10+ miles. 20+ obstacles
How I came to the decision of entering myself in my first Tough Mudder comes from the encouragement of one of my good friends. I also love challenging myself physically and mentally so my friend had me hyped up to go for it. We actually were supposed to compete at the Tough Mudder event in Sonoma back in October 2017 but it was cancelled due to the tragic wildfires. So we ended up transferring our ticket to the next closest event in NorCal which was in Sacramento in March .
TRAINING
On average I exercise 3-5 times a week so knowing that I had to train for Tough Mudder motivated me to stay in shape and get stronger. I mixed up my training by learning parkour, going on runs, going to spin class, playing tennis, and weightlifting. Tough Mudder has an online training guide you can find on their website up to 3 months before your event, so it was a great resource to use as a base for my workouts at the gym.
From my experience, I didn't think the courses itself were too difficult, but they weren't a piece of cake either. I felt like I should have trained my upper body strength better, but the other part about completing these obstacles is your confidence and grit. One thing I really enjoyed about Tough Mudder was that these obstacles were more focused on team effort and involved camaraderie.
"Probably the Toughest Event on the Planet
Tough Mudder is a 10-12 mile mud and obstacle course designed to drag you out of your comfort zone by testing your physical strength, stamina, and mental grit. With no podiums, winners, or clocks to race against, it’s not about how fast you can cross the finish line. Rather, it’s a challenge that emphasizes teamwork, camaraderie, and accomplishing something almost as tough as you are."
TIME TO GET MUDDY
Wearing the proper attire for Tough Mudder is crucial. You'll want to wear dri-fit clothing and moisture-wicking material. Avoid cotton! I wore leggings and a long-sleeve shirt to avoid my knees and elbows from getting scraped up.
The day of the event we drove to Gibson Ranch where Tough Mudder was being held. We arrived, checked in, took our team photo, and were ready to get muddy!
Before we even started, we had to make our way to the Start Line and we got extremely muddy right away. It had just rained so the mud was fresh and about ankle/calf deep. At the Start Line, they had music pumping us up and a MC giving his motivational speech. Once the whistle blew, my adrenaline was pumping and I was ready to go. We faced our first obstacle about a mile in, and each obstacle was spaced about half a mile in distance apart from each other. Since we're not competing against time, we weren't too concerned about running to each obstacle, but we did jog to keep ourselves warm since it was a fairly cold day.
To name a few, here are some of the obstacles we faced:
Kiss the Mud (crawling under barbed wire in mud)
Berlin Wall (climbing over 10-ft walls)
Skidmarked (similar to the Berlin Wall, but the walls are angled at 45 degrees)
Everest 2.0 (running up a steep and slippery halfpipe and people at the top pull you over)
Mud Mile 2.0 (series of about ten small mud hills and water filled valleys that you must scale over)
Arctic Enema (plunging into an ice bath)
Cage Crawl (dragging yourself backwards along a fence in water)
Funky Monkey (a monkey bar obstacle starting with bars, followed by a horizontal “wheel” (like a steering wheel), then two vertical wheels)
Lumberjacked (climbing over chest-high tree logs)
Electroshock Therapy (running through live wires up to ten thousand volts surrounded by mud)
I think I was the most excited for Electroshock Therapy (shocking right?!) since it's one of the trademark obstacles. I got shocked maybe 1-2 times and the shock was strong enough to make me fall over. My strategy for this obstacle was to scope out which path people ahead of me were taking and then run through it as fast as I could. Luckily I didn't get shocked in the face, as that happened to one guy in front of me and he looked like he was in a lot of pain.
For my first Tough Mudder, this was definitely one of the most challenging yet rewarding experiences. Huge shoutout to my awesome friends for doing this with me!
