Tough Mudder

I ran the Tough Mudder on Sunday. Well, RAN is a stretch. I limped and walked and slid the Tough Mudder on Sunday. I signed up for it after JK turned his harassment amplifier up to 11 and somehow managed to hook EG in. Shortly after, I learned SP had joined the mix, and team Weoooweooooweooooweeechhhhh was born (don't ask). In the months leading up to the event, my feelings about it fluctuated from sheer terror to foolish pomposity on a daily basis. I gave up any large scale training and tried to improve core strength (whatever that means) with push-ups and sit-ups, while maintaining a strict running schedule. Then I rolled my ankle like Rondo 'rolled' his elbow last night, and I didn't run for the past two weeks for fear of re-injuring it. So it was safe to say that my feelings on the morning of the TM were much closer to 'sheer terror' than I would care to admit. Weathering some serious cramps, severe mud inhalation, and mild-to-moderate cases of hypothermia, Team Weoooooweooooooweooooweeechhhh skipped across the finish line (literally) 4 hours after their 10:40 start. In those 4 hours, we endured a 10 mile course sprinkled with 28 humbling obstacles straight up the mountainside. Needless to say, it was tough and muddy. In light of any more TM philosophy, I want to run down the 28 obstacles and rank them on a 1-10 scale of 'Tough' and 'Muddy', because there were some doozies on both fronts. A link to the map of the course and pictures/descriptions of the obstacles can be found here.

1. Braveheart Run
Tough: 3
Muddy: 2

The Braveheart run was an excuse for most of the shirtless dudes to off-gas some of their testosterone in front of spectators. I used it to test my taped left ankle (Thanks Dad!). It was steep though, and turned out to a be cruel waste of energy, since the Death March was right behind.

2. Death March
Tough: 8
Muddy: 4

The Muddy scale may be relative at this early stage of the race, but this really was one of the Toughest obstacles, especially since it was one of the earliest and everyone was still running on adrenaline surges and trying to run up the ski slope. It wasn't long until even the biggest dudes realized that TM is not a race and started to walk. And walk. 1.5 miles later, calves doing that unconscious jiggle, we reached the first 'man-made' obstacle.

3. The Killa Gorilla
Tough: 6
Muddy: 6

This was our introduction into the enormous avalanche of mud we would become well-acquainted with. Arranged like those obnoxious queues at DisneyWorld that zigzag back and forth, the Killa Gorilla made you run up and down a steep and mud-caked hill ten times. Having not gotten our mud-legs, this was an adventure of trying to balance speed and functioning limbs.  

4. Devil's Beard
Tough: 2
Muddy: 4

A huge cargo net laying in a pit of mud. This is where one gets the first taste of teamwork, and what could have been a muddy crawl-a-thon, became closer to the middle person in the famous evolution progression. Thanks to everyone who held up the net and spared my knees some wear and tear.

5. Boa Constrictor
Tough: 6
Muddy: 4

I am going to lump muddy and wet together for the purposes of these evaluations, because each obstacle had a heavy dose of one or the other (except you Underwater Tunnels). Boa constrictor was the first obstacle that involved water, and willingly putting yourself into it. It was also the first (of many) obstacles that you probably wouldn't have done if you weren't exhausted and had lost critical blood flow to your brain. To put it simply, Boa Constrictor required you to crawl through a narrow tube INTO a pond of water and then through another submerged tube on the other side to get out. The tubes were narrow enough that you had to crawl through them, and had lots of nice rocks to get your first lacerations out of the way. And then there was the little issue of having to swim/crawl OUT of the tube if you wanted to breathe again, since the other end of the pipe was almost completely submerged. If I had thought this through, I probably would have psyched myself out of it, but I just followed JK and didn't realize how scared I should have been until after.

6. Tired Yet?
Tough: 2
Muddy: 2

Just your standard tire run, with some mud thrown in for good measure. Not too difficult, but still annoying to be high stepping when your legs are still burning something fierce.

7. Tree Hugger
Tough: 7
Muddy: 3

More ridiculously steep terrain. This one was probably moguls or a black diamond or something else that looks pretty and serene in the winter but will give you an aneurysm from May to November. With nothing to grab onto, I considered both the zig-zag approach and the bear technique on all fours, before deciding to conserve energy and just trek up normally. That and JK wouldn't let me get on his back.

