Over the past year a new challenge has come on the horizon and is starting to get noticed by extreme sports enthusiasts and tri-athletes alike. It's called the Tough Mudder. It is a 6 to 12 mile obstacle course designed to push the limits of nerve and endurance. It is inspired by British SAS training and bills itself as the Toughest Race on the Planet.
In the end it was challenging but I wouldn't go as far as calling it tougher than an Iron Man Triathlon or the God Awful Survival of the Shawangunks race . But it has it's moments.
I just ran the 12 mile tristate tough mudder on Saturday, November 20th in English town and I have to say, it was damn cold. There is no need to do that much swimming in late November in NJ. Not sober anyway.
This is us before the race. A former Ranger, two marathon runners and me. This is before we realized what we got our selves into.
The first obstacle- The Two Rope Bridge.
They said it was really the "second" but what they called an obstacle I called "making us run in the water for no reason other than to call it an obstacle.
This is us climbing on to the "Walk The Plank". I renamed this obstacle to the "Spirit Breaker". Allow me to elaborate. You had to rope climb on to the obstacle then voluntarily jump 15 plus feet into 20 feet of dark, murky, freezing water. Now if you have never experienced this before, it's a hell of a thing. First, you want to do what they call a life guard dive. Which is basically a way to hit the water so your head only goes a few inches below the surface. Apparently a few people on our team didn't get that memo. If you have never been in freezing water or dark, murky water (so dark that you can't see the sunlight from 6 inches below the surface) the experience can be a little "unnerving". When you hit the water, all of the air in your lungs is expelled and your heart seems to stop from the thermal shock of the water. Next, you open your eyes, it's black and you are completely disoriented. You may think you will know where the surface is, but trust me...you don't. You have to chill out and start to float a little bit, then start swimming. One of our team mates thought he could propel himself off of the bottom, but when his feet stuck in the muck and slowly released him, he hightailed it to shore.
Note to Tough Mudder Staff "Put rescue and support in the water." More than a few people needed assistance in the water. One of our team mates as well as others, needed assistance and if it wasn't for us and fellow racers there would have been some major problems.
This is a shot I took of the "Spirit Taker" while experiencing the first stages of hypothermia. See the people standing on top of the obstacle? It was there bright idea to help the people drowning by lowering a rope that stopped about three feet above the water. I'd like to thank the others who helped us fish our friend and other racers out.
As if the drowning experience wasn't enough, to add a little insults to injury we had to swim under these barrels before making it to shore.
Oh look we get to swim again. After a short half mile jog, it was back into the freezing water for a short 100 yard swim.
And finally..MUD!!! Well at least we're not drowning. This was about a 300 yard push through the mud. of the 12 mile course about 6 miles of it was mud. Quote of the day, "Chicks in France are are paying top dollar for this stuff." (Thank You Bill Murray).
The brochure said 60 foot cargo net. I don't know who measure these things by if these are 60 feet tall then I have a 12 foot C!@#$.
Yes, they made us crawl under barbed wire (with safety wire of course).
They don't call it Tough "MUDDER" for nothing. The guy in the picture with me is Kobie Jackson. He's the one who wrote and performs all of the music on The Self Defense Training System. See, even musicians with the SDC kick ass. (Sorry, I couldn't resist).
There were about 12 other obstacles that included scaling 10 foot walls, crawling through 20 foot tunnels, 50 yard fire walk which was really more like a "smoke walk" which gave you ZERO visibility with the real prospect of tripping into a burning bail of hay and finally the "electric shock" run. This was the mystery obstacle and could have been left out entirely since it served no real purpose other than causing an involuntary "FUCK!!!" out of my mouth when I was shocked. Picture a pergola with wires hanging from it. You can
The upshot is, the Tough Mudder was a good experience and I will be doing it again. It is a lot more interesting than a marathon and it fosters team spirit. I like the fact that they didn't keep time and encouraged others to help fellow racers out. Other than a few safety issues which I'm sure will be tweaked, if you can do it...do it. Run, do body weight exercises and life. Remember, you can "OPT OUT" of any obstacle. No one notices and no one cares.
The after shot.
Damian Ross, CEO The Self Defense Company
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3 comments:
That looked like fun! I've done a couple of "mud runs" here in SoCal. That looks a lot more challenging and fun. Thanks for sharing!
Bryan Zardeneta
That looked like a lot of fun. I've done a couple of "mud runs" here in SoCal, but that looks like it beats them all. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for sharing! That looked like a lot of ... fun! I've done some "mud runs" here in SoCal, but that looks a lot more challenging.
Very cool.
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