Tough Mudder -- Detailed Recap!

For those of you who have been following the blog for a while, you are aware that a few months ago the bf, some good friends and I decided to commit to the Tough Mudder.

What is the Tough Mudder?
Per the website: "Tough Mudder events are hardcore 10-12 mile obstacle courses designed by British Special Forces to test your all around strength, stamina, mental grit, and camaraderie. As the leading company in the booming obstacle course industry, Tough Mudder has already challenged half a million inspiring participants worldwide and raised more than $3 million dollars for the Wounded Warrior Project. But Tough Mudder is more than an event, it’s a way of thinking. By running a Tough Mudder challenge, you’ll unlock a true sense of accomplishment, have a great time, and discover a camaraderie with your fellow participants that’s experienced all too rarely these days."

Our team of 8 decided to try our hand at the Tough Mudder.

To get ready for our event:
• BF and I had been doing interval training, lots of HIIT and body weight exercises. We did not run. We did the Mudderling workout on the TM website.
• BF's brother does boxing and swimming, along with other cardio-intense workout. He would join doing interval training on the weekends.
• Other members did cross fit, and variety of gym-related exercises.

I'm not sure if any of us were 100% on point with diet. I know we certainly weren't.

Our even took place on Sat. Sept. 29 at Diablo Grande gold course in Patterson, CA. Our start time was 8:40, and we were out of the house by 5 to get there by 6:40. This is a much earlier start to the day than what we're used to....

All booths (registration, bag check, etc) were extremely organized. There wasn't much guesswork. Parking was a breeze. Only "complaint" is we had to park on dirt areas and the dust was just... ridiculous, getting everywhere, into our eyes, etc. Wetting the path MAY have helped but not much.

At around 8:10, we headed to the start line-- before reaching the start you had to go over a 8 foot wall-- this is the beginning!

These photos are from the Tough Mudder website!

We had a team of 8!

Right past the start line, you can see orange smoke-- this stuff was awful and it was wafting with us as we jogged the first quarter mile or so.

The first little bit was a nice, easy job. Very little variation in terrain, everything was relatively flat. Then came the 12 foot Berlin Walls.

I did get a boost over every wall; couldn't have done it without my team.

Then came the Arctic Enema-- we somehow lucked out and didn't have to jump into the ice water-- seemed like our timing was off-- got there before they refilled the ice cubes.

So... this was more refreshing and fun than anything else :)

Down and through some barbed wire...


And then it was time for the first hill.

And my god. It doesn't look like much right now, but honestly the incline was like 60 degrees. I was completely winded by 1/3 of the way up. This was such a shockingly deceptive hill. It took me the longest time to get up; mind you this was less than a mile into the course. By the time I reached the top, I thought I was either going to barf, pass out, or some combination of both. I don't know. I could only think... oh god... what the heck did I get myself into? After about 5 minutes of taking it easy... I never felt so awful the rest of the course. So... maybe just took it to be the max too quickly? I don't know.

After another mile or so of grueling, and I mean GRUELING terrain, we came to the two by twos, and one by ones.

... really tough.
I was pressing down as hard as I could and there was no way I could have made it without proper footing, which I just wasn't getting.... so I went swimming :)

After more jogging and walking, we did some over, under and through logs:


More jogging, then the mud pits:

We had been relatively clean, up to this point. After getting out of this, we were all easily walking around with 5 lbs or more of mud caked onto clothing, gravel in our shoes. It was dirty and.... really fun.

There was no shortage of camaraderie throughout; strangers helped each other and I definitely got a helping hand more than a few times :)

At this point, we were faced with another wall. Except this was much more slippery and we were starting to feel slightly tired.

I do love this sign. TM has a good sense of humor, so take it or leave it :P


More terrain navigation, and then there's the Boa Constrictor. Our version of this obstacle wasn't half flood as were some of the other sites...


The rings.. THE RINGS. MY GOD.

There were spaced out quite a bit- I was not able to reach... so.. went for another dip :)

And Funky Monkeys, notorious monkey bars!

I couldn't even reach the first bar on this one, lol. So I did the flying squirrel, made a leap for it, missed, ate it in the water below.

I just like this shot.

You had to climb up the back (15 foot wall) before jumping off the ledge. It looks way higher from above than from below. This was the one that I knew I was going to have the most trouble with. Height + water = freaked out Lisa. There were Marines at the top doing crowd control and occasionally pushing hesitant mudders in.. My legs locked and I backed up, but eventually sucked it up and just walked off. Terrifying, but very fun and rewarding once done.

Electric eel was so fun. Shocked by 10K Volts. (Felt like a pinch that also makes you unable to control your muscles momentarily, not painful really but .. shocking... haha)


Everest-- SO CLOSE TO BEING DONE!

This was the second to last obstacle and my legs were pretty shot after 10+ miles of trudging up and down crazy hills. I tried 3 times before grabbing hold of a friend who beastly bicep curled me up the ledge, lol.

