I Can't Get No Satisfaction

There sometimes comes a time in a person's life when you have to admit that some things are just not for you. For me that would seem to be obstacle course races, or OCRs.

You see I was meant to do Spartan Beast at the weekend; 13 miles and around 25 obstacles. But I didn't. I spent some time during the week um-ing and ah-ing about it, and in some respects I'm grateful that a silly injury (sprained fingers) meant I couldn't do it, but ultimately I had to admit to myself that I didn't *want* to do it and I'd have gotten no enjoyment from it. I didn't train specifically for the event and although it would have been a great thing to have accomplished, I'm resigned to the fact that obstacle course racing is just not for me. I don't really enjoy anything more than Grim or Gung-Ho! style events, that are predominately muddy or just plain fun. And that's ok.

Gung-Ho! finisher's garb

I think the reason I kept on signing up to OCRs (and then dropping out) was because I felt like I needed to push myself further and I was searching for a different sense of accomplishment. I've had a lot of fun with my events this year, but am I proud of any of them? Maybe Ultra12 and the Brighton Marathon but it doesn't feel like enough.

Jam jar wisdom

I want to train for something and be proud of accomplishing it. I've got a few events in the diary for next year, as you'll see from the side bar, but none of them feel like my A-race, my big event for the year. I'll need to build up my mental strength for the polar half, work on my hill running for Leith Hill and build up the distance again for Cakeathon and Stour Valley Marathon but that doesn't feel like any great shakes. It probably is. I'm probably skewing this in my mind. It doesn't help that a few people I know have signed up to or just completed big events such as ironman. Which to some extent is why I'm trying not to book too many events. I've said before that I just love taking part in events, I like the atmosphere, but by entering lots, without thought for how they fit together, I rarely leave myself room to train specifically.

So following on from last week's update post, I'm still changing up my training focusing on strength and building my running towards the Polar Half but I now need to work out what's going to give me the satisfaction I crave in terms of events.

With that in mind, last week's training looked like this:
Monday: Boxercise
Tuesday: Rest day
Wednesday: Strength training
Thursday: metafit
Friday: Rest day
Saturday: parkrun & Gung-Ho!
Sunday: 5 mile run

What kinds of events give you most satisfaction and which do you avoid?