OK, I'm gonna do a long writeup now that I'm home and cleaned up and have sort of had some sleep.
Tough Mudder MI was held in South Amherst, OH this weekend at an abandoned quarry. Supposedly the team exhaustively searched through locations in MI and was unable to find something suitable. I don't know what they were specifically looking for, but I'm 100% they could have found a similar location in MI. But whatever, I spent a couple hundred bucks on a hotel room in suburban Cleveland and met my friend Joe (who had come in from Chicago) at the hotel. Joe's really into Crossfit but hasn't been running very much. I haven't been lifting very much, so we joked that if you put us together we'd be a complete athlete. We got up at 6 and headed over to the parking area to be shuttled over to the quarry. I thought this was a brilliant idea - we all parked at some shut down auto factory and they contracted dozens of school buses to drive back and forth all weekend. There were tens of thousands of people there this weekend and South Amherst just doesn't have the space for all the people.
We had a 10am start time and got to the quarry a little before 9, dropped our bags and just hung out for a little while because there really wasn't anything going on except the trailer for the new GI Joe movie that played on a projector on repeat ALL FUCKING DAY. I've never wanted to see a movie less. We tried to keep warm because it was in the low 50s and drizzling on and off. Just about perfect weather for a long run.
The atmosphere around the race is honestly ridiculous. Everything is over the top patriotic and HOO RAH this and the idea that you're super duper tough elite athletes by being there. It turned me off of the whole thing from the start. It was kind of embarrassing. Anyways, after suffering through the costume contest (won by a guy wearing nothing but a loincloth and shoes and a guy wearing a thong, bow tie and shoes) if was finally time for us to start. I'll break it down the same way jen did using the map they listed on the website and I'll try to insert the ones that were out of order as I remember.
Obstacle 0) You actually have to climb a 6' fence to get to the start area. I had some trouble getting over it because I was being really dumb about my approach to it.
1)Braveheart Run - The starter says go, you run out of the start area. Everyone ran at their own pace because no one is going to go balls out at the start of a 10-12 mile obstacle run
2) Kiss of Mud - This obstacle was a lot later in the race, but it wasn't too bad except that by the point you went through this you were cold and tired. Ther was barbed wire above the obstacle but you would have had to stand up to hit it. There was just regular wire above you for the most part. Obstacle (no shit) sponsored by GI Joe
3) Berlin Walls #1 - Website says it's 12' walls, but it was actually 6-8 waist high walls to start with. It was a good way to get your heart rate up.
3a) Probably about a mile+ gap between this and the next obstacle. This was far and away the longest sustained run of the day
4) Bale Bonds - Climb over a bunch of hay bales. This was pretty easy because you were still very fresh, relatively dry, and hay bales are pretty easy to climb on
5) Arctic Enema - A jump into a waist deep pool of ice water, and then you have to wade under an obstruction and climb out the other side. After this, everyone was soaked and everything hurts until you get a chance to run for a few minutes. This is a pattern that repeats itself over and over throughout the day.
6) Underwater Tunnels - This wasn't on the course at all and I'm cool with that
7) Spider Webs - Same
8) Berlin Walls #2 - 2 consecutive probably 8' walls. Definitely not twelve feet as they say on the website because I was able to jump up and pull myself over with no help
9) Log Jammin' - This is actually much later in the race. I think it was 4th or 5th to last. Climb over logs of varying heights and climb under some, too. Going over is easy, going under sucks because you wreck your hands and knees on the gravel
10) Bump n Grind - Yeah this didn't happen either
11) Kinky Tunnels - Crawl through some underground tunnels with a bend in the middle. It was pretty disconcerting honestly because it got smaller as you went and you couldn't see any light until you were almost done
12) Boa Constrictor - Climb down a corrugated plastic tube, wade through water, and climb up one out of the water. I embarrassed the hell out of myself on this. Trying to climb into the initial tube I went feet first and then fell out of the tube back into all the people waiting for the obstacle. It was pretty funny.
13) Turd's Nest - was not there
14) Ball Shrinker - see turd's nest
15) Devil's Beard - climb under a heavy cargo net. This obstacle was pretty easy once you realized you just had to keep close togther. People's bibs started ripping off here and there were open safety pins all over the ground. I hope no one got tetanus from this even because I imagine more than a few people had pins buried in their hands.
16) Log Bog Jam - I don't know what this is but for 3/4 of the course you were running through the woods and very sloppy trails with bad footing or shin deep water so this applies to most of it
17) Creek Crusade - Probably a half mile of the worst mud and water holes I've ever run through. At the end of this you were freezing, wet, and filthy (notice a trend?)
