Fitness | The Beast Race 2016…

               “Your Body can stand almost anything, It’s your mind you have to convince”

Sometimes it is only when you challenge yourself that you can see the true strength that your body has. And that is certainly true for me.

Only a few years ago, I really struggled with the concept of exercise – I had no interest in it whatsoever and I hadn’t done since I was very young (You can read my fitness story here). Nowadays, I’m never away from the gym and the harder that the session is, the more I enjoy it (I’m a glutton for punishment) and so now when new opportunities arise for a challenge, I jump at the chance.

The Beast Race is a 10K obstacle race which takes place in September in either Banchory or Loch Ness. Having seen Christy from Dinner Stories take part the last couple of years, I decided that I would definitely have to give it a go at some point. And so this year I signed myself up along with Christy and also Laura from Laura Whispering as team ‘Bloggers & the Beast’.

Now aside from the Beast looking like fun, I also signed up to prove a point to myself that I was capable of doing such a thing. In addition, I was also interested to see what my body could do outside of a gym environment as well as seeing how far I could run (By no means am I a runner in any shape or form!). I also thought it would be fun to get a little mucky and wet for once in my life.

The day of Beast Race approached much faster than I thought it would (I swear life speeds up as you get older…) and admittedly I hadn’t done much in the form of running at all. I generally do some cardio throughout the week but for Beast, I wanted to focus on running a little more as I had heard all about ‘the dreaded hill’…

On race day, leaving my thoughts about ‘The Hill’ aside, I put on some suitable workout gear (I actually had to pop out in the morning to get a longer sleeved top as the weather was rubbish with weather warnings and such…), laced up my trainers and waited patiently for my wave time (2pm if you must know).

Wave time eventually arrived and with registering and the warm-up complete, it was then time to tackle the Beast!

The first obstacle that we had to complete were 4 rows of hay bales. Now these things are much higher than you think. Surprisingly, I managed to get over them without too many issues although you can lose your momentum when someone comes flying over the top of you…

After the hay bales, it was onwards and upwards towards the dreaded hill. Here, we had a steep run up the hill but at one point a lot of people were walking as the path was so narrow and you couldn’t pass anyone. Once we reached the top there was a Piper piping and also a mini wall to climb over and then we were on our way all the way back down…

On the way back down, we encountered a run through the forest, ‘ankle biters’, cargo net, a bog, a sandbag carry and a few other things in between. After that….things got really messy!

The messy obstacles were definitely my favourite. These included a slide (where I picked up my beast wound), a clay pit with a rope climb, a skip filled with water that you had to climb in and out and a few other obstacles. It was so much fun!

Overall, I really enjoyed my 1st Beast experience and I’m definitely wanting to do it again. I think that if you are thinking about giving it a go, then definitely do it. There were people of all ages and abilities taking part. If you don’t feel that you will be able to do an obstacle, you have the option to miss it out completely. I actually missed out the high wall as I hurt my shoulder going over the hay bales at the start and didn’t want to push it seeing as I had physio for my shoulder not too long ago. If I’m honest, I’m actually surprised that my only injury was my beast wound which is down below for your viewing pleasure (or viewing non-pleasure)…