Tough Mudder Course: A glimpse of our experience.
With a 9:20am official start time, we headed out around 7am. We had a 45 minute drive from Austin to Dripping Springs, plenty of time to ask what in the $#%#$ we were about to get ourselves into. Once we found the farm to market road to turn off on, we we were directed to an open field to park. Let me tell you, this event knows how to do things, from parking to water stops to first aid and back check, they know how to put on a race. It a major operation! After parking, we found the area to load the buses. We loaded a yellow dog for a 5 minute ride to the event site.
Once we checked in and turned in our death waiver, we got our bib numbers and they wrote that number on our forehead and arms. Then we checked in our bags and waited for our start time to be announced.
This is me attempting to get over a wall. We had to get over this just to get into the "start shoot". Once we were all in, they pumped us up with "Hoorahs", advised those with pace makers to skip the shock obstacles and reminded everyone that this was not a race but a challenge and team work was essential.
Wes & I in the start shoot.
The start line... here we were honoring the flag and singing the National Anthem.
Just getting started. The smoke in the background was or official start cue. The group was large the first mile and then everyone thinned out. Once you were on the course you could be with people who started an hour before you if they were walking the course. Your "place" was not a big deal, finishing was. There were about 300 people in our start group. They ran 3 different groups per hour for 7 hours... that's a lot of Mudders.
This was after our first event, bear crawling through the mud.
Here's Wes plunging in a mud water hole. It definitely took your breath away!
The flourescent shirt is me coming up from crawling through a tunnel that you went in at a decline and had to crawl back out at an incline. Tough stuff. This was definietly not for someone claustrophobic.
More running.... the running was much tougher than expected. We were in the Texas HILL country so there were no straight paved paths between obstacles. It was all hilly terrain with lots of rocks. Some parts we had to startegically climb. It added to the challenge, but there were times I just wanted a flat surface.
Here's the Arctic Enema... a huge trash receptacle filled with ice water and I'm talking heavily iced water. Wes waited for me at the top and we went in together. The only way to get out was to submerge yourself under a board in the middle to get to the other side and climb out. It took maybe 6 second... coldest 6 seconds of my life.
Here I am climbing out of the Arctic Enema. I was SO cold. I didn't want to move... I was trying to decide if I should laugh or cry.
Mud Mile - There were about 10 of these mounds of dirt to climb over. You definitely needed some help on the other side for someone to pull you over.
More Mud Mile.
Our team: "Mind Over Mudder" after the Mud Mile.
This obstacle was called Island Hopping. You had to jump from box to box to get from one side of the creek to the other. The boxes were not sturdy...Wes made it all the way across. I got a little over half way before falling in.
Run Forrest Run!
Final obstacle: Electroshock. The wires hanging down had elecrtic current pulsing through them. There was really no avoiding them. Just depended when and where you hit them and if the current was going through. Wes and I both got shocks that knocked us to our knees. Made for an great mud finish.
We made it!!! Finish line goodies included a TM Finisher shirt, orange head band, and a Dos XX.
Family finish!!!
I have to thank Justin for talking Wes and then I into doing this. We had a blast! His girlfriend Christine was supposed to join us but she wound up getting sick, but not too sick to roam the course and catch us with a camera at the designated spectator spots.
We completed a total of 10.5 miles, 22 obstacles and best of all Wes and I did it together!
