Race 1: Tough Mudder
Halfway there, livin' on a prayer. The first race of the year went well!
This link will probably go down after a while, but for now here's a picture of the course I ran: http://toughmudder.com/events/new-england/mount-snow-course-map-2011/
Sean and Colin both planned on coming, but Sean bailed due to money issues. Colin, the more injured of the group and most likely to drop, was still eager.
The course was a ten mile obstacle course with twenty-eight obstacles. These included:
1. Braveheart Charge: The stampede that starts every good cross country race. Stop, and you get trampled. For a half mile, you're boxed in. Not meant for the claustrophobic.
As a veteran runner, this one didn't really bother me so much, though. In the mess of the crowd, I actually lost Colin.
2. Death March: one full mile uphill at a 45-55 degree incline. Not a single person who started the race with me ran the whole thing, not even me. This one in and of itself wasn't too terrible, but my knees and calves felt this the rest of the race. Starting the whole thing winded made a lot of the events seem more difficult than they actually were.
3. The Killa Gorilla: Just for shits, they decided to make the course in a N-like formation for a while, constantly running up and down the side of the mountain. The downhill actually hurt more than the uphill; the incline was so heavy this time around that if you ran down it you'd lose your balance and fall - but stepping slowly killed your knees as they tried to hold you up.
It was halfway through this course that I caught up to Colin. As it turned out, he left in an early heat due to the confusion of the race. Everyone shouting battle cries and rough-housing at the beginning split us up, and it only got worse when I realized I needed somewhere to stash my glasses. But, three events later, we reunited and vowed to run the rest together.
4. Devil's Beard: This was basically a giant rope web forced down, that you had to hold up to get through. Constantly pushing you into the ground, this one looked a lot easier than it was - well, that's what Colin said at least. He was hurting pretty badly after this obstacle, but because I'm so much shorter than he is I actually just walked underneath him the whole time and coasted fairly easily.
5. Boa Constrictor: You crawl into a sewer pipe, which gets progressively more narrow, and follow it underground. The bottom layer is filled with water, so there's a small part where you're crawling in a cramped pipe, holding your breath and praying that the pipe will rise enough that you can breathe soon. The water was sewer-like and muddy, so you couldn't see if you wanted to.
I saw a lot of people whimper before going into the pipes, but thanks to Terry and Rik from the Wooster cross country team, I was adequately prepared for such dangerous maneuvers. I managed to finish quickly and had to wait for Colin a bit.
6. Tired Yet?: Run uphill through tires. Lots of tires.
This one was hilarious for me, because I was so small that I could hop across the tops of them without fear of breaking them or falling inwards. This was another event where Colin struggled and I just laughed it off.
7. Tree Hugger: This was one of the steepest inclines there was this race, with only tree branches to support you as you struggled to climb it.
If anyone has seen Black Sheep, there's a moment where Chris Farley falls down a hill, desperately grabbing onto a root to save himself. Just as he regains his control and begins to express gratitude to this little branch, the branch uproots and he falls down the hill again. This scene pretty much described everyone there, including me. I eventually just got frustrated and clawed the ground to pry myself up, hurting my hands as dirt pried its way underneath my fingernails.
8. Ball Shrinker: It lived up to its name. The course involved two ropes, one you hold onto with your hands, and one you step onto with your feet, and you balance above a lake with a snow machine feeding it more coldness. Certain parts forced you to go into the water.
This was the first course where being tiny was a tremendous disadvantage. I lost my footing on the bottom rope several times, and had to just hold onto the top one for dear life until I could catch the bottom one again. A few times someone particularly tall lost his balance, and his attempt to cling to the top rope swung it awkwardly. Every time this happened, I was thrown off the course. One guy had his arm jerked so hard from this that his arm dislocated, so there was a little bit of a traffic jam towards the end.
9. Mud Mile: "Hey Colin, why do they call it a Tough Mudder?" Running for a mile in the mud sounds easier than it is. When you have to force your legs to move upwards and forward, you get tired pretty quickly. A lot of people, including myself, had to walk this one.
