Tough Mudder 5k

Tough Mudder have launched a series of 5k events and last Friday I took part in one with an awesome bunch of people from The PT Barn.  This included Coach Scotty who is an awesome OCR coach and having been on a number of his six week courses and bootcamps I had been lucky enough to experience an obstacle race with these guys before and so was looking forward to having his experience, and help, as we made our way around the course.

There was a large group of us and all of these guys I met from The PT Barn. We are of differing shapes and sizes, varying abilities with some having qualified and competed for the World Championships and others never done an obstacle race before, and a lot of us only know each other from our time spent training with Scotty. These guys bloody rock! They are all so lovely and so supportive and we stayed together for the whole thing. There was always a helping hand, assistance getting up a high wall, words of encouragement, high fives when completing something you didn’t think you could, a hug to say well done, a fist pump, a sh*t load of smiles and a lot of laughs.

Despite all my obstacle racing over the past two years I had not done a Tough Mudder before and only been to them before in a support role whilst cheering on my husband many years ago.  So I had no idea what to expect!  It was in Stratford, which is fairly local to me, and so I assumed it would be water and mud free and it was.

There were 10 obstacles that included:

• Bale bonds – stacked giant bales of hay to climb over (for some reason this was roped off in our wave and we didn’t get to do this one)
• Skid marked – 10 foot slanted wall to get up and over (10 foot is really really high!)
• Devil’s beard – heavy cargo net to crawl under
• Giant A-hole – a-frame that you run through and then climb up/over (again so much higher than I thought it would be but one of the guys, Stuart, was next to me and although I was shaky I got it done and pleased as up and over is one of my nemesis)
• Mudder wheelbarrow – wheelbarrow action with a teammate (Emma was my wheelbarrow – well done Emma, shoulders of steel)
• Hero walls – 10 foot tall wall to get up and over (again so high and some of our guys could get up and over alone with no help!)
• Get low – crawl under chicken wire (this is where I was pleased I was wearing black knickers as my trousers ripped on the bum and when I got home I found my knickers had too – savage, though thankfully no flashing as a result!)
• Clean & jerk – stretcher carry with teammates (Emily was on our stretcher and weighs almost nothing so this one was good!)
• Hanging out – rings, one day I will get these (these were quite high so some of us needed help to even get to them)
• Everest – quarter pipe to run up and climb over
• Pyramid scheme – climbing up and over teammates to get over, once you get to the top you hang down to help the next up and let me tell you hanging down by your feet is terrifying (thanks Dave)

Being a new member this year to Mudder Woman, a group of ladies taking part in the events over the course of this year, I am pleased to say I now own my own Tough Mudder headband finally, and enjoyed that cider at the end!

I would say from the little experience I have of this event that I’d been told Tough Mudder were known for bigger obstacles and some of them really were. Given this I would say the camaraderie of OCR that I know and love is key here and the 5k series is a great way for people to try it out before moving on the the half or the full.

Until the next one….