Toughing Out the Tough Mudder

We survived! After several hours of running and obstacles on Saturday afternoon, we can now say that we are truly Tough Mudders! Here is Team AUSsome before the race looking clean and happy; our team included folks from Denver, Chicago, the UK, New Zealand, Perth, Sydney, and Melbourne.

I went into the race kind of scared about how difficult it would be and wondering if I'd be able to complete all of the obstacles. I had done plenty of running and some upper body work, but I didn't know what level of difficulty to expect. There really was no reason to be scared; it was fun! Here we are going over one of the many walls we had to scale throughout the course.

This ("Arctic Enema") was probably the "worst" obstacle. You had to jump into this freezing tub of water and ice cubes, duck under the barrier, and climb out the other side. It was so unbelievably cold that you immediately lost your breath and all feeling in your body. I seriously almost cried!









We didn't stay clean for long. There was SO much mud. We had to crawl under barbed wire through mud, go through tunnels with mud, march through trenches with mud, climb up hills made of mud...you get the idea. I guess it is called the Tough MUDder. Two days later, I'm still finding mud in my ears and when I blow my nose!

Our friends and teammates Kristy and Nigel had a waterproof camera that they took along with them during the race, so they were able to get lots of these pictures as we completed the obstacles (you'll notice water drops on some!). Our friend Orla came along as a spectator and got some other great shots of the team before and near the end of the race. I think Kristy took this one as she was swimming away from the platform from which we had just jumped!





The two obstacles pictured below were probably the most fun. The first one is a giant Slip and Slide. Of course, you landed in a mud pit. The second one is a giant pile of hay bales we had to climb over, which was cool because I could do it myself (versus the walls where the guys would have to yank us girls up in order to get over).

Our team didn't start the race until about 11am, so there were huge lines at some of the obstacles. That was kind of annoying, because we basically just stood around in the mud waiting for long periods of time. The whole course took about five hours for us to complete, but that included a lot of waiting. Though it was a sunny day and we got hot at first while running, we ended up pretty cold by the end because it was so windy and we were wet and muddy. I guess there were 15,000 people doing it on Saturday; 600 or so started every fifteen minutes.

The obstacle I was most scared about (not pictured here) was "Electroshock Therapy," which involved running through a tunnel of dangling wires, some of which were charged and could give you a nasty shock. Luckily, I didn't get electrocuted at all, not even in the surprise obstacle called "Electric Eel" where you had to belly crawl under and between wires. Zack got a small shock, but he said it didn't hurt at all.

In the end, I'm glad I did it, though I didn't want to sign up for this thing months ago when we first started talking about it. It was pure peer pressure that caused me to join in, but it ended up being a good excuse to work out more often and with friends, and we had a fun weekend hanging out on Phillip Island in a big rental house with everyone. And other than a few scratches, bruises, one twisted ankle, and some sore muscles, we didn't have any serious injuries on our team, so that's good!

Our dirty team is pictured above left partway through the course. I've since soaked our shirts in the tub with a stain remover and am currently washing them for the second time, hoping they are salvageable! And yes, my shoes are among the huge donated pile seen in the picture above right. Saving my old running shoes came in handy for this race!

Celebration time!

After getting back to the rental house and showering up (one of the best showers ever!), we all enjoyed some drinks, a huge pasta dinner, "dirt" for dessert, a few board games, and some footy watching on TV before crashing in bed. We were all pretty tired! There are lots more pictures on my Shutterfly site if you want to see more of the fun we had on Saturday. Tough Mudder Melbourne 2012-mission accomplished!

We are Tough Mudders!