8. Ball Shrinker
Tough: 8
Muddy: 8

Not muddy, but fucking freezing. And made worse by the fact that you are stuck on two rickety ropes trying to shuffle across a pond in chest deep water. The top rope kept whipping back and forth like it was trying to buck you off, and the bottom rope was just asking you to lose your footing so it could disappear forever. Shimmying across this obstacle would be a tall-order under any conditions, but in 35 degree water, it borders on absurd. Usually the obstacle names are a little intense for my taste, but 'Ball Shrinker' should probably ratcheted up and be renamed to 'The Sex Change' after how I was feeling afterwards.

9. Mud Mile
Tough: 4
Muddy: 10

Not 'Tough', per se, but so much mud that you wonder why you thought you could ever wear these shoes again. It was also around this point where I patted myself on the back for wearing boxer briefs (crucial) and shorts with tie-strings. Around this point you start to be able to detect 'good' mud and 'bad' mud, the bad mud being the kind that is just solid enough to resist your weight squish, making you fall flat on your keister. The wet, splashy mud is much more reliable.

10. Kiss of Mud
Tough: 4
Muddy: 7

Far less scary than the pictures would have you believe. Barbed wires are reasonably high off the ground (although plenty of number tags got hooked), and the mud was pleasantly devoid of rocks and other debris. You still had to crawl on your hands and knees, but it certainly could have been worse.

11. Hold Your Wood

Tough: 8
Muddy: 5

From here on out, no obstacle will fall below 4 on the mud-o-meter. Every inch of person was caked with mud, and it's hard to pinpoint where it came from. Hold Your Wood did not explicitly feature mud as a part of the obstacle, but when you're carrying logs up a mountain and then back down, you're going to drop it/fall a couple times. The logs were hearty and awkward to carry, and I tried the "shoulder perch" and the "hip holster" before settling on the "bear hug" the rest of the way. Several other Mudders were less thoughtful in their grips and many a log was seen barreling down the slope at unsuspecting spectators. Or perhaps this was a brilliant strategy. I'll never know, but I was sufficiently wiped at this point and was INCREDULOUS to find out we had only gone four miles.

12. Hey Bales
Tough: 2
Muddy: 2

A nice respite from the mud and cardio. A simple stack of hay bales to climb. A new smell to complement the mud/B.O. perfume. Cake.

13. Evil Knevil
Tough: 5
Muddy: 1
This was not as it is on the website. It was a half-pipe ramp you were expected to run up and then belay down the other side. My shoes weighed 4lbs at this point and were worn and muddy enough to have the word 'CONCUSSION' flash in my mind. I also envisioned Jackass out-takes that were probably tamer than this. Miraculously, the slope was such that you could run full-bore and be virtually 'launched' up the pipe into the loving arms of your teammates. Climbing down on the other side resulted in some wicked rope burn, but I'll take that over brain damage any day.

14. Spider's Web
Tough: 4
Muddy: 5

As JK likes to say: Teamwork makes the dream work. In this case, it was closer to: hold the goddamn net still for me and I'll help you in a minute. Not as catchy, but same sentiment. I scaled both sides of this muddy net this faster than I thought I would. Maybe the Powerbar bites were kicking in (finally).

15. Mystery Obstacle!
Tough: 4
Muddy: 7

While not muddy, and only moderately wet, this obstacle did a number on my gloves for the rest of the race. Why, may you ask? Because this obstacle involved wading through a trough of maple syrup and vinegar and then crawling through sawdust under a net to claim your freedom. Neither of these were terribly troubling, but my gloves developed a slippery film after this that I couldn't shake. Not a stellar feature for the upcoming greased monkey bars.

16. Walk the Plank
Tough: 6
Muddy: 8

Much like the Boa Constrictor, Walk the Plank was an obstacle I would have almost certainly talked myself out of if there weren't 10 people waiting behind me and I could barely remember my name. So instead, I took the 15-foot leap into 35 degree water and swam back in like I was Michael Phelps. It was the 'holy-shit' cold that makes you evacuate all the air out of your lungs and see fond memories from your childhood. Swimming in shoes is a royal pain also, and even though people kept advising me to "Grab the rope", it was nowhere to be found, so I just doggy-paddled like I had never doggy-paddled before. We were all borderline hypothermic at this point, and enjoyed a nice round of group hugs and tin-foil blankets like arctic explorers.