10. Kiss of Mud: Clearly, people weren't muddy enough after the last event, because we had to crawl face down in the mud underneath barb wire. I got poked once or twice trying to get some air - although the course was much easier than it should've been given my small size.
I'm also fairly certain, after looking at the obstacle, that someone big had suffered immensely and destroyed the barbs out of spite. Towards the end, the barb wires were about twice as high off the ground, looking clearly bent.
11. Hold Your Wood: The mission was clear and simple: carry a log up the side of the mountain and back down again. Other Tough Mudders make long logs a team effort, but in our case we just carried individual logs.
A lot of the people I passed in running portions caught up to me and passed me here. I was starting to get annoyed, especially when one football player laughed at me as he passed me. But then he tripped and dropped his log, rolling it back down the hill right before he reached the top. I laughed at him back, and then trotted along.
12. Hay Bales: Run through/jump over/do whatever it takes to get to the other side of a sea of hay. Whoever designed this course must have thought they were pretty funny, setting this one up right after all the muddy events. I tracked hay for a little bit.
13. Evil Knevil: Giant giant giant wall. Team work was absolutely necessary to get over. I got a running start and grabbed onto the arm of a runner ahead of me, but Colin had to have a few people push him up.
14. Spider Web: Another spider web-like rope, only this one was completely vertical and you climbed onto it instead of under it. Conceptually, this was pretty easy, but it became difficult when everyone was trying to do it at once, and the rope was constantly shaking towards the top. Again, my little size was a disadvantage, but I learned from the Ball-Shrinker and clung on for dear life before taking each step. Colin actually got thrown off this one, despite being a good fifty pounds heavier than I was.
15. Fish and Chips: This one was advertised on the website as the "Mystery Event" - the one that they keep a secret until race day that represents the hosting area. Since this one was hosted by Vermont, the secret event entailed wadding through copious amounts of maple syrup and vinegar, followed by belly crawling under wires through wood chips. I actually had a lot of fun on this one, despite a few pains here and there from the chips.
16. Walk the plank: Climb to the top of a steep incline, then jump off into water. The only thing that made this easy was closing my eyes the whole time. I saw a couple people at the top panic from the drop, and I was a little worried I'd wimp out if I took to long. As soon as I reached the top, I jumped.
17. Underwater Tunnels: The name of this event doesn't accurately describe it. There were big metal pipes, and you had to army crawl underneath them, under water. Under the water, you had about eight inches of room in between the top of the pipe and the ground.
Everyone I saw, including Colin, just skipped over this one. I sat there and paused for a long time, knowing that my old fears of drowning wouldn't be fond of this one, but I decided that I couldn't really call myself that tough if I skipped any of the events. The mud was really dirty here, and it was impossible to close your eyes and mouth hard enough to keep it from penetrating you as you shoved yourself in between the pipe and the ground. My eyes burned so badly that I had to do the next half mild blind, with Colin leading my way. But an army guy who skipped the event complimented me nicely on my balls of steel, so I felt like it was worth it.
18. The Glacier: Climbing the glacier wasn't the problem. The problem was hanging onto ice for dear life so as to keep from falling. It was cold and slippery and cold some more.
The way down was super fun. The people who came before us trampled the ground into a slide, with two long lines - one for each leg. I held onto the sides of the glacier, kicked off and slid down. The only unpleasant part (a VERY unpleasant part, though) was the middle of the two lines slowly rising at one point and jamming me pretty hard. The girl behind me, who was both taller and obviously lacking testicles, laughed immensely at my suffering.
19. The Gauntlet. The advertisement calls for high powered hoses spraying you as you go through. However, enough people had trampled the ground that this event actually wasn't really that difficult. The hoses were off-kilter, and I was able to just maneuver around the spray for less water pressure.
The water was still cold, though. There was a first aid station right after the glacier where people could rest and warm up, but I talked Colin out of resting when I saw a sign saying that the fire was coming up. Not realizing this event and a few others were first, this made the cold rather cumbersome.
