Nuclear Race Training Camp

A few weeks back I was excited to have nabbed a ticket to one of the free Nuclear Training days, I’d heard so much about these famous races and couldn’t wait to try for myself.

After an hour and a half in the car, we saw the signs for ‘Nuclear Bunker‘, it turns out that this race really is on the map! Nuclear are one of the few race companies who own their own farmland and the event is held at this location yearly. As you may have heard, many obstacle course race companies have folded this year. One of the reasons is due to the sheer cost of storing obstacles, moving them, setting up and possibly closing the road due to traffic.

Right, back to talking about the training day. We arrived nice and early with enough time to take a stroll and meet up with Leigh for the first time in nearly a year! The lovely thing about this event is that there’s plenty of space to change, not forgetting the added bonus hot showers to clean off some of the mud after.

We were split into teams, given coloured bibs (so we would stay in our teams) and taken off to play on the obstacles. We started with some climbing, and quickly moved onto getting wet and cold! Fortunately, it was a nice day weatherwise, the running in between kept me warm.

I soon realised that Nuclear’s obstacles were extremely unique, we were climbing over mud mounds higher than ever before, the monkey bars appeared to be never ending and there’s the famous ‘Slide Of Death’. I didn’t go down the slide, I’m having a real mental struggle with the idea of zooming down a slide into freezing water. My water fear is something I aim to address this year, maybe I need more training to shut off that ‘fear factor’? Any tips are very welcome…

Much to the hilarity of me and everyone else, we were told to slide through these elevated tunnels and at the end, it was sensible to turn around and come out backwards. I got my foot completely stuck, thankfully it was caught on camera so I can share this special moment.

I particularly enjoyed climbing across the open (and moving) cages, I have my nerves tested on an obstacle that involved climbing up and over a rope ‘bridge‘ and down onto slippery logs. We were nearly in tears of laughter crossing large orange bouncy balls, in water with only rope swings to assist us. A word of warning, Nuclear does require good upper body strength and I’d keep this in mind if you were considering the event.

Overall, I was extremely impressed with the race set up, there has clearly been a lot of thought applied to the obstacles to ensure they are completely unique and tough!. I loved how supportive and helpful the team were and I can see why this race has won so many awards.

Do you have any obstacle course races planned this year? Any tips for water fear?

Katie

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