Justice Ride: Tough Mudder

Okay, so the Tough Mudder was a little over a week ago on June 10th, but I now have some pictures to post thanks to our wonderful Tough Spectators!

Just to recap, the Tough Mudder was a 12 mile course in Avon, Colorado with 23 military style obstacles. My two friends Michael and Paul from Alaska and I went down to Colorado for the weekend. Of all the obstacles that included climbing over big walls, crawling through tunnels in water and mud, being electricuted in 3 different obstacles, and a few others, I found the ice water to be the worst. There was one obstacle with an ice bath and each competitor had to be fully submerged to swim underneath a little wooden bridge. The water was very shocking, but it was the numbness I felt afterwards that was so frustrating. My hands and feet stayed numb for some time and my core temperature felt pretty low. A couple obstacles later, there was a monkey bar/ring obstacle and my hands were still too cold to hold on. And if you can`t hold on... you get to swim in cold water again. Overall the event was super fun and unlike anything I`ve done before. Michael and I were pretty evenly paced so we ran the race together. It was a beautiful day running the slopes of the Beaver Creek ski resort. Michael`s family was there to cheer us on as well. Having some friends at the obstacles cheering for you is really encouraging and a great addition to an already fun race.

I read in the paper that there were around 13,000 racers over the two-day event. People do mass starts every 20 minutes with about 600 people. We started in the first wave of the day so it was nice and cool outside, plus we did not experience the bottleneck effect at the obstacles that I had been previously warned about. The race is very team oriented and there are no official race times kept or recorded. It idea is for people to challenge themselves and have fun. If at any time you do not feel like doing an obstacle, you are allowed to simply walk around. With that said, I timed Michael and I at 2 hours 48 minutes and although I did not feel like being shocked with 10,000 volts three different times throughout the race, we completed all the obstacles. It was very satisfying to complete this race and I think I would do it again.