17. Underwater Tunnels
Tough: 8
Muddy : 10

Even if I divided my "Muddy" category into "Dirty" and "Cold", Underwater Tunnels would still get solid 10's for both. Three giant pipes were laid across a huge pool of water and you had to plunge into the silty, freezing water under them to continue. There's nothing quite like being completely frozen and then opening your eyes on the other side to see complete and total brown. The water was so saturated with silt that we had silt beards for the next three obstacles and I found a disturbing amount of mud in my ears/eyes/nose. The shivers were now here to stay.

18. Glacier
Tough: 5
Muddy: 7

A steep wall of snow/ice, following by narrow, icy catacombs did not do much for our warmth problem. Shuffling down the ice tracks was cold and slow, but going faster involved putting your freezing hands in direct  contact with the ice walls to keep your balance. Tough choice. I chose the latter and regretted it.

19. The Gauntlet
Tough: 5
Muddy: 4

Another sadistically steep hill, this one complete with a murderous TM employee with a fire hose. I tried to use SP as a human shield, but instead I let JK take most of the damage. There are times for teamwork and there are times to save yourself. This was one of those times.

20. Cliffhanger
Tough: N/A
Muddy: N/A

I must have blacked-out for this obstacle. The website description does little to jog my memory. I'm sure it was cold and muddy though.

21. Blood Bath
Tough: 6
Muddy: 8

How many permutations of "Hop into this freezing water" can TM possibly come up with? While superficially similar to the Underwater Tunnels (going under a giant board), this was both easier (the water was dyed vivid shades of red, green, yellow, respectively) and harder (there was a significant amount of ice cubes floating on the surface). I have never had a brain freeze without eating anything. This gave me one.

22. Funky Monkey
Tough: 10
Muddy: 7

Funky Monkey can go either way. If you can make it across the inclined greased monkey bars, you will be dry and warm. If your gloves are still soaked in syrup and/or you can scarcely conjure up the coordination to peel and eat a banana, you will make it two rungs and fall into the ice water and swim your way out. I think you know which category I fell under. JK of course made it all the way across like the half-gorilla mutant that he is.

23. Berlin Walls
Tough: 9
Muddy: 4

12-foot walls impossible to scale on your own (unless you're JK of course). Camaraderie is palatable in this obstacle as groups of strangers push any part of you they can reach to boost you over the wall. I got handfuls of butt cheeks and mouthfuls of mud, but we made it over all four of these. So much harder than I expected.

24. Tower Hurdle
Tough: 5
Muddy: 5

File this obstacle under O for obnoxious. Something tells me Mt. Snow said "Hey guys, we have 20 chairlift poles we're about to get rid of, why don't you make an obstacle out of them?" and TM did. Anywhere from 1-3 feet off the ground, and tantalizingly close together, SP was more daring than I, but I wasn't sure if chest impalement was covered on my health insurance, so I played this one conservatively.

25. Fire Walker
Tough: 3
Muddy: 2

Hoping this would be a nice change of pace from icy water and snow obstacles, The Gauntlet had us running "through fire" but was closer to "limping through smoke". SP took this time to tell us about the dangers of smoke inhalation and EG was massaging his cramping quad like nobodies business.

26. Turd's Nest
Tough: 6
Muddy: 2

At this point, otherwise innocuous obstacles of rope were becoming serious tests of will. I would have scampered up Turd's Nest netting like nobody's business 3 hours ago, but now it took all of my energy to calibrate my feet to not fall through the holes and castrate myself.

27. Greased Lightning
Tough: 3
Muddy: 4

A gigantic slip and slide. But not without danger, as you had to get a running start on the top of the slide to guarantee enough momentum to the end. I took this a bit too far and gave myself a healthy dose of whiplash. At least I got into the Tough Mudder Facebook album because of it. Even though all the comments are people thinking that I pooped my pants (I didn't).

28. Electroshock Therapy
Tough: 6
Muddy: 3

Not Muddy or Tough exactly, but surprisingly potent for something I dismissed as a gimmick after seeing on the website. Running through 10000V wires sounds like something they throw in just to round out the whole experience but water-down, but as Team Weoooweooooweeoooooweccchhh joined hands and skipped across the finish line, I got some serious jolts. I found out shortly thereafter that holding hands AMPLIFIES each person's voltage exposure, and some annoying dude was trying to trick people into doing it all day. Little did they know that we suckers would do it on our own accord.

All in all, a great day with some great Tough Mudder Brudders. If you ever even consider it, you should do it. It has very little to do with strength, and everything to do with endurance and fortitude. Maybe you'll even surprise yourself. I know I did.