August 25th 2011…Firewalking and Globe-trotting…

Session Time: 35 minutes
Distance Covered: 2.52 miles

Total Time: 25 Hours 28 minutes
Total Distance Covered: 122.56 miles

Well.

It’s been quite a month or so.

As most of you know, I was unfortunately injured at an incident at an event at the beginning of July…and that was just the start of the fun and games!

The accident left me in bed for a week which actually gave me the opportunity to sit on the other side of my ‘leg lending’ concept. While I was stuck in bed unable to move, a couple of very kind people took inspiration from my runs for other people and kindly did a run or two for me – thanks especially to training buddy and Gary for the runs they did on my behalf! It was really lovely to know that while I was unable to run myself I was able to inspire others to enjoy their runs a little bit more.

Having spent a week or two recovering it was on to the next very exciting step on my journey…qualifying as a professional firewalking instructor.

The course was probably the most intensive training I have ever been on in my life, run by the Firewalking Institute of Research and Education (or F.I.R.E. for short) and involved training to run not just firewalks, but a whole range of extreme experiences. Over the duration of the course we learned to facilitate the following:

• Firewalks (walking on hot coals)
• Glass walks (walking on broken glass)
• Board breaks (breaking a solid board of wood with your bare hands)
• Brick breaks (breaking a paving slab with your bare hands)
• Low Ropes Courses (team building exercises)
• Arrow breaking (breaking a metal-tipped archery arrow against your throat)
• Steel Re-bar bending (bending a 8ft piece of steel re-bar (the stuff they use to reinforce sky scrapers!) against your throat)
• Trust Falls (falling and letting the team catch you!)

It was incredible! Once you’ve walked on broken glass, broken an arrow with your throat, bent steel re-bar with your throat, broken wooden boards and paving slabs with your bare hands AND walked on Fire there really is nothing you can’t do!! 😀

Claire’s Glass Walk

Claire’s Brick Break (with bare hands)

Claire’s Brick Break (with bare hands)

Low Ropes Courses

Low Ropes Courses

Claire’s Board Break (with bare hands)

Low Ropes Courses

Team Building!

Claire Firewalking!

Firewalking

The coals are hot!

Claire Firewalking!

Building the circle fire walk

The glass walk

The Trust Fall

Low Ropes Courses

Claire’s Arrow Break (on the throat)

Steel Bar Bending (with the throat)

Steel Bar Bending (with the throat)

Building the 108 for the final walk

A fully certified firewalking instructor!

There are so many applications of these skills and ways that they can be used to help other people, and for me that was the reason for doing it.

When I did my first firewalk, I felt unbelievable afterwards. I felt totally unstoppable, like I could achieve anything that I put my mind to…and the thought of being able to bring that sort of experience to other people was enough to get me to sign up! We learned several ways of using these techniques to help people from Team Building, Advanced Goal Setting and Eliminating Limiting Beliefs through to Breaking through Fear, Overcoming Obstacles and Barriers and learning the Power of Focus.

The last night of the course involved doing 108 firewalks simultaneously (yes, that’s One Hundred and Eight, one immediately after the other!), the last of which was 27ft long…and done in complete silence. (My mum commented that it was an extreme way to solve my problem of consistently cold feet! 😉 )

It was a truly amazing experience, and the training was first class – I couldn’t recommend it enough (btw if anyone is interested in doing the instructor training just drop me a message and I’ll get you all the details!)

In the next month or two we will be doing our first test burn and having a firewalk for friends and family, as well as running our first public glass walk…and after that our new company “The Seemingly Impossible” will be launching to bring these experiences to a range of people to corporate companies to charities wanting a different means to raise funds! How exciting! 😀

…and then if that wasn’t excitement enough…shortly after we completed our firewalking instructor training we jetted off to the other side of the world for a fantastic Tony Robbins Seminar.

We spent two weeks in the Gold Coast, Australia meeting some amazing people, making friends and having a truly life-changing experience at Date with Destiny.

In case anyone is planning on attending the seminar themselves I won’t give any details away here, except to say that it was amazing, and that Team 9 rock!! 😉

So after the madness had subsided (a little bit!) it was back to party session central and time to get back into the swing of things.

Training buddy and I decided today that we would take it relatively gently to ease ourselves back into the party session groove so we hit the streets with lots of giggling and motivational bum slapping (no spatulas required!) 😉

Today’s session consisted of a combination of power walking and slow running…we did a slightly shorter circuit than usual..and my legs did send several messages to my brain along the lines are “what on earth are you doing?” and “please stop now, we’re not used to this!”

There were a lot of moments were my legs morphed into the lesser-spotted wobbly lead variety, and the lolloping Princess Consuela returned, but we kept going and they managed to keep it together.

The MCGC (morning, colgate grin combo!) got dusted off and sent out in the direction of anyone we met…and achy legs aside it really was great to be back. 🙂

After a little dance jog, I found my stride again (courtesy of the teeny tiny tiggers of course) and my legs had a moment of “Hmmmm…..I vaguely remember something like this…”, so maybe there’s hope for me yet!

The main thing is that I’m pretty much healed now and back on the party session express…and looking forward to my next dedicated run (I thought after such a break it wouldn’t do my dedicatee justice to do the first one for someone else!)

Oh, and of course we celebrated with a much deserved happy dance at the end…oh yes neighbours, I’m back!! 😀

Another Step Closer x