Tough Mudder

At the weekend I flew back from Italy, packed my kit bag and then the following morning got up bright and early to head to Tough Mudder to take on the full.

I had previously done the new 5k event with The PT Barn, which you can read more about here.  I had also completed the Tough Mudder Half, which you can read more about here.  So now it was time for the full!

I was signed up with my bestie, Emma, and her boyfriend Dan.  Emma and I do all of our obstacle events together but this was the first obstacle run that Dan would be taking part in and between us we were excited!  The signs you see as you enter the event village always make me laugh and you see similar whilst on the course too.

We were starting as a team and we were finishing as a team.  The run was as usual very up and down though didn’t feel as hilly as the course used for the half that Emma and I had completed.  Here we are before and after:

I will repeat what I have said several times before but the thing I love about OCR is the teamwork and everyone helping everyone else out and with Tough Mudder not being chip timed this is one of the areas mentioned in their pledge that ‘Tough Mudder is not a race but a challenge’, that ‘teamwork and camaraderie before course time’ plus ‘help my fellow mudders complete the course’ whilst having fun!

As we made our way to the start line we found we were in the same way as a man who was completing his 100th Tough Mudder event that day – and was running with a backpack full of all the headbands he has earned over those events.  This was pretty awesome and he actually helped us on the underwater tunnels obstacle giving a little helping hand push under the tubes.

There were some obstacles that I had not done before as they were not on the 5k or half courses.  These included:

• arctic enema – the name gives it away and I was that stupid person that came out of the end and said ‘my god that’s cold’ to which the marshal said ‘the clue is in the name’.  You climb up to a platform, slide through a tube into a container of icy water, the submerge fully under a partition and then climb out the container on the other side.
• electroshock therapy – I don’t know why I was disappointed not to have done this on the previous events, because now I have done it I can say that it hurt!  A weird pain that is exactly what it says, a shock, but left my two teammates on the floor whilst I froze not knowing whether to help or carry on.  As they started crawling I ran on and got shocked twice more – man that smarts!
• funky monkey – I can’t do this, enough said!  but kudos to those that did especially those that made it look super easy.
• underwater tunnels – a large container of cold water with tubes to submerge yourself under and come out the other side then repeat three times.
• cage crawl – I’d done a very similar obstacle at Nuclear Races and so whilst people were wondering how you tackle this I was straight in there and knew the drill, quite like this one!
• walk the plank – now I will happily admit I didn’t even try this one.  I knew there was no way I would be able to make myself jump from a height but stood watching people who did it over and over again – maybe one day I could muster the courage?

There were a number of obstacles that I was hoping to be on the course that weren’t including Just The Tip, Prairie Dog, Kong and Kong Infinity but most of all was disappointed that Shawshank was not on the full course as it was my favourite on the half and I was looking forward to doing that one again.  But this just means I have to go back in 2019 for these ones!  You can see more about the obstacles on the Tough Mudder page here.

When doing events such as Tough Mudder people often wonder how you train and think its the craziest thing to do but I am sure the same people would surprise themselves if they gave it a go and most would thoroughly enjoy it as it is heaps of fun!  Tough Mudder also post videos with training ideas on their social media and have a whole section on their website regarding training for one of their events that you can find here.

I had a blast on Sunday and so did my team – I am by far the weakest runner and yet didn’t feel like I was holding anyone back at all and we all worked well together.  It was also great to learn more from Dan about Runarchy that he is part of.  Runarchy have a mission to inspire everyone on the planet to boost their mental fitness through exercise.  They quote:

As a brand our mission is to inspire you to create mental fitness through running & exercise.