Last one, electric shock again:


We were all spent. I didn't cover all the obstacles; there weren't photos of all of them online so I did not link, but this does give a good idea of what we were doing throughout the 10+ miles!

Finish, and you get your Tough Mudder headband!


The toughest part about all this: the fricken terrain.
The hills were KILLER. It was never ending up, down, up, down, up down.. etc. Those with knee problems-- going downhill is tough because you have to take it slow or else feel extreme knee pain. Luckily I have good knees but 3 members of our team were not as lucky.

We were doing these, the whole time:

The little dots are people; us! :) Love this shot because it really gives some perspective. Distance covered by this shot is maybe half a mile? Maybe...


All in all, this was an AWESOME experience. I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who wants to get out, have some fun with good company. It's not a competition (unless if you really want it to be)... but you can make it what you want. The people are friendly. The event was VERY well organized. The Tough Mudder staff takes good care of you; water, bananas, little snacks along the way and first aid stations and medics on call.

Most importantly, you feel accomplished. All around just... so positive and happy that you conquered this beast.

Excellent team building exercise, for those of you looking to build camaraderie amongst coworkers or what not.

I was deathly sore the next day. I would say everyone on our team was above average shape, but I know that I personally have a lot of room for development. We are signed up for the Spartan Race in November so harder training is in order! For those of you who do cross-fit; I think you guys are in good shape to tackle this! We are going to add in more hill/trail running to our workout regime to get better prepped.

Please leave me any questions/comments below and I will get back to you!

Thanks for coming by and reading about our adventure :)

Lisa

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Of recent happenings :) Fitness and Art

Greetings! In Mushu's verbiage...

Been quite a hiatus for me and blogging. This sounds dramatic but it almost feels like I'm at some cross roads in life so I have been focusing on that.... that and keeping up with my health and fitness goals for Tough Mudder.

Speaking of Tough Mudder, training recently has really been dominated by Zuzana's Workouts as can be seen on her YouTube. She is amazing. AMAZING. We have dramatically increased our overall fitness and cardiovascular endurance as a result of this training. And you don't have to work longer (in fact, we have worked shorter sessions), you just have to work harder and smarter. Our workouts are now 30 minutes on average, most of the time more around 20, but it's ridiculous and we're completely exhausted by the end, can not do another rep, and will be sore the next day. As people who work full time (and as an artist during the other times..), the more time efficient things we can do, the better!

Here's one of my favorite workouts from Zuzana.

!!!!
Burpee Torture!! 

Remember, good form! And it's totally OK to modify movements; I still have to modify a lot of my movements to keep my form good / to avoid injury. Filming yourself or working out with your partner is a great way of becoming more aware of your form. Most of us have no idea what we actually look like until we see ourselves from a different angle; totally normal-- it's a learning process!

We've increased our workouts to 5-6 days/week, mainly actually  because it just feels great, not because we're trying to push push push or whatnot.

Our diet has also undergone a few changes. We are eating a more protein based diet with less simple sugars/carbs. Avoiding carbs (like white rice) at dinner if possible. We feel really, really awesome.

Dare I say.. bf and I are getting addicted to these workouts?

Next post I'll share my super healthy (yet delicious) banana bread recipe with you all.

Meanwhile on the creation front I have still been busy!

I was recently accepted as a member of the Artisan Group and have joined a gifting to Mariska Hargitay, from Law and Order: SVU!

When I was a freshman in college, the roomie and I used to watch SVU all. the. time. So much it was kind of ridiculous actually. It was kinda fate that I was able to prepare the following goodies to gift her:

I went on a cuff binge over the weekend and created these cuffs:

I think it's funny how art comes in phases.

Also these earrings have been in the works for a long time, but I needed a few hours of free time to sit down and make them..

I have had requests to do Super Nova earrings for seriously 2 years now. I am finally committing to the idea, and am so glad I did. These are quite intricate, very flashy. I'm going to have to find an excuse to make myself a pair in crystal clear and wear them to work with a plain shirt...

I also have some potentially exciting news but since I don't know anything for certain yet I can not share :X

HOW IS EVERYONE?!

Lisa
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lisaHQCD@gmail.com

DIY: Homemade Energy Bars - No Bake! Super Healthy.

The last 3 weeks weren't good for me fitness wise.

I had this weird kink in my lower back, which transferred to my hip socket. It literally took me out of commission for three weeks, so I couldn't work out. Whole time I just kept thinking "I'm too young for this to happen!!"

Needless to say I'm feeling a bit loose and out of sorts. I was officially able to get back to the regular routine 2 days ago, but still taking it easy and doing modified, lower impact version of some exercises until my muscles/nerves get better.

Turns out I had a bunch of muscles that locked up and gave out because I don't breathe properly and clench my jaw unconsciously. Bad! But all is getting much better now :)

Today I wanted to share my homemade power bard with you guys. With demanding workouts, we have to find high quality, lost lasting but easy to enjoy energy sources.

