SURVIVAL Running ten kilometres is achievable for most healthy people butas soon as there are substantial obstacles placed every half akilometre, the challenge moves up a few gears. And as thechallenge grows, so does the training and the reward. JamesWilkinson takes you through his journey to and beyond Survivalof the Fittest.

ne day I hope to tell my grand-children that I have doneeverything I wanted to do. Ihope to tell them that I havetravelled the world, that I have

sat among great people, that I've over-come the greatest challenges and reapedthe greatest rewards and that I did it allwith a smile on my face. I hope that I cantell them all of these things but one thing Iknow that I can tell them already is thaton a cold November morning in 2012 Iachieved something that only a fewmonths before I didn't think achievable. Iconquered something that changed notonly my physical aesthetic but my mentalviewpoint of my own abilities.On the 3rd of November 2012 I stood onthe start line of the Manchester Men'sHealth Survival of the Fittest filled withanticipation, excitement and readiness tosee if all the training had been worth it.This was the pinnacle of all the hours in

the gym, all of the miles put behind me inall conditions. I was in the shape of mylife so far and I was about to find out ifthat was good enough. But taking the steps to the start linebegan months before. I had some idea ofwhat to expect and knew that whatever itwas, cardio was going to be paramount. Running any further than two miles wasjust for fitness freaks and Olympians. Forme 10 Kilometres may as well have beena marathon. I started small, two milesevery other day until I was comfortablethen I upped it by half a mile each time Iconquered the previous distance. Running was boring, it was repetitive anddifficult. But it was necessary and it wasworth it.Running alone, however, wasn't going tobe enough. I wasn't facing a 10K run on

it's own. There was a lot of conditioningto be done to get me over, under, roundand through the barrage of obstaclespacked into the course.Body weight conditioning was key. Press-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups comprised themajority of my workouts with just a coupleof dumbells to keep the rest of my mus-cles in good shape.The race would only take a couple ofhours but getting to it took much longer. Itwas an arduous few months of exercise,eating well and ultimately commitment tomy goal - Achieving the previously un-achievable. The dark prelude that was the night be-fore the race couldn't vanish quicklyenough as my anticipation built to fever-pitch. I was like a child on Christmas Eve,only instead of bounding downstairs to anarray of presents and food, I was going

FITTESO

L OF THEST

Canal crossing. They neversaid it was going to be easy

down to a cold, dark morning and a 4 eggomelette.We arrived in the once glorious and worldfamous surroundings of Sport City andit's crowing glory Manchester City's Eti-had Stadium. In a short while we wouldbe climbing the daunting spirals of thegrand stadium as one of the many obsta-cles between us and the finish line.The organisation pre-race was fantastic.Clear instructions led to short queues andsimple pieces of kit such as our racenumbers and timing devices. The hardestpart of the pre-race build up was attach-ing the timing chip to our laces with fin-gers that had become as dextrous assausages in the bitter cold of early No-vember.Men's Health organisational worker AdamPatel told me that "This is our first eventin Manchester and we have over 4000runners. It's taken on the popularity of ourLondon and Edinburgh races straightaway." "It's busy here today but that's the bestthing, it keeps everyone going becausethis isn't easy. Good luck mate!"

e were called to the bustlingsurroundings of the startingenclosure for a generalwarm-up. Tension filled everymolecule of the air, you couldalmost see it in your breath.

"Turn around and face the start line." Oh shit.Realisation. Daunting realisation. Doubt was going to be inevitable, I had itearly on in my training, loads of it, but Ihadn't felt it in a while. But as I turned toface the start line I saw far beyond it, 10kilometres and more. I was running this race with two of myclosest friends but I was doing it for my-self. I wished them luck and turned toface the start.The hundreds of people around me dis-appeared as the countdown began."10... 9..." Was the training going to beenough? "8... 7... 6..." I can do this."5... 4..." I'm ready."3..." Why the fuck am I doing this?"2..." Shit."1..." Shit."GO!" SHIT!Straight up and over the first mountain ofhay bails. Off the other side and straightup over the next one. Not too bad at all.It's happening now so let's go for it.Over a parkour section, difficult on myfrozen hands. At this point I saw the firstfew people pulling up with minor injuries,twisted ankles from jumping off the plat-forms and pulled muscles from a lackwarming up. This proved that it was

tough. I didn't know how many peoplewould be left at the end but I was deter-mined to be one of them. As we rounded a corner, guided by thehigh-vis motivators who would prove vitallater in the race, I stared into a hungrygate, wide open at the bottom of thegrand spirals of the Etihad Stadium. Fouror five spirals was only half way up thefirst tower and this is where reality set in.I was feeling ok at a steady pace but oneof my running mates was realising that heshould have trained more, he shouldn'thave taken it so lightly, less than one kilo-metre in and he was struggling.He battled through the first stitch and wedescended the next tower. A bit of lightrelief until we were shepherded back upthe next tower. Another hungry gatelaughing at my burning quads.Up the third tower and down the fourth.Mercifully there were no more to climb.Instead we ran through the underbelly ofthe stadium and emerged beside the hal-lowed turf. 50,000 blue seats willed us onas if filled with passionate fans as theyusually are. One lap of the immaculatepitch guided us out into the comparativelytiny surroundings of the sport city athlet-ics track.400 metres round the athletics track andover some steeplechase hurdles, the lastof which brought us to our first encounterwith water. But there was much more of

