Blog: Entries Tagged With 'tough-mudder'

Yesterday I did my third Tough Mudder, this time in Lake Elsinore. I opted for this one after the March SoCal event was cancelled due to excessive rain and mud (the irony).

So Friday night, we flew down to Santa Ana/Irvine, got our rental car, met up with Raymond at Pokenoya, walked around the Orange County Great Park (we wanted to get on the hot air balloon but it was shut down early due to wind conditions), and drove to our hotel in Lake Elsinore. The hotel was pretty ghetto but we chose it because it was 0.8 miles from the Lake Elsinore Diamond where the event was. So the next day, Priscilla just drove me down the street and dropped me off right at the venue.

After the event (which I'll elaborate on in a bit), we drove back to Irvine and checked into the Hilton by the airport. In the evening, Raymond picked us up and we went to Aaron and Lauren's place to hang out with them. But we didn't see the baby since she'd already gone to sleep. And finally on Sunday, we went to church at the Saddleback Irvine South location (we walked there from our hotel) before flying home. It was a pretty eventful weekend, so we hit the hay early.

So back to the SoCal Tough Mudder. Checkin and bag drop were pretty quick, though that was perhaps because I had an earlier wave time (9:00) and got there at 8:20, so it hadn't gotten too crowded yet. The format was pretty similar to the NorCal event a month ago, though the Full route here didn't involve doing two laps and repeating some obstacles. Unlike my previous two times, I ran this one solo (hard to find people crazy enough to sign up with me, especially if it involves travel). It was definitely more fun with a team, but since I was able to set my own pace, I chose to run most of the way and finished in just over 2.5 hours. But my legs started cramping at mile 8, and I'm not sure if that was due to the tight compression socks that I was wearing. On the positive side, the socks did prevent a lot of (though not all) grit from getting in.

There were 21 obstacles on the Full route. Like with NorCal, the first obstacle was Kiss of Mud 2.0, ensuring that everyone started off with their entire frontside covered with mud. On Hero Carry, I paired up with a big guy and it was challenging carrying him on my back, mostly because his damp legs (from the previous obstacle) kept slipping from my hands. So he started carrying me about 20 feet before the switch point.

Blockness Monster was again a lot of fun, though most people didn't turn around and grab the block on their way down, which reduced throughput by a lot. SoCal had one obstacle I've never done - Tower of Tire, where people had to climb over a wall made of giant tires stacked three layers high. Pretty easy.

Mud Mile 2.0 was easier than it was at NorCal. Most people were able to get over the first two sections without help. The remaining sections required minimal help - just one person giving one hand from above.

Having had experience from a month ago, I breezed through Kong Infinity and Funky Monkey, though my technique still could use work. Cage Crawl was again a bit vexing, but I was doing ok until near the end, when the cage got pretty close to the water and then my face had nowhere to go but under the water. I then started freaking out and pulled myself through as fast as possible while getting water up my nose and down my throat. I can see how this could be a dangerous obstacle - I honestly wonder if anybody's come close to drowning.

On the next obstacle, Just the Tip, I got further than I did at NorCal, making it past the knobs and pegs in the middle. But on the latter half, it was too painful to keep holding onto the wood edge, so I bailed. I actually ended up losing some skin on my palm here. The guy after me completed this obstacle pretty easily, and he said that the trick was to keep the arms hanging loose instead of doing the cat grip that I was doing. In keeping the arms loose, the grip would probably also be relaxed and rely mainly on the tip of the fingers, which explains the name of the obstacle.

Arctic Enema was pretty cold, but I really felt it after getting out. That's when the shock wears off, I guess. And speaking of shocks, Electroshock Therapy was the next obstacle. I tried to carefully weave through the wires but still got hit twice in the back. I crouched to get under some of the wires, and the announcer compared me to a baby bird crouching in a nest and said that somebody should come and put regurgitated food into my mouth. I think this was the same announcer who in 2014 commented about me making sweet love to the mud! At least I didn't crawl through the mud on all fours this time.

Immediately afterwards was the final obstacle, Happy Ending. People were really good about forming human ladders and didn't seem to have the trouble that people were having at NorCal. I was able to get up pretty quickly thanks to some heroes at the bottom. And with that, upon crossing the finish line, my third Tough Mudder was complete.

