Who’s A Tough Mudder?

I am – Oorah!

We did it. Alex and I ran (and walked) the whole damn thing and finished every obstacle. In terms of painful but gratifying things I’ve done in my life it ranks third after giving birth to my two kick-ass kiddos. Here’s our before and after shots. When Daniel saw that bottom one on the right he said: “I’ve never seen you look that out of it… while sober.”

It took us about 4 hours, which I’m pretty happy about, as I’ve never run 10 miles in my life. Of course, we didn’t run the whole thing because the course went up and down hills (and I do mean straight up and straight down), but we ran a lot of it.

There were some things that were as I thought they would be: the Arctic Enema was awful – full stop, running on the trails was tricky – people were dropping like flies from twisted ankles and horrific cramps, walking the plank was really fun, and trudging through a quarter mile of knee-deep mud at mile 9 was murder on already exhausted muscles.

Then there were the things I did not expect.

1. The first thing that surprised me was how well run the whole Tough Mudder event was. They had water stations every two miles (with snacks like bananas or cliff bars, which totally kept me going), and life guards at any obstacle with water. The lines at the obstacles were generally pretty short and moved quickly, and at the end, after you run through the live wires, they force water on you – over and over, as you stumble toward your free beer.

2. That leads me to that last obstacle – the Electroshock Therapy. This is their signature obstacle, and I wasn’t fool enough to think it would be easy, but it was fucking terrible. It might not have been so bad, except my shoe got caught in the mud and I fell hard, catching a live wire in my left ear as I went down. I don’t know how much voltage I took to the side of my head, but it hurt enough that for a few seconds there all I could do was press myself into the muck and think “just stay down.” I laid there, hoping nobody would fall on top of me, caught my breath, then very carefully stood up between the wires. I found my footing and charged through to the end – only another 30 feet really, and I think I took another hit of electricity, or two, to my legs, but I made it. They put that orange head band on me but I couldn’t stop walking. I think maybe I was in shock. They forced a few cups of water into my hands. I drank them, and asked Alex to make sure my head wasn’t bleeding. My ear was numb, but my whole head hurt so much I couldn’t tell if I was injured or not. It was the only time in the whole race that I fought tears. If it hadn’t been the last obstacle I might have been able to run it off and not think about it, but then again, if it hadn’t been the last obstacle, I might have quit and not finished. I pushed forward to find my beer.

3. Given the advertising of the event, I had been a little intimidated by all the testosterone, but I am very happy to report that there are actually lots of women who ran with us. I would guess 40%. And there was a wide age range too, I would peg the average around 35. And I only saw one or two folks go around an obstacle over the course of the entire race. People were in it for the challenge, which was cool.

4. The electric eel wasn’t so bad, but the monkey bars kicked my ass (I fell off after the third rung- it was greased I swear – and had to swim the rest of the way). Also, I thought the cage crawl would be easy, since I am totally comfortable in the water, but once I dunked and came up under the chain link I had to seriously fight back a panic response that came out of nowhere. All I could do was focus on moving my breath in and out while I climbed ahead. Way freakier than I expected.

5. It was a ton of fun. I mean, I wouldn’t have signed up for it if I didn’t think it would be at least kind of fun, but I think it was the challenge that attracted me. Now that I know how much fun it is, I will totally go back (though until my head stops hurting I reserve the right to go around the final obstacle – yes, my head still hurts 30 hours later).

So that’s that. If you’re thinking of doing one yourself, here’s what I learned:

1. Train on hills. Seriously. I was running five miles easy leading up to the event, but the hills killed me.

2. Start hydrating two days before.

3. Cotton socks are death around mile 8, they bunch up and just hold mud in clumps. Also, I wish I had worn some trail running shoes.

4. You will need help. Don’t be afraid to ask, it’s part of the fun. Be sure to return the favor when you can.

5. Don’t worry about carrying water. The hydration stands are well stocked.

Alex is already pushing to do another in February. I’m waiting for my head to stop hurting before I commit to a date. I’m thinking maybe a half marathon is next… I mean really, it’s only three more miles, and there’s no electricity involved. How hard could it be?

I’m giving myself one more day to sleep in and recoup, then it’s back to my regular schedule of getting up early to write. It’s been quite an adventure.

Ohhrah!