So whilst a large contingent of my fellow Striders had
decided to take a trip to France to ‘run’ the Marathon Du Medoc, a race which
involves around 20 wine stops and fancy dress, I, for some bizarre reason had
decided to run Tough Mudder, a race involving various obstacles, masses of mud
and oh yes, electrocution!
The race starts in 20 minute waves, and through what can only be described as an administrative cock up, I ended up starting the race an hour and forty minutes behind the team I’d originally intended to run with. Despite this I still found the event to have a great atmosphere and sense of camaraderie, stood on the start line yelling, chanting and jumping up and down with my fellow mudders at the warm up. We soon made our way to the start line, which would see us all have to get over a 6 foot sheer wall made of planks, this saw me suffer my first injury, before we’d even started! Having straddled the wall and dropped over the other side it became apparent to me and various other male mudders that this was not an ideal strategy, I don’t think I need to say anymore!
After a brief psych up session from the MC we set off to the
strains of ‘The Eye of the Tiger’, cheesy, but fun nonetheless. The race would
then make up of a 12 mile run with 30 obstacles. I can honestly say a few of
the obstacles really stuck in my mind, the first being the ‘Mud Mile’, this
involved a huge mud pit with shoe sucking mud up to your knees, I soon figured
out that the easiest way to pass this was on my hands and knees helping to
disperse my weight, I was then helped back up out of the pit by The Flash and
Superman, I in turn turned round and helped Batman out (sorry, I forgot to
mention, a lot of people run in fancy dress) as the point of Tough Mudder is to
help each other.
Another obstacle which stuck in my mind was the ‘Arctic
Enema’, a skip full of ice water and a row of tyres forcing you to submerge
yourself and pass under them, I actually found this quite a welcome obstacle as
at the time I was very hot from running! I’d later come across ‘Cage Crawl’
which involved lying on your back in water and passing through a channel with a
cage on top allowing you inches to keep your head above water!
Not long after
this at around 8 miles I stumbled across the guys who’d started ahead of me
‘Colums Minions’, they’d all been split up over the course, and so with a
couple of words of encouragement as I passed them I carried on the find the
guys at the front Colum and Arran. It was lucky for me that I did, after a
couple of miles running together we came across ‘Everest’, the obstacle
involves sprinting up a huge curved gradient which ends in a vertical surface
and you have to reach for your fellow Mudders at the top who then pull you
over. I went first and sprinted all the way to the top, grabbing hold of the
guys at the top, then finding myself slipping back down as my grip had not been
good enough. Arran did the same and then Colum managed to get up, myself and
Arran soon followed on our second attempts, later we would hear of people
having 20 attempts at this obstacle!
After a couple of miles cross country and passing through
concrete pipes we found ourselves at the last obstacle ‘Electroshock Therapy’
which meant sprinting through a structure filled with wires carrying a
purported 10,000 volts, we’d seen these things knock people unconscious and so
sprinted through as fast as we could, all of us got shocked multiple times and
much to the crowds delight we all uttered a variety of expletives! Muddy, wet,
cold and recently shocked we happily collected our headbands and free beer,
which once again made me think, why the hell didn’t I go to Medoc!
For more information visit the Touch Mudder website.
Steve F