20. Cliffhanger: this was sort of like the Black Sheep moment all over again, only with fewer branches. When I saw people falling down it, I just crawled up the whole thing from the beginning.
21. Blood bath: the description on the website says: "It's like tye-dying your shirt at summer camp, except that it's your body and it's the summer camp from hell." Basically, you jump into a huge vat of - er, something - and swim through it to the other side. There were three vats, one green, one blue, and one red. Colin took the green one, and I the red.
Initially, it was bubbling a lot, so I braced myself for something really scalding hot. But then, after diving in, I learned that the entire thing was like diving into a vat of ice. The other side of the tunnel was predominantly ice. Colin seemed like his wasn't so bad, though, so I didn't complain for fear of judgment.
22. Funky Monkey: Monkey bars stream across another ice cold water pit, and some of the bars are buttered down.
I looked at this obstacle, and noticed that the water level was really low. From what I could tell, too many people had passed us, and the water had just splashed out the edges of the obstacle. If I had fallen into this, the water would not stop me from hitting the ground. So, to prevent that, I sort of cheated and climbed up the side of the obstacle and walked along the support beams on top of everything. The moderator didn't seem to mind.
23. Berlin Walls - kind of like that one really big wall, only slightly smaller and four of them. The wood gave me a lot of splinters.
Colin and I noticed virtually every team doing it differently (we had to enlist help because we were a team of only two - stupid Sean). A team wearing all Family-Guy themed shirts put someone on their shoulders and hoisted the other up. A team of ninja-turtle shirts used their hands as a stepping stone and their shoulders as another. One basketball player just ran and hopped to the top, clawing his way up all by himself. I ran into the army guy again here, and out of appreciation for my efforts prior he agreed to help me over the wall. But before I could get out the "Where's the rest of your team?" I was thrown to the top by him and him alone. I spat out a blind-sided "Thank you?" in his general direction, then kept going.
24. Tower Hurdle: The website said we had to climb the chair lift, which was misleading. We actually just started where the chair lift dropped us off and ran up the mountain to where it started, then ran down the skiing side. This was a cakewalk, being a runner and all. Colin was kind of injured at this point, so I took my time nonetheless. Everyone else was walking at this point, so I didn't feel too guilty.
25. Fire Walker: You had one objective and one objective alone: run through fire. I was a little disappointed at the shortness of this obstacle, though I was fairly certain that this was inevitable. Even with Death Waivers at the starting line, there's really only so much they can push someone through. If people died, I imagine, it would still probably go to court, and even if the waivers stopped Tough Mudder from claiming any responsibility, it would still be bad press.
26. Turd's Nest: One more spider web net, only this one was another horizontal one, one you climbed on top of instead of underneath.
This one was a little difficult as someone tiny, since the holes were kind of big. I saw a fat guy look at the ropes, yell "Fuck this!" and jump in on his side, rolling his way across the obstacle. Everyone laughed and cheered as he did so.
27. Greased Lightning: You fall down a slip and slide, trying to jump off just in time before you fall into the water (which nobody did). But your eye was always on the water, because you didn't want to be wet for the last event, which was...
28. Electroshock Therapy: The final challenge was running through live wires to the finish line. My tiny size served me one last time as I ran through, artfully dodging every wire (oh ho ho, see what I did there?). Colin was shocked a few times, but he seemed fine so I assume it wasn't so bad.
As we walked through the finish line, cute girls put our victory headbands on our heads and gave us free beer. We also got t-shirts, high fives and hugs, as customary to a good race. We drove the three hours home, and three showers later I have most of the mud removed from my body. My car, however, suffers on.
With Colin's injury, we actually ended up taking a pretty long time - about five hours. While this wasn't the best time ever, our runthrough proved that my body could take five hours of constant abuse (most of which was running up and down hills). And it also proved, through Colin's efforts, that you can finish a race with all sorts of injuries. The human body is capable of some pretty intense things - things we don't really realize we can do because we quit when we're scared or in pain.
Today's race motivated me more than anything. Come October, I will finish that marathon. And so help me God, Sean will be there too.
