There's just under two months left for you to sign up and join The700Level team to run in the MuckRuckus MS Philly event on June 9th out in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania. It's a fun and dirty event that helps raise both money and awareness for multiple sclerosis. Please consider JOINING OUR TEAM and running alongside us in the event or at least donating to the cause. You can DONATE directly to our team on this page here.
I've been preparing for the challenge of the MuckRuckus MS Philly's 5-mile course of mud and obstacles for a few weeks now -- although I probably haven't been putting in nearly enough prep work for someone who was pretty damn out of shape to begin with. I was on a good three days a week plan for a few of weeks, but that was before I interviewed Peter Hopkins about his experience running in the event to support of his wife who lives with MS every day.
When I told him I was a bit intimidated at the idea of running 5 miles, he settled my nerves quite a bit. Perhaps too much. This is what he said:
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"It's easy to be intimidated, but one of the nice things about this MuckRuckus is that it is true that almost anyone can do it. It's about 5 miles but you don't run that whole time non stop. You can't. You have to stop and do the various obstacles and things that are in it. There's some built in rest. And next, virtually all of the obstacles and especially the more difficult ones, you can just decide not to do that one. There are a couple of obstacles that involve ropes and heights and you can just decide you don't want to do those. You can just walk around them. Three-quarter of the people are in the non-competitive division and you do what you want."
Sounds like a piece of cake, right? So much so that I didn't hit a treadmill or the pavement for two straight weeks. Not a good idea.
I got back at it this week by hitting the Schuylkill River Trail on a beautiful spring evening. I think half the city was out there on Monday. I did roughly five miles but it was more of a jog/walk than a straight run. I'm not a runner. I don't enjoy running much, to be honest. But it was great to get out on the trail on a sunny late afternoon.
The next step we hope to take is to join in with one of the training groups around the city that get together to train specifically for the Muck Ruckus MS event. You can see an entire list of available training groups around town in both the city and the burbs at the MS Society's website here.
There's Radius Fitness down by Headhouse Square which is offering boot camp sessions with the $10 of the $15 fee going directly towards your MuckRuckus fundraising. If you're out in the burbs, there's Premier Personal Training in West Chester or Team Boot Camp Challenge in Media, both offering discounted training sessions as well for Muck Ruckus participants. If you're in Jersey, the CHHRC Gives is in Cherry Hill and offers an 8-week training program for only $69 bucks (a $240 value).
The point of me telling you all of this is that it's not too late. We're going to give it a shot and have all intentions of kicking the MuckRuckus MS course's ass on June 9th. We've just get to get moving a little bit more over the next two months.
A couple of Level readers have already signed up and committed to run with our team, so please do the same and JOIN The700Level MuckRucus team here. And of course, if you can't make it to run, you can DONATE right here as well. All support is greatly appreciated. One thing to note: the 1:00 pm time slot we've signed up for is currently full but if you sign up for the closest available time slot to 1:00 pm we can move you into ours on the back end. Feel free to reach out with any questions. And hurry up and join already.