Category: Race Reports

Tough Mudder is all in your head

Here’s something that took me a while to figure out: Tough Mudder was, for me, about 75% mental. Yes, the hills were a lot of work. And some of the obstacles were physically challenging if not impossible for me at my level of ability, like Hangin’ Tough and Funky Monkey.

But a lot of the other obstacles, when you step back and look at them, aren’t that grueling. Jumping into a pool of (not ice cold) water? Crawling through a tunnel? Going into the event, I thought they were just things to slow you down, and almost provide a break from the running.

And they were, for some people. But for others, who maybe have some fears or hangups about enclosed spaces, heights, or the unknown, they were the hardest parts of the course.

Here’s the thing: willpower is like a battery. Numerous studies have shown that we only have so much self discipline, and the more we use up, the less we have for later in the day. These studies have fascinated me for a while, and they usually involve having someone do tough math problems or keep their hands submerged in ice water, and then choose either a plate of cookies or fruit (harder problems lead to more cookie choices.)

Basically, if we use our willpower on task A, we won’t have much left for task B. Some theorize that we can mitigate this by taking regular breaks, so 50 minutes of work followed by 10 minutes of “active recovery” will yield better results than just pushing straight through consecutive hours.

In Tough Mudder, you’re looking at several hours of stress in a row, with no real breaks (you can stop for a rest, but there’s not much escaping this environment.) Under these conditions, willpower depletion can be massive, and that’s where the obstacles come in.

For me, I had to “work” hardest to simply start the Mud Mile and Walk the Plank. I’m still not sure why Mud Mile was so hard; probably I just didn’t think that I was going to make the leap across the first chasm (ours didn’t have that much mud to walk through; it was more about leaping deep and wide ditches.) Walk the Plank is a more obvious fear. Looking 12 feet down (17 if you include body height) can be intimidating!

So whether you’re jumping from a high height into muddy, possibly freezing water, facing fear of heights…

Tough Mudder - Walk the Plank

Or slithering through an underground tunnel that’s barely wide enough for your shoulders, facing claustrophobia…

Tough Mudder Trench Warfare

Or just launching yourself into the world’s craziest slip & slide, facing fear of losing control…

Tough Mudder Greased Lightning

(and don’t get me started about the electric shocks!)

Under the exhausting conditions of Tough Mudder, these actions can be incredibly daunting, and there’s no way to adequately explain it to Bob from accounting the following week.

The trick, really, is to embrace your inner four year old and remind yourself constantly to have fun. Because it’s tons of fun, and you’ll realize it when you’re through it but getting to the end is so much easier if you keep that in mind from the very first step.

Tying this back to my upcoming marathon, I’m lucky that I only have to do one activity, albeit for a very long time. My concern is that my willpower will erode over the course of the race, and each step will be harder to take than the one before it. I don’t have a solution to that yet, but I’m thinking a lot about the mindset I’m going to want to adopt for each quarter of the race. “Have fun” will probably enter some of it, but I still need to come up with some kind of “make it no harder than it has to be” system. Fingers crossed!

Photo Credit: Gareth Ledger

Tough Mudder Everest (video and tips)

I’ve spent a week procrastinating on an overview of Tough Mudder Toronto 2012, but I think the overall concept of what we did is still too big for my tiny little brain. So here’s some footage of Everest, in which one climbs up a giant quarter-pipe:

This was the second last obstacle of the day, and we’d been climbing Mount St. Louis Moonstone’s hills for something like 14 km before that, so my biggest worry was that I wouldn’t have the legs to make the climb.  I remember going into it trying to figure out how many attempts I was going to make before giving up and walking around it.

But I did it in one.  Here’s some of how that happened:

Use the help available to you. See all those people at the top with their hands reaching down?  They’re there for you.  Sure, aim for the top ledge, but be ready to grab a helping hand.  For some of us, accepting help is the hardest obstacle to overcome, so this is a great opportunity.

Pick ONE hand. There aren’t too many misses in the video, but a lot of the ones I saw seemed to be people without a clear plan going up.  When they reach the moment where they know they aren’t going to make it, a quick decision has to be made among the many hands that are in reach, and quick decisions are not easy after a long day.  I think a lot of people tried to grab three hands at once instead of just one.  I had mine picked out before I started my approach, and I pointed to him just to be clear, both to me and to him.  It was my teammate, but it could have just as easily been someone else.  Oh, and as long as you’re picking, choose someone with long arms.

Go fast.  High school physics time: your job on this obstacle is to convert kinetic energy to potential energy as you go up the ramp.  You’re not going to get much additional acceleration one you start your climb, so bank as much speed as you can and try not to lose too much as the ramp gets steep.  And it gets steep really fast – it’s not a gentle slope by any means.

