Training for the Ultimate Suck

Most of the time when I tell people about the challenges I train for, they give me the "you're crazy" routine.  I don't think I'm crazy; I think I want to see the depths of my soul.  I want to see what makes me, breaks me, can change my perspective on who I am and what is possible.  I consider the Ultimate Suck that kind of challenge.

How do you start training for something like this?  It isn't a basic OCR or follow the guidelines of a running routine.  It's a little of the unknown mixed in with a lot of reps of general conditioning, heavy lifting--shit, I have to perhaps shoot a gun (don't do that very often) and perhaps survive pepper spray!  What the hell did I get myself into?

Breaking Up My Training

The Suck is at the end of August.  I finished running an ultra (Ice Age 50) May 9th.  I have roughly four months to gain back all the weight I lost plus a little from pure running.  Ultra running isn't my thing, but I did it with a friend because I wanted the challenge.  I'm not what I consider a super strong person, but what I do have is enormous amounts of endurance in weight training, calisthenics, and repeated workouts.  I have a motor.  What I need to gain is some muscle mass and no how to carry shit around for distance.  The video up above isn't a far cry from some of the concepts I've built.

Building a Base

I'm taking this concept right out of Mark Twight's book, Training for the New Alpinism.  Mark Twight knows a bit about endurance and carrying your body around for a long time.  What I've concluded is that to survive races like the Suck or Death Race or anything that is 24 hours plus, you must have the ability to carry your body around and do fitness without breaking down.  

To start my weight gain and muscle strength plan, I broke up my weeks into 10 day sessions.  within that time frame, I can give my body rest.  For some reason, if I set my plan up in a 7 day plan, I feel cramped with what I want to do and don't give myself time to rest.  Base building is all about general fitness.  I have a good base already, so building up general strength and not being sore everyday isn't something I have to worry about.  The plan was something like this:

1. Strong lift 5x5 (traditional olympic lifts.  I pick three, usually squats in there and dead-lift)
2. Recovery day of light push-up and pull-up work throughout the day
3. Soldier of steel workout (sometimes I picked a workout from here; sometimes I made my own cross fit style workout).
4. Recovery day of hangs and FLR's, perhaps a run.
5. Long day:  This is a day that I make that simulates what I would do in the race.  Example:  I'll hike with a weighted ruck, chop wood, flip tires and bear crawl the stadium at the local high school, drag weight, farmer carry buckets with weight, so on and so forth...
6. Nothing.  Rest, you need it.
7. Strong lift again 5x5 
8. Recovery day exercises
9. Split wood, followed by cross fit style workout (usually more body-weight and burpee heavy)
10. Recovery day

I do this for roughly 4-6 weeks depending on my time before my race.

Building Endurance

Once my base is what I consider good, I'm ready to shift into more endurance, more long pounding workouts.  While cross fit style workouts are good at getting some general fitness going, I find it to be a bad short-cut into building sustained energy for races such as the Suck.  There are no short-cuts in this kind of conditioning--gassing out in 20 minutes won't help you prepare for 36 hours of work.  

So I change my 10 day plan up a bit more.  There are more "long days" and my 5x5 days have extra exercises.  My Soldier of steel days, change into more of a "carry and suffer" workout.  Observe:

1. Strong Lift 5x5, rest for 5, begin pull-up routine (discussed further down), weighted box step-ups for 20-25 minutes
2. Recovery day
3. Carry and Suffer: weighted sled pull while farmer carry, kettle bell swings x20 into sled sprints, front squats into sled sprints, waiter carries, weighted box step ups for time.  Rest for 5, go out and run 400-800 repeats.  Start basic in week one (2 miles) and build to 5-10 miles based on your running skill set.  Break up repeats with burpees. 
4. Recovery day
5. Long day: Same concept as the base building
6. Recovery day
7. Long day or carry and suffer (based on time allotment)
8. Nothing
9. Strong Lift 5x5
10. recovery day

Recovery Days and other days

Do what you want with recovery days.  Some days you'll need to do hardly anything...maybe stretch or something really light.  Other days you may feel like you can do a rather rigorous light workout (do some push-ups or pull-ups, maybe a little light weight) or perhaps a good low pace run or swim.  Whatever they are, keep it light.  The body needs recovery time. 

Sometimes, because of time, I have to break up my days into two parts.  I'll do part of the workout at god-awful early times and the other part either during my kids' nap times or later in the evening.  You have to be pretty flexible.

It's a plan, not a schedule

I have two kids and have a wife, a life is more important than this.  I can do most of this because I train like this in the summer and I'm a teacher.  My workload becomes less in the summer.  Even still, in the school year, I'll take on some of my schedule in the morning in my own makeshift gym and the other part after school in the weight room where I supervise.  This plan works for me.  Take what you want, but be flexible.  The most important thing is being consistent with workouts and recovering.