With mud from my toes to my nose and sloshing through my shoes, I waded through waist deep mud and over heaps of slippery dirt with only one thing on my mind, finishing. Exhaustion setting in and my knees splitting from an old injury…and falling on my face around mile 5, the cold mud for once in the course felt oddly and momentarily refreshing. “We are almost there,” I thought as I sludged my mud-caked Nikes out of the pit. But as two of my teammates pulled me out of the pond of goop and I hobbled (broken pirate style) around the last bend, there it was…the mountain of all obstacles – literally. Everest, a greased half-pipe, and Electroshock therapy, dangling electrified wires, were the last two obstacles that stood in my way. “Bring it on!”
Dubbed as one of the toughest obstacle course races, the Tough Mudder is an intense 11-mile, 25 obstacle race. Designed by British Special Forces to test your strength, stamina, mental grit and camaraderie, the course has you climbing walls, swimming through fields of mud, squirming under barbed (and sometimes electrified) wire, running almost a marathon and dunking your body into ice tanks, among other things. It’s a race that gives you the opportunity to prove yourself, not only to your teammates and the other competitors but also to yourself, that you truly are tough enough – or just crazy enough!
The highlights of the Tough Mudder, Las Vegas race for me were:
- Kiss of mud – crawling under barbed wire through muddy water
- Arctic Enema – a quick dip into ice-cold (and I mean ice-cold) water.
- Funky Monkey – a monkey bar challenge that brought me back to the good old days on the play ground
- The Wounded Warrior run – I hopped a free ride on a random dude’s back for half of it!
- Berlin Walls – scaling 3 sets of wooden walls that progressively got taller
- And of course, Everest. It took me four very painful attempts to grab my teammates’ hands, but I did successfully scale the half-pipe.
Check out all the obstacles here and our race day video here.
However, when they say that Tough Mudder is a race that you can’t finish alone – nor would you want to – they mean it. The best part about competing in this race was running it with my co-workers. The camaraderie, support and energy everyone brought to the course made the event. From running buddies to helpful boosts over the obstacles, my co-workers and all the other competitors are what got me through the race, up the walls, through the mud and across the finish line. (Plus it’s amazing what a little peer pressure and a bunch of stubbornness will get you through as well!)
Are you tough enough?
Evergreen Hiker 