Tough Mudder

Yesterday, I did the Tough Mudder challenge with friends from boot camp. I drove up on Friday, leaving around 3:30pm and getting to Bear Valley 8:30. It took 5 hours to go the supposedly 3 hour drive due to traffic. We rented a large cabin for the group where we stayed Friday and Saturday nights. This is the "before" photo of the group Friday night. Everyone was a bit nervous about what we signed up for.

On Saturday, our wave started at 11:30am. The first wave started at 9am, then every 15 minutes thereafter. Tough Mudder is a 7 mile challenge with 18 obstacles.
We got our bibs and they marked our face and legs with our bib numbers. I guess in case lost our bib and died, they could still identify the body ;\

Here is our group of nine, still unsure what we were in for, although we did expect tears, blood and sweat.

We got to the start line just before it started, so we were at the very back of the line. This was perfectly fine with us, because we didn't want to get trampled going down the first hill.

We raised our right hand and repeated the Tough Mudder pledge.

Then, we were off... Taking our time not to fall down the first hill...

The first obstacle was crawling on our stomachs in muddy gravel under barb wire. Then we went down and up some nasty hills. The gravel was painful on the arms, but we were still smiling at the first water stop

We stopped for a photo op before going through the boa constrictor.

The boa constrictor was a long tube that we had to crawl through. It was just short enough that I couldn't do it on my hands and knees, I had to crawl on my stomach.

Other obstacles included a 12 foot wall we had to get over, a fence we had to climb, carrying logs, running though mud and a snow blower, lots of steep hills, and more. The worst one was the underwater tunnels. The water was so cold, I could barely breath. I felt like I was couldn't catch my breath because the coldness of the water made my muscles tense up. I decided to skip putting my head under the tunnels since I couldn't breath just walking through the water. I went around the tunnels and continues to climb up the other side on the ropes. Even with the water so cold, I still did the next obstacle, which was a water slide back into the water.

The "mystery" obstacle, was "hot shots". We had to do a shot of straight hot sauce. Then came the last obstacle, running over fire. Below is the group running through the fire to the finish line. We started as a team and finished as a team, supporting each other along the way.

It was a fun weekend with a fun group of friends. And, of course, we finished the day with the free beer and the orange headband!

I survived the event without too much pain. My arms are sore from crawling through the gravel. My legs are bruised from falling on a rock in the mud. And, my butt muscles are sore from climbing all the hills. Much better off than our Coach, who dislocated his wrist and had to pop it back in place. That just sounded painful!