-Didroy
This link will probably go down after a while, but for now here's a picture of the course I ran: http://toughmudder.com/events/new-england/mount-snow-course-map-2011/
Sean and Colin both planned on coming, but Sean bailed due to money issues. Colin, the more injured of the group and most likely to drop, was still eager.
The course was a ten mile obstacle course with twenty-eight obstacles. These included:
1. Braveheart Charge: The stampede that starts every good cross country race. Stop, and you get trampled. For a half mile, you're boxed in. Not meant for the claustrophobic.
As a veteran runner, this one didn't really bother me so much, though. In the mess of the crowd, I actually lost Colin.
2. Death March: one full mile uphill at a 45-55 degree incline. Not a single person who started the race with me ran the whole thing, not even me. This one in and of itself wasn't too terrible, but my knees and calves felt this the rest of the race. Starting the whole thing winded made a lot of the events seem more difficult than they actually were.
3. The Killa Gorilla: Just for shits, they decided to make the course in a N-like formation for a while, constantly running up and down the side of the mountain. The downhill actually hurt more than the uphill; the incline was so heavy this time around that if you ran down it you'd lose your balance and fall - but stepping slowly killed your knees as they tried to hold you up.
It was halfway through this course that I caught up to Colin. As it turned out, he left in an early heat due to the confusion of the race. Everyone shouting battle cries and rough-housing at the beginning split us up, and it only got worse when I realized I needed somewhere to stash my glasses. But, three events later, we reunited and vowed to run the rest together.
4. Devil's Beard: This was basically a giant rope web forced down, that you had to hold up to get through. Constantly pushing you into the ground, this one looked a lot easier than it was - well, that's what Colin said at least. He was hurting pretty badly after this obstacle, but because I'm so much shorter than he is I actually just walked underneath him the whole time and coasted fairly easily.
5. Boa Constrictor: You crawl into a sewer pipe, which gets progressively more narrow, and follow it underground. The bottom layer is filled with water, so there's a small part where you're crawling in a cramped pipe, holding your breath and praying that the pipe will rise enough that you can breathe soon. The water was sewer-like and muddy, so you couldn't see if you wanted to.
I saw a lot of people whimper before going into the pipes, but thanks to Terry and Rik from the Wooster cross country team, I was adequately prepared for such dangerous maneuvers. I managed to finish quickly and had to wait for Colin a bit.
6. Tired Yet?: Run uphill through tires. Lots of tires.
This one was hilarious for me, because I was so small that I could hop across the tops of them without fear of breaking them or falling inwards. This was another event where Colin struggled and I just laughed it off.
7. Tree Hugger: This was one of the steepest inclines there was this race, with only tree branches to support you as you struggled to climb it.
If anyone has seen Black Sheep, there's a moment where Chris Farley falls down a hill, desperately grabbing onto a root to save himself. Just as he regains his control and begins to express gratitude to this little branch, the branch uproots and he falls down the hill again. This scene pretty much described everyone there, including me. I eventually just got frustrated and clawed the ground to pry myself up, hurting my hands as dirt pried its way underneath my fingernails.
8. Ball Shrinker: It lived up to its name. The course involved two ropes, one you hold onto with your hands, and one you step onto with your feet, and you balance above a lake with a snow machine feeding it more coldness. Certain parts forced you to go into the water.
This was the first course where being tiny was a tremendous disadvantage. I lost my footing on the bottom rope several times, and had to just hold onto the top one for dear life until I could catch the bottom one again. A few times someone particularly tall lost his balance, and his attempt to cling to the top rope swung it awkwardly. Every time this happened, I was thrown off the course. One guy had his arm jerked so hard from this that his arm dislocated, so there was a little bit of a traffic jam towards the end.
9. Mud Mile: "Hey Colin, why do they call it a Tough Mudder?" Running for a mile in the mud sounds easier than it is. When you have to force your legs to move upwards and forward, you get tired pretty quickly. A lot of people, including myself, had to walk this one.