I had fun, and it was great to see everybody tackling the obstacles and giving it their all. But I'm probably not going to sign up for another one unless somebody asks me to run with them. I don't really enjoy getting dirty, the overhead of getting to the events is a bit much, and the nature of the obstacles lend themselves to completing them with people you know. I do still enjoy the obstacles and the athleticism, and I'd like to try Spartan Race, which is intended to be more individualistic and competitive. But that will have to wait since I have an ankle injury, wrist pain and a GI condition that I'm trying to recover from. My biggest obstacle, apparently, really is myself. But these are hurdles, and hurdles are meant to be conquered.

Warning: minor Tough Mudder spoilers ahead!

Yesterday I ran my second Tough Mudder, this time at the Sonoma Raceway, an hour and 45 minutes from home. I and two others from Pure signed up and were supposed to do it last year, but that event was cancelled due to the Sonoma wildfires. Fortunately, the skies were clear this year for the rescheduled NorCal event.

Our start time was 10:00, but despite pulling into the parking lot an hour early, we ended up going out in the 10:45 wave due to insane wait times, particularly a 45-minute wait to get checked in at Mudder Village. The checkin process was pretty slow and inefficient, and there were not enough helpers. It took another 15-20 minutes to get our bag checked in. At least there were enough porta-potties at the village for there to be no wait there.

Once on the course though, everything was great. There were well-stocked water stations (half with food) every couple miles. The obstacles were excellent and the wait times at each were minimal. And the camaraderie was amazing.

When I did my first TM in 2014, there was only one type of event, which is now called the Full. Now, there's also a Half and a 5k that overlaps with the Full event. It's TM's way of broadening the appeal and reaching those who may not want to do the full distance or set of obstacles (e.g. no Arctic Enema or Electroshock Therapy on the 5k and Half). Our group did the Full (I wouldn't settle for less). There are also harder event types that are held in different locations, but we're not crazy enough to do those, yet.

The format for the Full has changed. It involved doing two laps around: first a 6-mile loop, then a shorter 4-mile loop. Because of this, 4 of the initial obstacles were encountered twice. There were 20 unique obstacles on the Full route.

After an initial jog up and down a hill, the first obstacle was the Kiss of Mud 2.0, where you crawl on your belly under barbed wire through mud. Great way to start things off - with your frontside completely covered in brown!

The Mud Mile 2.0 was a little annoying. You had to slide down into a 6-foot trench filled with muddy water and get help up onto the next section. The way the walls were constructed, you couldn't really get a good grip on the walls yourself. So usually this would involve at least two people helping you from above, below, or both. You had to do around 8 of these. I skinned both my arms pretty good on this obstacle, and it was the sole obstacle our group decided to bypass on lap 2.

Block Ness Monster was the most fun. This involved teamwork but also some basic physics. Most people however did not turn around and grab the block on their way down; it would've allowed more people to get over faster if they did.

Last time, I didn't have much trouble with Cage Crawl, but this time, my head dipped below the water early on and I got water up my nose. I then started getting anxious and ended up swallowing some of the water a couple times (hope it was sanitary). I guess the trick here is to be relaxed and to realize that you have enough room to keep your head above the water without your face rubbing against the cage.

Berlin Walls was easier this time. The three of us were able to get on the step at the bottom and jump up and grab the top of the wall on our own. Last time, I needed help reaching the top. I think the step has been made bigger so that you can have both feet firmly planted on it, which wasn't the case last time.

Happy Ending was by far the obstacle requiring the most teamwork and coordination, and as a result, was the most rewarding. It involves forming a human support structure to allow people to climb up a smooth 40-degree wall. In some videos, you can see ropes or horizontal planks halfway up the wall, which makes it a lot easier to get up. Ours had none of these. So it took a lot of effort to form a chain to get people up, and man were things chaotic. One person would have to stand on a narrow ledge at the base of the wall, then another on his shoulders, then a third on his. A fourth person would be at the bottom supporting the first person's feet, which otherwise were likely to slip and cause the entire human ladder to come crashing down. Finally, the ladder would be long enough for one person at a time to climb up to the reaching arms above. In practice, things were not so orderly. I started out holding a guy's feet, but then they told me to climb up, but the ladder started collapsing before I could get high enough, so then I ended up being part of the ladder for a while. Finally, people gave me the chance to go up again, and when I was standing on top of a 2-person ladder, a guy above who was dangling down, his legs held onto by others, was able to grab my hands to pull me up. Talk about teamwork!

