Endurance Journey March 2020 – Winter Nuts Challenge

As we know OCR and running have events have now been postponed until the Corona Virus epidemic is over, Luckily I still managed to get an OCR race in before this happened, my short account of the Winter Nuts challenge is below.

Over the offseason I have put in a large amount of training and maintained 5 running sessions a week, 3 gym sessions and also mixed some swimming and boxing into the mix.

I was confident I would perform well in the Nuts Challenge but I underestimated one of the key components of this race…. The ice-cold chest-high water, I had raced in this depth before but nothing this cold. The start of this race was quick and I maintained touching distance with the front runners. The first few obstacles were simple walls and cargo nets, we made our way up a slip wall and jumped into the pool of water below, my body felt the full force of the cold water shock and I was gasping for air.

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This water was unbelievably cold and I recommend anyone
attempted this race to come with the proper equipment such as neoprene suits
and base layers. I scrambled out of the cold water and I knew then my clothing
choice was poor, my cotton long sleeve top and running tights would only soak
up the water making me colder.

Next came an onslaught of water-based obstacles with very little running breaks in-between to warm up this only made the issue worse and left me with uncontrollable shivering and disorientation. I had originally planned to do 3 laps of this course (21k) but this was now out of the question due to the cold conditions.

I rushed through the rest of the course completing the majority of obstacles but was not going to hang around to retry any failures, got to the finish line and was very relieved that I could not get out of the wet clothes and get warmed up.

After seeing many other racers come out with borderline hyperthermia I’m glad  I made the smart decision to call it a day at the first lap and come back next time fully prepared!

All in all the Winter Nuts Challenge is a great race to kick off the OCR season with a challenging course and some fun obstacles, but racers need to do prior research and come with the correct kit!

Let all hope this corona virus epidemic passes quickly so we can return to normal life and get racing again!