Tough Mudder

Remember the obstacle course day at gym class in elementary school?
That is basically Tough Mudder except with a lot of hills, mud, and TOUGHness. It is a 12.5 mile run with 20 plus obstacle courses.
When I heard about the first ever Tough Mudder being held in Georgia. I knew I had to run it. I’ve run a half marathon and a full marathon (yea I know Unilocalers are only allowed to do competitive eating and bar crawls) but I never ran a course like this that had different types of obstacles. I know what the CEO felt when he competed in marathons and tri-​athlons and felt it was boring and didn’t offer enough variety. So he birthed «Tough Mudder» from a Harvard MBA class project.
So I ran the «Toughest Event on the Planet» and enjoyed it. I loved the different dynamic changes it had and how it made you workout different types of muscles while you ran it.
The most fun obstacle courses I would have to say are Walk the Plank (20 feet drop off of a platform and swim to the other side), Funky Monkey (monkey bars that ascend up and descend down), and the Berlin Walls.
Beside the from the ones I mentioned they also have Texas Smokehouse (where you go inside a shack full of smoke and make it to the other side), crawling under barbed wire in the mud, running up and down muddy hills, carrying logs, going through tunnels filled with ice water (yes the race staff dump bags of ice into the water) and getting through live dangling electric wire with up to 10,000 volts to get to the finish line, and more. And YES… I paid to do it… LOL
website said that the Georgia course was the toughest and longest they had (there were so many hills and lots of mud… more like Georgia clay… Mmmmm).
Tip of advice. If you prepare well for it, you can end up enjoying the course. Go ill prepared and wing it… you’ll be suffering all the way through. Unless you think suffering is fun =D and get maximum enjoyment in just completing the course than you’ll be fine.
Here are workouts that I did that I feel like that prepared me for the race:
Hill Workouts
Pulls up after exhaustive workout
Push ups… all different kids
Planks…drunken planks (work on those abs! and core!)
Deadman hangs
Lunges, scissor kicks aka jumping lunges
Kettlebell swings
Russian get ups
Leg workouts aka squats, deadlifts, clean n jerks n press
Run Long Distance
Also what helped a lot was getting plenty of sleep a week before the race (7 – 8 hours… sleeping is training too). Carbo-​loading 2 – 3 days before the event. Drink plenty of fluids and make sure you are hydrating the week before. Carry Gu packets for the middle of the race to prevent cramping and it worked! My hamstrings were cramping and went away after ingesting a Gu packet.
For footwear, I thought wearing cross country flats were best. You don’t get the huge thick sole that a lot of running shoes have (that I believe are bad for your knees). Cross Country flats are what I would call the in-​between regular running shoes and Vibram Five Fingers. They were lightweight, got minimum sediment in my shoes and performed flawlessly.
Definitely wear gloves. I wore football receiver gloves and it helped with the ice water, gripping rope and wooden walls. Do not wear them while doing the Funky Monkey… they don’t help.
I would do Tough Mudder again. I might even travel out of state to compete in them. They say every course is different. I also appreciated the fact that competing in Tough Mudder raises money for Wounded warrior Project. I loved it and had a fun time but it didn’t blow my expectations away (hence the four stars). I was definitely satisfied.
Just get ready to squeeze lots of dirt/​mud from your clothes afterwards if you decide to do it. I still can’t seem to get rid of it EVEN after wringing my race clothes 10 times.