Arctic Enema didn't feel too bad when I first got in, but when I dunked my head under the water was when I really felt the chill. Still, this was pretty manageable.

On Electroshock Therapy, I got shocked in the middle of the back when going through the first or second row of wires. It felt like a rubber band snapping against my skin, but it probably would've been worse if the wire had touched my bare skin. I rolled over the hay bale in the middle and then crawled the rest of the way, so I didn't get shocked again. Next time I'm going to try to force myself to just run through quickly. It seems more mental than anything else.

On Just the Tip, I did fine climbing along the wood edge, but as soon as I tried to grab a round knob halfway through, I didn't have enough grip and bailed. I'd been wearing gloves up to this point, thinking that they would help during the climbing obstacles, but all they did was get muddy and slippery.

So on Funky Monkey and Kong Infinity, I did it without the gloves and got all the way across on both. These were pretty cool - it was nice to see that those obstacles got a big facelift since last time.

Everest 2.0 was the final obstacle. Despite the rounded lip that's been added, most people were able to get up on the first try as they grabbed onto the hands above. I just ran hard towards the wall, and when I felt myself losing speed due to the curve, I made myself run even harder, so I think I may have gotten my hands on the rounded lip, but of course I had nothing to really grab onto, so the people up there pulled me up all the same. Tough Mudder complete!

Special mention to some very awesome people we met on the course. The first was a guy decked out not in athletic wear, but in a suit and tie. He was also wearing a black 25x headband. Respect! We also ran into some guys carrying a large crash pad the size of a twin mattress. They were also doing the Full and would be rewarded with money for charity for getting the thing to the finish line. Really taking that team building to the next level!

At the finish line, I was sad to see that there weren't people crowning Mudders with headbands. I guess it would get too hectic given that each event type has its own headband, but it could still be done. Instead, there was a table with event headbands and all the different Legionnaire headbands that were out for taking on the honor system. There was a staffer there, but she wasn't looking people up on a list. Also, my headband just says "Tough Mudder Full," no longer showing the year. Makes it a little less fun to collect them. The finisher T-shirt (now blue instead of black) does still show the year.

Compared to last time, the showers were not freezing cold and there were changing tents. It was nice to be able to change into fresh clothes immediately after hosing off. I would've liked to change my mud-water-infused underwear, but I didn't have a towel and didn't want to bare it all in the tent I was sharing with several other guys, so I opted to just change my pants and shirt. I changed my socks and shoes when I got back to the car, and having paper towels on hand was very useful to wipe off my feet before putting on fresh socks.

I had a lot of fun and was glad to run with my coworkers. I trained more this time around, but even without that, this event seemed a little easier than the one we did in 2014 (e.g. there's now just one obstacle with electric shocks instead of three). The obstacles are more complex than some of the more basic ones we did before. Tough Mudder definitely seems to have gotten more mainstream and commercial since 2014, but as far as I know, they still rely on volunteers for staffing. Given that the company had over $100 million in revenue in 2016, perhaps it's time to start hiring people to ensure an adequate level of staffing for the larger number of participants it's allowing into its events.

My Tough Mudder adventure will continue next month as I do the SoCal event in Lake Elsinore.

Yesterday, a team of five from Pure made our way over to Diablo Grande in Patterson to participate in the exhilarating challenge of Tough Mudder. Our team name: Dirty Puritans. Originally we had 13 people sign up, only to have most of them flake. Their loss!

The event was quite fun, but I would've gotten way more fun out of it had I been with my team the whole time. Sadly, a small injury from last week came back and caused more pain in my knee as the event went on. At mile 3, I told my teammates to go on without me because it hurt to run, and I was holding them up too much. Making it down hills started getting tough, and I had to resort to walking down backwards to avoid landing hard on my knee. My team ended up finishing an hour before I did but was gracious about waiting for me.

A quarter mile in from the start, even before the first obstacle, we had to cross a swampy river. So much for running in dry shoes!

