Things I'll Miss About World's Toughest Mudder

After two years of participating in the World’s Toughest Mudder, I’m skipping it this year. My brain says it’s the right decision to make. It was never supposed to be an every-year thing. And it’s expensive. My brain tells me I have a mortgage, a wife and kids, responsibilities that come first. My brain also tells me I have a busted leg. I limp painfully walking through the grocery store. After trying to fix it myself for a month, today I made a doctor’s appointment. My brain says there’s NO WAY I could or should do World’s Toughest Mudder this year. And my brain is right.

But my heart . . . My heart is stubborn and illogical. My heart would give anything to be there this year, to see how far I could push it. My heart is a pain in the ass. And it tortures my brain.

I know there’s so many things I’m going to miss about World’s Toughest Mudder this year. For therapy’s sake, here’s a few of them:

Stop the Music (Warning: This is a Rant)

 

I've noticed an increasing and disturbing trend at some obstacle races this year, and it really stuck out at September's Vermont Beast. And it needs to stop. Now.

PAK'S OCR ADVICE

Two-time World's Toughest Mudder champ Junyong Pak recently made a few videos with Coach Up giving viewers tips on how to tackle common obstacles such as the rope cross, barbed wire crawl and rope climb. Check them out here:

RANT AGAINST OCR HATERS

I was listening to a running podcast the other day when the conversation among the hosts and guest - a marathoner - briefly turned to mud and obstacle racing.

"Oh, don't get me started on that," said the guest, followed by laughter all around, a few quick comments about how he couldn't stand it and then they moved on.

I know I should be all zen about haters. I know "haters gonna hate" and "sticks and stones" and "I'm gonna let it roll off," etc. Well, bullsh#t.

VIDEO: GUY DROPS 130 LBS, RUNS TOUGH MUDDER

I signed up yesterday to run Tough Mudder - The Great Northeast in August up in Maine. It got me thinking about last year running Tough Mudder Boston at Gunstock, New Hampshire (the Boston of the North?). What made that run really special was that I did it with a friend who had lost 130 pounds within the last year and just, out of the blue, signed up to run Tough Mudder. I thought he was crazy to just jump into it without having run a smaller race first. But he crushed it, and it was pretty inspirational. Check out the video below.

      

Your Friend Fear

Ask people what their motivation is for exercising and eating right, and you'll get a lot of different answers: wanting to be healthy, live longer, be stronger, fit into a bathing suit, make an ex jealous, etc.

Motivation is a personal ingredient to fitness. And whatever works for you is great. But when it comes to motivation, one motivator rises far above the rest: Fear.

I'm not talking about fear of abstract possibilities, as in if you are unhealthy and overweight you may eventually suffer from high blood pressure, diabetes, and an early death. These are certainly motivating factors to consider. But that's a fear of something that sometime, someday, mayhappen if I continue to live a certain way. That's the kind of abstract fear that looms in an uncertain future, one that is easy to ignore and put off.

The kind of fear that is the best motivator is a very real fear, a looming clear and present danger. Something with a hard date, that is approaching, is unavoidable, and will make you suffer unless you prepare.

The Argument for Electric Obstacles

An article posted today on Today.com has reignited the debate over Tough Mudder's electric obstacles.

Tough Mudder gained fame due in no small part to its electrically-charged obstacles -- such as Electroshock Therapy and Electric Eel -- in which participants brave being zapped by electric wires while wet or actually in water. The article on Today.com interviewed emergency room doctors, who saw a rash of Tough Mudder participants, most with injuries related to electric obstacles, following a Tough Mudder in Pennsylvania last spring. The doctors in the article state the obvious: Getting zapped by electricity can be dangerous.

For some obstacle racers, the article was the latest excuse to take to message boards and complain about TM's electric obstacles, with some calling them too dangerous, while other opponents dismiss them as little more than a gimmick.

The Struggle to Define "Success" (A Recap of the 2013 World's Toughest Mudder)

It's hard to measure success when that line is constantly shifting.

Shortly after my first obstacle race in 2010 -- a Warrior Dash at a ski resort in New York, where I felt like I was going to die after making the mistake of sprinting the beginning and gassing out -- a friend said I should do something called a Tough Mudder in Vermont. I laughed and dismissed it. I was approaching 39, and even in my best days, there was no way I could have ever run a 10-mile race, never mind full of obstacles on a mountain.

But when friends said they were signing up for it, I figured if they could do it, I could. The idea of a Tough Mudder scared the hell out of me, and, fueled by fear, I trained my ass off. I came in a little over three hours, but I walked away with a nagging feeling that I could do better. I resolved to return the next year with new goals -- to qualify for World's Toughest Mudder (at the time, you had to qualify for WTM by being in the Top 5 percent of finishers) and to complete the Mount Snow, Vermont course twice in one day.

Tao of Obstacle Racing

In the week leading up to the 24-hour 2013 World's Toughest Mudder, I remembered the quote above from Bruce Lee: "Be like water." It resonated. With just days to go before the race, Tough Mudder announced fairly dramatic changes to the course -- the 2013 version of WTM would feature a 5-mile course instead of the previous 10-mile course. It also wouldn't feature long, cold swims as an obstacle; competitors had a chance to stay "relatively dry," provided they completed each obstacle perfectly.

These changes caused strong reactions on messageboards. Many complained, saying the course would resemble a Warrior Dash, that the 5-mile course would make it easier. Others wondered how the focus on making the race obstacle-heavy would play out. I thought of Lee's quote.