Brewery thing sounds good to me, you'll have your beer in no time.
This is a mud run / obstacle race thing so gauging a time is really out the window as you dunno how bogged down it will be (going by this weeks weather, pretty bad) and how long you'll end up queued at obstacles but I love these kind of things and they're great for motivation.
Distance is all mental - my first OCR I signed up for was a 10k in Edinburgh when I'd not long started trying to get fit. I shit myself thinking - that's a LOOOOOOONG distance - I don't do running really even to this day - and was worried that I'd make a complete arse of myself but you get there and realise that yeah I had to push through but I knocked the shit out of that.
One think I always keep in mind was a few years back I ran the UK (potentially the world's, no one's ever disputed it) first long distance obstacle course race. It was 20 miles and to this day it's the only time I've ever run anything close to that.
I started burning out REALLY early like at the 6 mile mark, miles 7-10 were horrendous, I was raising money for a charity dedicated to a friend who had passed away and had set my sights on finishing it, there was the option to bow out at about the 12 mile marker and do a "half". None of my mates run these things so it was just me and my thoughts and the pain and thought that, I've still got more than half to go to get through this.
And then you started passing the burn outs who had cramped up or were limping along on the verge of giving up. I passed one maniac screaming at his running partner - fuck this shit, you're brain is giving up, your body could run all day if it needed to so get your shit together and let's get moving.
It always stuck with me, I'm not superfit and on paper for that race I definitely wasn't someone you would go - yeah he's got that in the bag, but after that I powered passed the half drop out point and finished the thing.
I've trained much harder for much easier shorter races but I now get that, it really is what you can get your head to power through rather than your body. On tonight's run about 500 yards in my knee was giving me gip and for the first couple of miles I kept thinking, I'll just turn back here. I kept pushing myself on because I had my goal and come the 2nd half of the run I was charging along singing to whatever was coming on my radio app and practicing potential answers to an upcoming interview.
Mind over matter, when your body is truly done or out of its depth, IT will let you know, not that whiny shitty voice in your head that says "it's a bit cold, your socks are wet, this is too much for you just."
Come the point on Monday when i've recovered from my hangover enough to engage with the online community I fully expect a report telling me you've smashed your race