We have the option of buying energy bars but we decided that we try to make our own; this way we can control exactly what goes into it, and tweak it depending on our mood.

The overall idea of it is very simple:
Grind up a bunch of nuts, make into bars by combining with a fruit/honey/agave/nut butter glue. I'll explain in detail below.

So here are SOME of the ingredients I used. You can really get creative and use whatever you like-- we used only raw nuts, some almond butter, dried cranberries, vanilla extract for flavor, oatmeal, chocolate bits.. etc etc.

Step 1:
Combine all your liquid ingredients + dried fruit (I used cranberries, you can use any dried fruit you want) in a food processor and blend the heck out of them until they become pasty and very... very sticky and gooey. This will become the paste that holds your bars together!

For my paste, I used APPROXIMATELY the following ratio of ingredients:
- 1 cup dried cranberries
- 3 tbs almond butter
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tbs honey

Yes, you will have to blend a while (on and off, took my about 10 minutes to make approx 1 cup of goop), and the motor in your blender may get hot. When things get stuck, I stop the mixer and shake things up..

At this point you may feel things are hopeless and that these items will never blend. Persevere. It will come together. If you feel like your blender is going to explode, you have the option of adding 1-2 tsps of almond milk.. you be the judge of how much.

I add a little almond milk, blend a little, see how it's coming together. This is the hardest part, I swear! You want a thick, really sticky goop.

Yeah, keep going...

And when it looks something like this:

Your fruit glue is ready!

Now throw it into your hand mixer. Trust me, you're going to want a hand mixer for the next part. A lot of  blog posts I've read suggest kneading it by hand. I'm going to save you the the trouble now and tell you that it is immensely difficult to "knead" this by hand because the "dough" is SO , SO dense.

Fruit Glue goop!

Not super appetizing, but it's okay cuz you won't see it for long.

Now take all your whole nuts, and grind them in the same mixer (with goop and all) until they are pretty fine-- the finer the bits are, the easier they adhere together to create the base for your bar.

Blend until it looks like a flour, almost:

Put the ground nuts into your mixer. Secure the mixing attachment.

First thing I added to my fruit glue and ground nuts is almond meal (which is just ground almonds, very fine!) and ground flax seeds.

Add cocoa powder at this point if you'd like.

For dry ingredients, use as much as you can so that everything still sticks together as a dough-- the amount is dependent on how much fruit glue is made and you can judge this by eye/feel. You will have to experiment with this, but I assure you it's not hard and you will know. If the dry ingredients have stopped incorporating, you've added too much, and I suggest you dribbling in a bit of almond milk to help it come together again.

This dough is TOUGH and will seriously clump up (in a good way!) You want everything to stick together without you having to press it together.

To ensure all your ingredients are well mixed together, clean out the mixer attachment every once in a while to let everything reincorporate.

Let your mixer to its thing. Set it on STIR (low), and allow it to whirl. 

I do love my Kitchenaid. It's one of the common kitchen gadgets I use often.

Once your mixer is ready, line a pan with parchment. This really helps cleanup afterward and makes cutting your bars easy peasy.

Dump your mixter into the pan and PRESS HARD.

Use them hands!! Press em real hard into the pan.

And the final product....

Stick this in the fridge for 2-3 hours before eating for everything t o stay together.

Cut, and serve!

You won't need to eat a lot to feel satisfied, and it's so delicious. Honestly, this is filled with nothing but good nutrients and clean energy for your body. I personally eat a 1x1x3 inch rectangular block, and it completely fills me up for hours.

The best part about things like this is that it's so easy to make, and keeps really well so spend 30 minute a week to make enough for 3 people to last for a week. It's so worth it. You'll know exactly what you're putting into your body!

The weather has been so nice, and we are so close to Tahoe that we went to Angora Lakes last weekend!

Drive is about 2 hours, and we went for a day trip.

We packed sandwiches, rented a little boat and paddled to the middle of the lake to enjoy the wonderful day

On the He Qi front, I have been busy creating new formulations!

New Lemon Green Tea sugar scrub

And new Chocolate Sugar Scrub CUBES:

These lather, because they have shea butter soap in them, so they are a cleanser :)

Lovely Vanilla Body Butter (A new favorite product of mine, actually :) )

^ This has actually become my new go-to moisturizer for the body. It smells amazing. It's available in a half size if you would just like to try it out :)

And some new Botanical Bath Salts! 

Since my back has been weird/muscles are stressed I have used the above bath soak; such a relaxing experience.

There are also a few new creations on the jewelry front but I will leave that for you to discover on your own.

He Qi website also got a facelift! The new layout is cuter-- I hope you like it as well!

I also FINALLY got Instagram. Joining the tech age, hahahha. It's so fun so far, the filters on the camera are so awesome-- makes all photos look great. My username is lisaHQCD in case anyone wants to follow :) This is my new addiction so you might see quite a bit of photos at first... 

That's all for now. Thank you for dropping by today!

Lisa

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