Last year I decided that I needed to do something completely different, so I signed up to do a
Tough Mudder. I live in northern California, so I signed up for the Squaw Valley Tough Mudder back in September 2011. I had never before ever considered doing anything like this, but I figured that it might be fun and it may not be too many more years that I would feel like I could do it.
The Squaw Valley course ended up being 13.26 miles with about 20 military style obstacles that we had to get through, over and under. I thought that I had prepared myself as much as I could and I truly thought that I would have no problems. I'm not generally affected by higher altitudes, I worked out really hard for months before hand, and I knew that the distance of the course might be my only issue since the most I ever run is 3 miles and always at a pretty slow pace. But, I was confident and felt that this Tough Mudder would be a challenge, but not too much of one for me.
Boy, was I wrong!
At first I planned on doing the course by myself, but luckily got connected with a group of ladies from here in Oakland that let me join their team. Team Bodicea we were called. Also, my sister and a good friend of ours came up to cheer us on and lend their support. I know now that if I didn't have Team Bodicea and if my sister and friend weren't there, I might have given up when things got hard for me. And they got hard for me early on.
I don't know the exact numbers, but I think the whole course was uphill. Miles and miles of uphill climbing. I know we gained about 3000 feet of elevation from the starting line, but for my legs there was no downhill or level ground. My legs started to hurt by the third or fourth obstacle, so I was in pain for pretty much the whole thing. The obstacles were fun and not totally impossible. We had to crawl through mud under barbed wire, jump into ice cold water, launch up a 15ft. (maybe bigger) quarter pipe, climb over walls, up ropes and across monkey bars, jump from a 25ft. high platform into freezing water then under floating barrels, through tubes filled with mud and water, run through electrified wires and balance over a pond on 3in. wooden boards that were wobbly and many more.
The only one that really sucked for me was jumping off the 25ft. platform into water. I couldn't catch my breath after I hit the water, then I couldn't get the attention of the guy in the kayak so I started to panic. It was about 40 or 50 feet to swim to the next obstacle where I knew I'd at least be able to hold onto something, but I was sure I wasn't gonna make it there. I've never been so sure that I was going to drown before and I was freaking out.
Luckily, there was a guy in the water near me and saw that I was freaking out and talked to me and stayed with me and helped me to calm down enough to make it out of the water.
Here's me right out of the water, still feeling like I was dying. My lungs were burning and I felt I would never catch my breath. My sister and friend rode the chair lift up to this point on the course and got to watch me my teammates on the worst of all my obstacles. But, they also gave me good vibes, hugs and motivation to keep going and finish what I had started.
It took us 5 hours to complete and I'm pretty sure that I won't do another Tough Mudder, but I'm glad I did this one. I'd never before experienced that kind of adrenaline, I'd never before tested my strength, endurance and mental capacity to such an extreme. And, the weird thing was that I didn't realize how hard it was (besides the actually pain in my legs) until it was over. For hours afterward I felt like I still couldn't catch my breath, I was shaky and had no appetite until the next afternoon.
Even though I went into it a bit too cocky, I didn't give up and I earned my orange headband! It was for me the challenge of all challenges and I definitely recommend doing something like this at least once in your lifetime.
