I may be Nuts

For our last day in London, Wilma and I went to Oxford Circus for food and a little shopping. I bought some more clothes and souvenirs and was unsure how they would fit in my bag which was already stuffed. Once we had enough of London we took the Southern Train (reluctantly) and headed down to the south coast. We arrived at my cousin’s and I instantly did laundry which was sort of my staple for arriving back in Worthing. I was running the Nuts Challenge the following day and wanted to get everything ready. It was scheduled to be cold, and possibly rain or snow. I was running it with my cousin. After much deliberation, we decided to run, and decided after one lap we would see if we wanted to do the second. My cousin picked me up at 8am and we made our way to the course. The parking lot was muddy. And it was cold. I was wearing my big coat which I would not get to wear on my run. We eventually changed into our running gear and wait for the starting call. We jumped around to keep warm. The first wave was at 10am. They needed the temperature to warm up a little bit so they could break the ice off the course. The run started off fine. We went over a few obstacles, all was good. Then we went into our first water obstacle which was like a mud trench you went in and then had to crawl over a mud wall. The water went to our ankles and wasn’t terrible. As we progressed on the course, the water obstacles would get deeper and the mud humps we were crawling over were getting taller that sometime I would need a boost to get out. We would have to climb rope ladders, and some of the obstacles were natural. Like we crawled into a creek and would have to walk through the creek for a bit before hoisting ourselves out. We crawled over logs, and when we weren’t completing an obstacle we were trying to run on slick mud. Running on mud was hard. We moved as fast as we could to keep warm, but it was cold. It was probably around 35 degrees F and it would sometimes sprinkle on us, and I think it even snowed a little bit. There were armpit deep pools we would have to wade through, and the more and more I got wet the harder it was to warm myself up again. I was having a good time though. My cousin would ask me how I was doing and I would be laughing out a good. We had to carry a sand bag up and hill and back, and another was carrying a tire. We carried a tire slightly up a hill and then we got to sit on our bums and slide down the hill. It was a lot of fun. Then we had to climb with the tire again up a hill, but this one was slick. You would slide down a few feet and them have to climb back up the hill again. I had a good time though. Another different obstacle was the smoke house. They essentially smoke bombed a house so you can’t see anything and you have to wade through the house. The obstacle that did me in though was the water slide. You slide down a slick piece of wood and then free fall maybe three feet in a pool of water. You then have to swim to the rope later and pull yourself out. I was so cold! And it wasn’t like it was warm outside either. We had more rope climbing obstacles and more mud to wade through, and I was frozen. I had to skip out on two obstacles. One was basically swimming through a lake and the other was climbing over river tubes that were tied together, and if you failed you fell in the lake. I think if I would of had to fully submerge myself again the race would no longer have been a good time. I did the firemen pole and climbed over hay stacks. I definitely found this course a bit more challenging than the tough mudder, but probable because it had almost twice as many obstacles, was freezing, and I wasn’t in as good shape. It’s hard to keep your normal exercise routine when you are on holiday. Before we reached the end of the first lap my cousin and I had decided we were only doing one lap. We completed 7k in about 2 hours. We changed into dry clothes and ordered some hot coca and hot food. I did have a good time. But I don’t think I would do a mud run in the winter like that again. I could barely walk for two days. That made the following day interesting because we went out to Stonehenge. It was cool to see the rocks, but Wilma and I did not pay the 15 pounds to get closer to the stones. So we walked through the sheep field to get our look. We then walked around Salisbury before heading back to Worthing for a family dinner. I was going to having dinner with two of my cousins and their families. It was cool to have so much family in England. Wilma took off at like 4am the following morning. I spent my remaining days in England being lazy . I did make it out to Portsmouth one day which was awesome. I took a trip on the HMS Warrior which is like the Titanic but older, and a Navy Ship. And I took a tour on the HMS Victory which is 250 years old. The Victory fought in the Revolutionary War. I explored around a few other museums and then checked out the outlet stores nearby. I had museums and shopping all within walking of each other. It was pretty cool.Portsmouth was my last day trip out. Otherwise, I spent my days trying to arrange my bag which was over weight. My cousin is having to bring some stuff with him in April because I had acquired too much junk during my travels. I can’t believe my time in the UK and Europe is up. I barely touched the mainland, so that will be next on my European agenda. I think I’ll miss my family the most, but overall I had a fantastic time and can’t wait to go back!