This is a map of the whole layout and courses. It was approximately 9-10 miles in length with 25 different obstacles to go through in between the jogging up and down hills and through the mountains.
The MC at the opening gates was doing a good job prepping people for the event. We all got in that communal tribe mentality with our hooping and hollering, beating our chest to the thought of conquering the beast before us. We made our pledge, paid respect to the flag, and vocalized in unison our desires and then we were off! At this point in the event we weren't tired, we were mentally excited and eager to go and that's just what we did. Everyone was at a jogging/running pace and the day had begun.
Some of these events might actually be out of place on the map. I think this was our third thing, but no matter. There really wasn't much to this one, just run underneath the nets at a lower gap then normal. For a taller person it's obviously worse but nothing that hindered me.
Still nothing really difficult. This didn't feel like much of an obstacle at all, more like just continually running through the fields except now there was a bit of mist in the air from hoses. It was more annoying than anything because who wants to be misted by cold water early in the morning as a way to start their run?
Alright, I must say that even though this was only the 4th event it took us about an hour to get there. Well before this we had been greeted with ungodly uphill treks up the mountain and slow dangerous footstep ones down it. That's one thing that needs to be mentioned is that this whole place is normally a ski resort, the black diamond variety, and we are going up and down these hills CONSTANTLY. I can't stress that CONSTANTLY enough because these are easily 3-4 miles worth of hills alone throughout the whole event which your legs will not appreciate latter on.
Now, as for this event we had the option of either doing team logs or individual ones. By the time our wave of runners had made it to the log pile there were not a whole lot of team logs left and we all decided to just carry our own. I made the mistake of getting a log that looked hefty (as to garner man points) but was really short. This meant I couldn't balance it properly on my shoulder, which would have been the best way of doing it, and had to underhand it up and down another hill. Not fun. Good log selection can really make the difference in this event.
Ok, this event was a fun one that I was looking forward to doing. I remember monkey bars back in the day as being really fun to do as a kid and I knew completing this would be a testament to my lack of upper body strength issue. The challenge with these bars, however, wasn't the threat of falling into cold water below but that the angle of the bars goes upward so you'd have to reach out farther. The other problem, from what I was told, was that the bars themselves were rotating. I didn't notice that really, wasn't too busy concerning myself with not letting go. Once I started this it became apparent that just taking my time and going methodically from bar to bar wasn't going to be enough given the angle I had to reach at. My body quickly built up momentum from swinging itself and I used it to carry myself across like a pendulum. Would not have made it otherwise. The good news was once I got to the half way mark then the bars angled back downwards making it easier to grab them. I completed this tasks san-water drop and I was happy. When I looked back on pictures posted by the Tough Mudder facebook group I noticed some people had taken interesting approaches to this challenge such as hooking their legs between the bars instead of dangling, and even once person got up OVER the bars and just crawled on top of them to the other side. Kind of ruins the whole swing-like-a-monkey vibe you normally associate with monkey bars, but it works!
One other obstacle I looked forward to was balance beam over water. I've always felt I had good balance and I thought this would be easy. Well, not as easy as it could have been. The problem was that the obstacle had become so clustered with people waiting in line and people going so slowly across the beams that the coordinators started telling us to go multiple people at a time, not to wait for the person in front to fall or complete it first before we started. This meant that all the movement and vibrations from the other persons steps traveled to your end of the beam, forcing you to constantly readjust your balance so you wouldn't take a dive. I managed to make it across although there were severely times I was standing there wobbling, even crouching down almost ready to fall over. Made it across and then watched one of the funniest things of the day happened. One of my teammates started coming across and we were rooting him on, watching as he was wobbling and adjusting with his arms to stay up. The whole beam is shaky and it's a pain and he's taking his time rightly so and he makes it a little more than half way across. But then, a guy on another beam (not as far along across) next to him loses his balances and falls over in the direction of my friend's beam. The guy puts out his arms to prevent injuring himself on the beam and grabs it, shaking it just enough for my friend to finally keel over the side into the water. When he came across he was sad he fell over, and then we told him what happened and he wasn't to pleased. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I got a real tickle out of watching my friend get soaked on account of someone else doings. It put a smile on my face. He was fine with it, but still just annoyed he got unnecessarily wet.
Alright, this is turning out to be a super long post and that was only 6 out of the 25 obstacles! I will have to make several other posts about this latter as there's just too much to talk about in one entry.
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