10. Kiss of Mud: Clearly, people weren't muddy enough after the last event, because we had to crawl face down in the mud underneath barb wire. I got poked once or twice trying to get some air - although the course was much easier than it should've been given my small size.
I'm also fairly certain, after looking at the obstacle, that someone big had suffered immensely and destroyed the barbs out of spite. Towards the end, the barb wires were about twice as high off the ground, looking clearly bent.
11. Hold Your Wood: The mission was clear and simple: carry a log up the side of the mountain and back down again. Other Tough Mudders make long logs a team effort, but in our case we just carried individual logs.
A lot of the people I passed in running portions caught up to me and passed me here. I was starting to get annoyed, especially when one football player laughed at me as he passed me. But then he tripped and dropped his log, rolling it back down the hill right before he reached the top. I laughed at him back, and then trotted along.
12. Hay Bales: Run through/jump over/do whatever it takes to get to the other side of a sea of hay. Whoever designed this course must have thought they were pretty funny, setting this one up right after all the muddy events. I tracked hay for a little bit.
13. Evil Knevil: Giant giant giant wall. Team work was absolutely necessary to get over. I got a running start and grabbed onto the arm of a runner ahead of me, but Colin had to have a few people push him up.
14. Spider Web: Another spider web-like rope, only this one was completely vertical and you climbed onto it instead of under it. Conceptually, this was pretty easy, but it became difficult when everyone was trying to do it at once, and the rope was constantly shaking towards the top. Again, my little size was a disadvantage, but I learned from the Ball-Shrinker and clung on for dear life before taking each step. Colin actually got thrown off this one, despite being a good fifty pounds heavier than I was.
15. Fish and Chips: This one was advertised on the website as the "Mystery Event" - the one that they keep a secret until race day that represents the hosting area. Since this one was hosted by Vermont, the secret event entailed wadding through copious amounts of maple syrup and vinegar, followed by belly crawling under wires through wood chips. I actually had a lot of fun on this one, despite a few pains here and there from the chips.
16. Walk the plank: Climb to the top of a steep incline, then jump off into water. The only thing that made this easy was closing my eyes the whole time. I saw a couple people at the top panic from the drop, and I was a little worried I'd wimp out if I took to long. As soon as I reached the top, I jumped.
17. Underwater Tunnels: The name of this event doesn't accurately describe it. There were big metal pipes, and you had to army crawl underneath them, under water. Under the water, you had about eight inches of room in between the top of the pipe and the ground.
Everyone I saw, including Colin, just skipped over this one. I sat there and paused for a long time, knowing that my old fears of drowning wouldn't be fond of this one, but I decided that I couldn't really call myself that tough if I skipped any of the events. The mud was really dirty here, and it was impossible to close your eyes and mouth hard enough to keep it from penetrating you as you shoved yourself in between the pipe and the ground. My eyes burned so badly that I had to do the next half mild blind, with Colin leading my way. But an army guy who skipped the event complimented me nicely on my balls of steel, so I felt like it was worth it.
18. The Glacier: Climbing the glacier wasn't the problem. The problem was hanging onto ice for dear life so as to keep from falling. It was cold and slippery and cold some more.
The way down was super fun. The people who came before us trampled the ground into a slide, with two long lines - one for each leg. I held onto the sides of the glacier, kicked off and slid down. The only unpleasant part (a VERY unpleasant part, though) was the middle of the two lines slowly rising at one point and jamming me pretty hard. The girl behind me, who was both taller and obviously lacking testicles, laughed immensely at my suffering.
19. The Gauntlet. The advertisement calls for high powered hoses spraying you as you go through. However, enough people had trampled the ground that this event actually wasn't really that difficult. The hoses were off-kilter, and I was able to just maneuver around the spray for less water pressure.
The water was still cold, though. There was a first aid station right after the glacier where people could rest and warm up, but I talked Colin out of resting when I saw a sign saying that the fire was coming up. Not realizing this event and a few others were first, this made the cold rather cumbersome.
