this pain and humiliation? Four reasons: one I am a fitness sadist and the gym was closed; two I have been signed up for this year’s Tough Mudder contest and need a lot of practice if I am going to survive the 12 mile run and 26 insane obstacles (monkey bars, ice swims and nettles to the nipples to name a few). Third, I will be running this year’s Tough Mudder contest with my younger brother Pete Wallace. Pete is the definition of fitness, 5’11 carved out of granite, body fat in single figures, a former Mens Health Cover model of the year runner up (our dear mum still has the calendar and poster to prove it) and with the stamina to run 12 miles backwards whilst giving me the finger in his sleep. If I am to be able to hold my head up at any family gathering ever again I need at the very least to keep up with him and maybe just maybe have my rocky moment….

And finally and most importantly I have been inspired to do this by my Dad, Mr Wallace Snr, the toughest man I know. Last year Dad spent nine months fighting Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. His face swelled up, he never
complained he never slowed down; he could not sleep more than a few hours a night, he never complained he never slowed down; his hair fell out he never complained and bought a new hat, he spent hours plugged into a chemo machine he never complained and finished his Sudoku.

He beat Cancer, he did not make a song and dance about it just smiled and took his wife shopping. Chuck Norris and Jack Bower combined ain't got nothing on this guy. So inspired by Mr Wallace Snr both myself and the and the “machine” Pete Wallace will be running the Tough Mudder and trying to raise a little money along the way for Lymphoma research to try and prove we are half as tough as our Dad.

So to help me keep motivated both Pete and myself will be up dating this blog each week with our
training progress and states and throwing in a few vids for your general amusement.

Stats 2 January 2012:
Weight 116 Kg
Run time and distance 5.5km 36mins
Chin Ups 5 unassisted
Days to Tough Mudder 132