So let me unpack this for y’all. I started my day mildly terrified because I didn’t have a team. WELL. I got there an hour and a half early in order to make it through everything and familiarize myself with the area.
Sat down in the little waiting tent, started talking to the people whose table I crashed at... And found out they were leaving in the same start wave as me, and were all doing the full.. And hence, the dream team was born.
Honestly, I’m so thankful that I found them. The guys let me and the other girl set the pace, and none of us had seriously trained for this so we were all pretty evenly matched. I had SUCH a blast with these guys.
Ten miles, twenty obstacles, five new friends, one great experience. I loved every bit. And we are already planning for next year.
Now the fun part is seeing the blossoming bruises over the next few days.
ALSO. I totally got burned as hell because I put on sunscreen at 11 when we started..... And we were out until 3:30. But we also were using mud as a natural sunscreen.
Blockness Monster was probably my favorite obstacle. But I’m very impressed with myself for a lot of reasons.
I hope y’all are prepared for me to gush about this race for forever.
Bout to go through this thing best as I can remember it sooo here’s a read more for all the people who don’t want to read this.
Gonna try to do this in Order.. So first, hero carry - basically just carry someone until the halfway, and then switch. For some reason, the guys thought it was a genius plan to just carry us two girls, instead of carrying each other and letting us do the same. Anddd even though I told Carlos I would attempt to carry him, he straight up just kept walking through the switch point. I wasn’t going to complain though because he had a good chunk of muscle on him and I probably would have hurt myself trying to pick him up.
Berlin walls were actually super easy for me. I’m not particularly scared of heights, and they only had the one wall up. I’m not sure if it was just super easy, or if climbing trees all that time when I was younger paid off.
Everest 2.0 easily ranks up as one of my favorite obstacles. First of all, Carlos literally just ran up the wall and pulled himself up.. I was impressed. I was the last of my team to go up because this made me a little nervous. BUT I had no reason to be nervous about it! I literally ran almost all the way up, grabbed a rope, and then the guys steadied me while I actually climbed onto the top.
Devil’s Beard was simple if you did it right. My ponytail kept getting stuck, unfortunately. It wasn’t super muddy though, and there was a guy who walked it half-bent over and made it super easy to crawl through. Bale bonds was just like hay hurdles. It smelled good but I ended up having to wipe hay dust out of my eyes.
Skidmarked was really the first time I experienced “Mudder nation” camaraderie. Everyone was offering a foothold or just straight up lifting other people and it was pretty great. Pitfall is muddy water with varying ground heights and you can’t tell where it changes, so you have to go slowly in order to not fall (which I almost did...twice).
Kiss of Mud 2.0 involved barbed wire and mud. Up until this point, we were all still pretty clean. After this? Everyone was covered from chest down with mud. I learned from Devil’s beard to keep my ponytail down and just tried to avoid getting kicked by the person in front of me. Quagmire is what I would affectionately call ‘shoe stealer.’ The mud was thick and you suctioned to the bottom so you just had to try not to lose your shoes.
Mud Mile 2.0 was also a lot of fun as far as I’m concerned. This was the first obstacle I really felt like I could help other people with, because I was able to offer a hand up from on top of the walls, and when I was in the water I could offer a foothold. Humpchuck was basically a matter of getting to the top because everything after that was easy. We took a nice break here because I knew one of the volunteers from a facebook group and he gave us ice pops.
The last obstacle of the lap was... Block Ness Monster. Honestly, my favorite. So much fun and reminded me a lot of American Ninja Warrior stuff. And we got to hang out in the water for a minute while doing it, and it felt so good. The sun was SO hot.
Lap 2 started with... Arctic Enema. Holy hell, that was cold. We got out and my body just instantly wanted to cramp. After that we had a nice little walk to warm up until we got to Just the tip. There was actually a pretty decent sized bottle neck waiting for this obstacle and we were right next to Everest, so what it became was all of the mudders who were waiting for their turn were just endlessly cheering for the people trying to get up Everest. And they cheered the hardest for those who were struggling. I made a solid attempt on Just the tip, but only made it across the first set of boards. When I grabbed the first knob, I lost my grip. But I tried.
I’m good at climbing, so I had no issues with Balls to the Wall. I didn’t even realize they had put a handle at the top so you could stabilize yourself as you switch sides. I just switched and carried on. I failed on both Rope-a-Dope and Funky Monkey, but I gave both of them my best attempt and I know I need to work on things like that now. We had a few repeat obstacles, and Trench Warfare. Honestly it was so nice and cool in those tunnels I wanted to stay longer. After doing Mud Mile again, we had Electroshock Therapy (which personally terrified me) and then Block Ness again and then finally, Happy Ending.
Electroshock Therapy wasn’t as terrible as I expected.. But I got caught twice on my arm and literally my whole body spasmed. Powerful stuff. Happy Ending, I think we all just kept low to the boards and climbed up, then slid down together. It was cute.
tl;dr. I had a blast. My team rocked. I tried to complete every obstacle to the best of my ability and only failed a few times. I’m impressed with myself but I know what I need to work on. And I’m already planning to do another OCR in September with the other girl I teamed up with.
This weekend I embarked on the biggest challenge of my life! I completed the tough mudder! I went from a total bum to total badass in 5 weeks. It wasn't easy but damn it was worth it!