that to come. That was a high intensity start and a realtest of my fitness but I was fine. Not onlywas I going well but I was still going. Ad-mittedly I was only 2K in but it was astrong 2K. The next couple of kilometres had onlyminor obstacles such as jumping on andoff flat-bed trucks a few times, just tokeep the full-body test ticking over. In keeping with the friendly atmosphereof the race, I talked to a fellow participantwho was competing in all of the racesacross the country that year.“I’m not doing it for the medals or tobreak records but you’ve got to keeppushing yourself.”“I did one last year and by the next week-end I was fine again. So why not do an-other one?”Just as we settled into a comfortablepace, we were stopped in our tracks by acanal crossing. No bridge. I was runningwith two of my friends - One is six footfive, the other, 5 foot seven and I’m aboutin between. As the tall one leapt with noreservation feet first into the canal, ex-pecting to touch the bottom before hishead disappeared under the water, theattendant uttered “It’s nine feet deep” andhis tall frame vanished into the brownwater of the Manchester canal. The look

W

The Wall of Fame. 9feet of pain, willing youto fail.

of terror on my short friend’s face waspriceless and allowed a laugh to comeacross my heavy-breathing mouth. Thesmile was short lived as we had sevenkilometres to go whilst cold and wet.The next notable obstacle was undoubt-edly the most fun - Two short courses ofinflatable obstacles like you might find onTotal Wipeout or It’s a Knockout. Whilethis might seem easy and fun, after 4kilometres of obstacles the uneasy, inflat-able ground worked very much againstour progress. That being said, jumpinghead first through a small hole with norisk of breaking your neck is a light relief.It didn’t last long. It wasn’t long before wewere back on solid ground running backtowards the Stadium.At the halfway point we arrived at the firstand only water station. Some muchneeded rehydration before a long run to-wards the home of a British team enjoy-ing unprecedented success. TheManchester Veledrome, the home ofBritish cycling. Wiggins and Hoy, Pendle-ton and Cavendish have all been throughthis building on their way to success.That sort of thing can help when you’redeep into a race like this. The next obstacle we reached was anarmy assault course. An assault coursewithin an obstacle course. That is thevery definition of adding insult to injury.Over and under a few cargo nets and A-frames, monkey bars and running withsandbags topped off with a very irate drillinstructor. I’m sure it was there for moti-vation but it was the last thing I needed.From difficult to wonderfully easy, thiscourse kept us guessing, as we ran up toa steward holding a hose pipe and point-ing down a big mud slide. Great fun. Untilwe realised there was tree roots andstones all the way down which certainlywasn’t comfortable in the cold and wet. But being covered in mud on our backs

wasn’t enough for this course and wewere directed under a very heavy cargonet through several inches of extremelythick mud that took a few people’s train-ers off their feet. But we took it all in ourstride because we were nearly there. TwoK to go.This is the point that adrenaline begins tocarry you and it was a good job as wewere pointed to another dip into thecanal, Albeit, a lot more cautiously.Wet and cold once again, we came to thesection titled ‘The work zone’ which wasessentially a large building site turnedinto an obstacle course. Cone runs and acountless number of large concrete bol-lards to scramble over which reallysapped our last reserves of energy as wehit nine K.At this point we know the lactic acid isthere and we know that there’s not muchleft in the tank but the crowds are begin-ning to build again and the big, inflatable,welcoming arms of the finish line are insight.The last few obstacles were really morefor the crowd’s enjoyment than challeng-ing the participants. Into a skip full ofmuddy water and bark which created anunbelievably sticky, disgusting mush. Outof that skip and into another which wasjust ice water. We only had to wadeacross it but it took our breath (What littlebreath we had left).

But that was it. One obstacle left. TheWall of Fame. A nine foot monster waitingto trip us at the last hurdle. Heart’s pump-ing, head’s pounding, legs are burning.Everything I trained for is on the otherside of this behemoth and there was nochance it was going to stop me. We helped each other to the top in a pre-viously organised system and there wasthe finishing line in all its glory. I launchedmyself from the top with pure achieve-ment and excitement. Unfortunately, mylegs didn’t have the same enthusiasm asthey crumpled beneath me. Quite embar-rassing in front of the big crowd but theystill cheered because a lot of them hadalready finished in previous waves andstayed to support the rest of us. Andfalling wasn’t an issue at this point, I’dcrawl to the line if I had to. All three of us got our feet on the groundand we crossed the line as a unit just likewe had been for the rest of the race. Success. Victory. Achievement. I’d doneit. I’d conquered my body, my mind, thecourse and other people to get over thatline and it was all worth it. I was elated, Ialmost felt that I could do it again. And Iwill, next year but at the time, after all thesacrifice and the discipline, I just needed a pint.

I’m not doing it for themedals or to break records

but you’ve got to keeppushing yourself.“ “