The obstacles on the course were as follows (with three additional obstacles available for Legionnaires only):

1. Glory Blades: A 6ft wall, sloped downward, so once you got over the top, you just had to slide down. I asked for a boost, though I probably could've made it over without one.
2. Warrior Carry: An athletic girl and I took turns carrying each other 100 feet up the hill. Not too bad; she was probably only 110 pounds or so.
3. Cage Crawl: Floating on our backs, we had to make it across a pool of water with a chain-link fence overhead. Somewhat relaxing, but at times it felt like I was short on vertical room.
4. Pitfall: Had to duck under a beam with electrified wires hanging down. There was enough space between wires for me to avoid getting shocked, but one of our team members wasn't so lucky.
5. Killa Gorilla: Had to go up and down the steep face of the hill a couple times. Crouching on all fours like a gorilla helped.
6. Mud Mayhem: Crossing over wet, muddy trenches. Not too much to this obstacle, but it sucked getting lots of little rocks in my shoes.
7. Walk the Plank: Climbed up the face of a 12ft tall platform and jumped into the water below. It helped that there were three lines of people jumping, with a staffer having one person from each line go on the count of 3. Scared of heights? Too bad. Jump, and let gravity do the rest.
8. Arctic Enema: The least favorite of many, but I didn't think this one was that bad. Perhaps the compression shirt and pants I was wearing helped me from feeling too cold. Getting that sudden chill on the way out was probably the worst part.
9. Ladder to Hell: Climbed up a series of rungs spaced about 5 feet apart, then back down the other side. This was pretty easy for me.
10. Funky Monkey: Had to climb up monkey bars first angled going up, then going down. Halfway on the way up, I reached for a bar that wasn't there and plunged into the pool of water below.
11. Balls to the Wall: Had to climb over a tall wall using a rope with knots spaced 6 feet apart. This rope was very slippery and I almost didn't make it up, but when I got enough altitude, I grabbed onto the top of the wall and pulled myself over.
12. Cliffhanger: I don't particularly recall this, but looking at Youtube videos from other events, it looks like this was just going up a steep muddy slope. I sort of recall doing something resembling this. I don't think it was that bad.
13. Devil's Beard: Had to crawl under a long, heavy net, on a downward incline. Would've been easier doing it with more people, but since there were only a couple people running this when I was, it was harder on us to lift the net.
14. Kiss of Mud: Crawling through mud with barbed wire overhead. A great way to get one's frontside completely muddy, and for me to lose my paper bib that I should've attached to my backside, not my frontside.
15. Hold Your Wood: People had the option of carrying an individual block of wood (50 pounds?) or to carry a longer log. I carried a log with two other guys - it was probably a good 150 pounds.
16. Berlin Walls: Two 8ft walls. I had help from members of another team getting over. Meanwhile, two shirtless Chinese guys jumped up, grabbed the top of the wall, and effortlessly lifted themselves over. Dang.
17. Soggy Bottom: Fording another wide muddy river. I learned my lesson from the first one and tried to keep my shoes angled downward so as to not get stuck in the mud as much.
18. Pole Dancer: Using your arms, make your way over a pool of water using two poles that are first angled downward, then upward. I was able to do most of this without landing in the pool on my feet, but at the end I strained my calf reaching out for the edge with my foot. Not good.
19. Quagmire: Just running over a couple mounds of mud with shallow muddy water in the middle.
20. Prairie Dog: Going through a downward tube. Pretty much just slid on my bum as I saw others doing.
21. Everest: A lot of fun, but seemed a little easy. Everybody seemed to make it up in one or two tries. I was able to run up and grab onto the edge of the platform but didn't have a very good grip to pull myself up. The good people at the top helped pull me up.
22. Electroshock Therapy: The emcee from the start was now here at the finish, encouraging people to run through this obstacle and take the shocks, while lots of crowd members were watching in amusement. I took the easy way out and crawled, very slowly, under the wires and got completely muddy from face to toe. The emcee had something funny to say about me taking my sweet time to make love to the mud, and that girls should get my number and give me a call.

The event overall was well-run with lots of volunteers on the course. It was good to see staff at each obstacle and to have six water stations, three of which provided food. I missed my cup of Dos Equis at the end and when I tried to go back for it later, the lady denied me re-entry (despite still having my wristband), which really sucked. At least I got my finisher t-shirt, though.

Overall, I had a blast and just wish that my leg didn't act up so that I could've run with my team. Guess I'll have to do more hill training in preparation for my next Tough Mudder!