20. Cliffhanger: this was sort of like the Black Sheep moment all over again, only with fewer branches. When I saw people falling down it, I just crawled up the whole thing from the beginning.
21. Blood bath: the description on the website says: "It's like tye-dying your shirt at summer camp, except that it's your body and it's the summer camp from hell." Basically, you jump into a huge vat of - er, something - and swim through it to the other side. There were three vats, one green, one blue, and one red. Colin took the green one, and I the red.
Initially, it was bubbling a lot, so I braced myself for something really scalding hot. But then, after diving in, I learned that the entire thing was like diving into a vat of ice. The other side of the tunnel was predominantly ice. Colin seemed like his wasn't so bad, though, so I didn't complain for fear of judgment.
22. Funky Monkey: Monkey bars stream across another ice cold water pit, and some of the bars are buttered down.
I looked at this obstacle, and noticed that the water level was really low. From what I could tell, too many people had passed us, and the water had just splashed out the edges of the obstacle. If I had fallen into this, the water would not stop me from hitting the ground. So, to prevent that, I sort of cheated and climbed up the side of the obstacle and walked along the support beams on top of everything. The moderator didn't seem to mind.
23. Berlin Walls - kind of like that one really big wall, only slightly smaller and four of them. The wood gave me a lot of splinters.
Colin and I noticed virtually every team doing it differently (we had to enlist help because we were a team of only two - stupid Sean). A team wearing all Family-Guy themed shirts put someone on their shoulders and hoisted the other up. A team of ninja-turtle shirts used their hands as a stepping stone and their shoulders as another. One basketball player just ran and hopped to the top, clawing his way up all by himself. I ran into the army guy again here, and out of appreciation for my efforts prior he agreed to help me over the wall. But before I could get out the "Where's the rest of your team?" I was thrown to the top by him and him alone. I spat out a blind-sided "Thank you?" in his general direction, then kept going.
24. Tower Hurdle: The website said we had to climb the chair lift, which was misleading. We actually just started where the chair lift dropped us off and ran up the mountain to where it started, then ran down the skiing side. This was a cakewalk, being a runner and all. Colin was kind of injured at this point, so I took my time nonetheless. Everyone else was walking at this point, so I didn't feel too guilty.
25. Fire Walker: You had one objective and one objective alone: run through fire. I was a little disappointed at the shortness of this obstacle, though I was fairly certain that this was inevitable. Even with Death Waivers at the starting line, there's really only so much they can push someone through. If people died, I imagine, it would still probably go to court, and even if the waivers stopped Tough Mudder from claiming any responsibility, it would still be bad press.
26. Turd's Nest: One more spider web net, only this one was another horizontal one, one you climbed on top of instead of underneath.
This one was a little difficult as someone tiny, since the holes were kind of big. I saw a fat guy look at the ropes, yell "Fuck this!" and jump in on his side, rolling his way across the obstacle. Everyone laughed and cheered as he did so.
27. Greased Lightning: You fall down a slip and slide, trying to jump off just in time before you fall into the water (which nobody did). But your eye was always on the water, because you didn't want to be wet for the last event, which was...
28. Electroshock Therapy: The final challenge was running through live wires to the finish line. My tiny size served me one last time as I ran through, artfully dodging every wire (oh ho ho, see what I did there?). Colin was shocked a few times, but he seemed fine so I assume it wasn't so bad.
As we walked through the finish line, cute girls put our victory headbands on our heads and gave us free beer. We also got t-shirts, high fives and hugs, as customary to a good race. We drove the three hours home, and three showers later I have most of the mud removed from my body. My car, however, suffers on.
With Colin's injury, we actually ended up taking a pretty long time - about five hours. While this wasn't the best time ever, our runthrough proved that my body could take five hours of constant abuse (most of which was running up and down hills). And it also proved, through Colin's efforts, that you can finish a race with all sorts of injuries. The human body is capable of some pretty intense things - things we don't really realize we can do because we quit when we're scared or in pain.
Today's race motivated me more than anything. Come October, I will finish that marathon. And so help me God, Sean will be there too.
-Didroy