Tough Mudder tid bit or ramble

Dear Sweet Mother of God.....Well it's called the Tough Mudder for a reason!  I got my butt kicked, not just kind of where I'm sort of sore later, I am/was covered in bruises, hurt in strange places, and took forever to get my body temperature back to normal!  The Tough Mudder is by far the hardest, toughest, craziest "challenge" that I have ever done.  For those of you that have no idea what a "Tough Mudder" is I'll give a quick definition.  It is a trail run, obstacle course, torture riddled, challenge designed by a retired British Forces guy that loves to watch people in pain.  I am in really good shape, I can run for miles, I can lift, crawl, do whatever I need to and normally 11 miles does not put me down for the count but I was crying mercy at mile 3.  Yep, I'm doing a marathon in 2 more weeks and I wanted to go home at mile 3. That's a problem. 

For the Tough Mudder you run 11 miles and have to go through, over, under, between, around, and in 16 obstacles. That doesn't sound too bad until you realize that the air temperature is only 53 degrees in the sun and the water temperature that you're going through would be lucky to register 40 degrees, and 12 of those 16 obstacles involve you being nearly completely submerged in ice water.  Hypothermia was a real thing for 3.5 hours of my day last Saturday. My nails were blue, I'm positive my lips were blue, I was shivering nonstop, and it took me hours after the challenge to get back to feeling normal even after a ridiculously hot shower. 

We would run for a half mile or more then have to jump in water, crawl over mud, and swing to another side of a mud pit, get out, run another mile or so, repeat.  There were many runners that were being taken to the finish line via "Aquapod" Gator deals, basically 4 wheelers with roll cages that do great in mud and water.  The race coordinators started passing out those shiny emergency mylar blankets at mile 4 which was GREAT. I wrapped up like a baked potato and stayed like that for the next 7 miles.  I ran with my arms wrapped up under my "blanket" and stuffed the blanket in my shirt when it was time for an obstacle, get out of the water and wrap back up.  At one point there was a medic tent where a medic was telling a guy that he was not allowed to continue on until his lips were no longer blue or his temp came up because he was very close to being taken out against his will but for his safety.  This course was down right dangerous.  Red actually got hurt falling from a "Berlin wall".  The wall was a 12' tall wall (hence the name) where you get helped over by being lifted and pulled to the top, on your way down though you're on your own.  I lowered myself and was able to negotiate a nice landing from an 8' drop after extending my arms a bit, Red wasn't so lucky and landed straight legged at the bottom.  Yeah, he was hurting for quite a while.  I have no idea why we thought this was a good idea but now after a week and getting my body temperature back to where it's SUPPOSED to be I definitely want to do this again.  That's right, I wanted to quit at mile 3, I battled hypothermia literally for about 3  hours, I nearly drowned taking "The Plunge", was shocked by electricity and temperature, bruised in more places than I can count, and was close to tears multiple times but yet I want to do it again.  The people surrounding you are GREAT, everyone helped everyone, there were no physical boundaries of "do not touch me".  I was lifted up multiple times by complete strangers because I was stuck in some God forsaken pit and quite simply was too short to get out.  I helped lift guys over walls and pushed girls up mud mounds.  I was muddy, I was frozen, and I was bruised, but I loved it. 

This post turned out to be a lot of rambling and nonsense but I promise that the next post will involve 1) pictures of said bruises and 2) more streamlined useful information for anyone that is crazy enough to want to do this insane challenge. It's called a challenge for a reason, not a race.  The signs even say "Tough Mudder doesn't want you to have a heart attack so if you don't feel well please feel no shame in dropping out".