18) Twinkle Toes - A balance beam across a pool of ice water. I made it most of the way across before falling in. Joe stayed low and went all the way.
19) Island Hopping - This wasn't there
20) Cliffhanger - Run up a hill. This was really easy as long as you had any energy and sprinted up
21) Rope-a-dope - wasn't there
22) Everest - Climb up a quarterpipe. There was a huge logjam at the beginning of this event because it's not easy to run up a quarterpipe after you've run 10 miles. Almost everyone that got to the top helped people up though. Almost every single person I met at this race was super super helpful and friendly. I didn't like the atmosphere before or after the race but during the race everyone was great.
23) Funky Monkey - Monkey bars across ice water. This was almost impossible because the bars were greased and your hands were wet and muddy. I saw one person successfully cross it. I made it a grand total of two monkey bars in
24) Walk the Plank - This was easily my favorite event. You climbed up a tower and jumped at least 20-25 feet into a lake. I had a lot of issues with the logisitics of the race as a whole but they were really on the ball with this one. 12 people jumping into a lake over and over again without landing on anyone else and then successfully swimming out takes a lot of coordination and from the few minutes I saw of it they had it down pat. This was towards the beginning of the race, right next to the "Warrior Dash Finish Line"
25) Electroshock Therapy - the one everyone knows about, the final event is running through a bunch of 10KV wires before you cross the finish line. I ran straight down the middle and didn't get shocked at all.
There were a bunch of obstacles that aren't on the map
- One where you ran through trenches with burning wood all around. I was dumb as hell and didn't hold my breath or cover my face and had to stop for a minute afterwards.
- Electric Eel - Crawl under barbed wire with live wires hanging down and zapping you. I waited in line in the rain for this event for 20 minutes and ended up skipping it because I am a wuss. Joe did it and said he lost track of how many times he got zapped, but he couldn't stop laughing afterwards
- Some stupid thing where you carry a log. We carried logs through a very very muddy trail, down a hill, and back up the same hill. It took forever, was extremely slippery, and there was broken glass on the ground. Fuck this stupid event and whoever thought it up
- Swing with rings over water. I made it to the last dumb ring and fell off.
- Another set of walls, I think they were 10'. They were really hard but again everyone was very helpful and helped everyone out.
- The hardest obstacle was about halfway in and involved jumping into a waist high ditch of water and climbing up a big dirt mound on other side. And then doing it 9 times. My shins and knees are shredded because of this one, but that's to be expected.
- Not an obstacle, but mud and water everywhere. Duh, I know, but I can't overstate how muddy everything was. The one constant was that as soon as you got warmed up a little bit you'd have to wade through a creek or slog through an ultra muddy trail. I'm amazed that my only "injuries" from it were scraped shins and knees.
Things I liked:
- The people the people the people. Can't say enough about the other racers and how friendly and helpful everyone was
- I was proud that I was able to do this pretty well after building it up so much in my mind. I don't think there's a whole lot more I could have done to prepare save sitting in cold mud for long periods of time
- The Walmart where I was able to buy a longsleeve technical shirt for $12 before the race and throw it away afterwards
- The course was pretty and some of the obstacles were neat
- They had a good amount of aid stations with bananas and water and stuff
- The shower when I got back to the hotel. It was amazing.
Things I didn't like
- Still pissed they couldn't find a place to do it in MI. Instead of making a day trip of it I had to spend a few hundred extra dollars on lodging and food.
- Logjams at nearly every obstacle. It's inevitable, but like I said I had a 20 minute wait for one obstacle and you had at least a few minutes for almost everything else
- Logistics in general. There was trash everywhere - when I threw my clothes away all I could do was set them near a trash can because there was nowhere else to put them. Thousands of runner generate lots of trash but they were very ill prepared for it. There was also one food tent for everyone and it was about the size you'd see at an average high school football game. They sold hot dogs, burgers, candy, and a couple other things. We ended up just leaving and going out by our hotel.
- There wasn't a lot of creativity in the events. It's just "get cold and wet doing this" and that gets pretty old quickly
Overall, I'm glad I did it but I won't be planning to do it again. Maybe 2/3 of the way in it stopped being fun and became a slog to finish it. I think that's intentional because they make such a big deal about "mental grit" and the "toughest event on the planet". It wasn't easy, but it wasn't that hard and I really think that anyone that's in pretty good shape should be able to finish without too much trouble. There are so many of these that have sprung up in the last couple years and I would be real surprised if anything but the big ones (this and WD) were still around in 5 years
