As a Tough Mudder, I pledge that...I overcome ALL Fears

I probably didn't take Tough Mudder preperation as seriously as I should have.  I barely did strength training the last few months.  I ran a lot, but even then, not as much as I should've.  So it should come as no shock that it kicked my ass, it kicked it hard...

But I survived.  I finished.  I conquered.  I am satisfied.  (Well, mostly, but that will be explained shortly).

Our team was me, Bill, and our cousin Andrew.  It was held at Crumland Farms in Frederick.  In hindsight, there are some logistics about that location that probably setup for a bad experience.  Roads leading up to the farm were not very wide and complimentary of large volumes of traffic.  Hearing reports that MANY runners with later wave times were stuck in traffic for HOURS and missed their run.  So, there's some work needed there.  Luckily, our run time was 8:20, second of the event, so we had to get there early anyway.

The event is designed by a former British Special Forces, and is designed to push you to the brink, both physically and mentally.  On the day, I did the following things:

1. Dove into a dumpster of ice water, having to submerge my head to get to the end
2. Lept over mud trenches
3. Crawled through mud pits with barbed wire 8 inches above
4. Scaled TWO roughly ten foot walls
5. Scaled a pile of hay bales two-high
6. Scaled a MOUNTAIN of hay bales five-high!
7. Carried a log about half a mile, lumberjack style
8. Crawled through a trench full of rocks and pits
9. Jumped off a 15 foot high platform into water
10. Tried bounding over two sets of raised logs (Attempted, slipped, chose to keep moving)
11. Crawled through a pit of water, with electric wires dangling from barbed wire 8 inches above
12. Swam through a lake, ducking three floating barrel rows
13. Scaled two roughly twelve foot walls (Skipped, but I helped 4 or 5 people boost to get them over)
14. Grappled and climbed over 5 mud mountain walls
15. Crawled up and down construction drainage tubes (This was a lot harder than it looked and sounded)
16. Climbed monkey bars, fell in shortly after starting, and swam out
17. Made it halfway across a balance beam, swam out after falling off
18. Attempted to scale a quarter-pipe (My legs were shot at this point, skipped)
19. Sprinted through a field of electric wires
20. Oh yeah, and in doing that, we covered nearly 11 miles.

The end results...My calves began cramping on me around mile 7.  This made me have to walk the last 3 or so miles, as well as hindered a bunch of obstacles.  My quads hurt too.  I scraped the everloving crap out of my knees and elbows.  Physically, I was weak and that disappointed me.  BUT, what impressed me was how I met the mental aspects.  Leading up to this, the ice dumpster, the walls, the electric wire crawl, the electric wire sprint, the monkey bars, and the 15 foot jump...all made me hestitate to do this.  But, i did it!  The only thing I was disappointed there was not being able to try the quarter pipe.  It's tough to finish, but I couldn't even try it.  I was also proud that for both electric wire obstacles, I charged through them.  I got hit at least once in the crawl.  In the sprint, I was doing a Braveheart style thing, so my adrenaline kind've numbed me.  But I think I impressed a number of people who were hesitating.

All in all, Tough Mudder challenged me.  I may not have performed physically superior.  But I finished it.  And that's what it's all about.  Tough Mudder is not a race, but a challenge.  That's in the pledge you say at the beginning.  You are out there to complete the course.  And I did!

And then, the parking thing happened...

So, the parking for this was a big field, on several slopes.  As we were heading back to the cars, we saw storm clouds moving in.  I spent about 30 minutes waiting to get out before the skies opened up.  A severe thunderstorm and downpour...And guess what, that big field turned into a big mud bowl....

EVERYONE got stuck.  Even 4WD vehicles!  And Tough Mudder had no solutions, other than encouraging fellow participants to help push cars out.  After sitting in the traffic for about 3 hours of no moving, I gave up and took Noah with me back to the entrance.  We made sure the car could sit there overnight and called Shannon to pick us up.  My cousin also got his car stuck as well.  We're going to try getting it out with a group of people tomorrow and a pickup truck.  Due to the storms, they had to cancel the last few waves of the day, so Tough Mudder is dealing with PLENTY of complaints now.  Hope they can sort it out.

It was fun.  May not do it again, but maybe.  We'll see, but I know that for one day...I. DID. IT!

*UPDATE* - 9am on Sunday, we returned to the site to try getting the cars out.  They ended up cancelling TM on Sunday due to traffic issues, weather issues, parking issues...lots of issues.  No way that area would've been able to park cars today.  Luckily, between myself, my brother Bill, my Dad, my cousin Andrew, and his friend Simon, we figured out the right steps to drive his Challenger, my Sonata, and then my brother's Dodge Ram out of there.  Even the 4WD Ram had some troubles (didn't have All Terrain tires), but we did it.  45 more cars were still stuck there when we left.