Don’t let go until you’re secure.  When I did Everest, I thought I my hand grab was almost a high five and I grabbed the ledge at the same time.  The footage shows that I was a mile from the top.  Perceptions get messed up on an obstacle like this, so make sure you’re locked onto the top before you let go of the hand that helped you, or you’re going to slide back down.  I saw it happen, and I doubt that it was by people who were having so much fun they just wanted to do it again (though it was plenty fun.)

Fun follow up: fresh from our victory on Everest, we all knew we had just a mile or so left to trot out before the electric shocks and the finish line, and we all felt pretty good about ourselves.  Plus we were at the bottom of the hill!  Smiling confidently, we turned the corner, and saw another uphill.  There were a few swears at that point… (See the first “near-breaking point” story here for back up)

Spartan Toronto 2012 Race Report

June 24th was the Spartan Sprint, “Toronto Edition,” which I put in quotes because it was actually in Oro, which is about a two hour drive from Toronto.  We were in the 12:30 heat, and we got there about 11:00, which turned out to be perfect.  Parking was a few miles away with shuttle busses, so by the time we registered and (I) warmed up it was pretty much time to start.

We had no real idea what to expect from a Spartan Race.  Tough Mudder does a better job of describing the course and obstacles (while leaving a few secrets intact) but all I had to go on was a participant video from the 2011 event, which was at a different (closer!) location and left me feeling pretty “meh.”

Thankfully, it looks like they stepped up their game this year, and it was a blast.

There were three of us on our team (we lost a fourth member to the “my wife won’t let me” excuse, which she apparently denies all knowledge of,) and we decided to make it a team effort instead of every man for himself.  Of course, it took about five minutes into the race to see who’d been training, and two of us formed an “advance team” with occasional pauses to see if we could find our straggler (who ended up finishing just a few minutes behind.)

Also, not knowing what we were going to face, one thing we noticed quickly is that finishers from previous heats had one thing in common: they were very, very dirty.  And we didn’t know exactly why, but looked forward to finding out.

So: the obstacles, as best as we can remember them:

The trail itself

I should point out that the first half of the race was mostly running, and the obstacles were definitely “back loaded.”  We could see the last six or seven at the finish line, and had no idea how many there were, so at times it felt like it was a run with a few tricks at the end.  It all worked out well though, and I’m pretty sure this design was intentional, since it worked to thin out the pack pretty quickly, making the waits at the obstacles pretty minimal.  And I don’t know what the rush was; there were more than enough challenges to keep us entertained.

I’d never really done trail running, and I’ve got to say, it was a real joy.  The hills weren’t too huge, and the terrain was challenging but not so much that I spent the whole time in fear of breaking my ankle.  I really wish there was a trail system near me that I could keep doing this kind of running on instead of concrete.  The terrain was fairly soft, and this course could totally have been run in Vibrams.  I saw a few people doing that, but I brought shoes in case there were a lot of jagged rocks (there weren’t.)

Low hanging net

The first real obstacle was a cargo web on a hill that you had to run under.  All you had to do was bend over, close to 90 degrees and climb up the hill while the webbing ran over you, so as long as your lungs had room it was a nice warm up.

Tube crawl

Running without glasses means not knowing what’s coming up, so while I saw the cargo nets in the distance I almost overlooked the plastic pipe on the ground that we were meant to crawl through.  I don’t know how wide it was, but not a whole lot bigger than shoulder width.  You could probably extend your elbows out to each side.  I slithered through, mostly pulling myself forward with my arms.

And I came out a little dirty.  Hmmm, I thought, maybe a few of these would account for the dirt levels we saw from other finishers?

Cargo net climb

Right after the tub was the cargo net, maybe 8 or 9 feet high.  Lots easier to do with someone holding it steady below you, which I did for the person in front of me and someone else did for me.  Lesson #1: I’m really awkward swinging legs over a wall, and even more so when my feet are tangled up in rope.  I’ll have to practice that somehow.  Anyway, no real exertion, just mental strain.

Rope climb

Shortly after this was the rope climb, which was maybe 9 or 10 feet up but could have been any distance, really, since I’ve never tried to climb a rope before.  The choices were climb the rope or do 20 burpees.  I did a test pull, then realized I didn’t know how to climb a rope but I did know how to do burpees, and my teammate was already starting them, so I opted for the low road and burpeed up.

Pulley weight lift

This was pretty simple stuff, hauling a few small kettlebells into the air by pulling down on a rope.  It was just a “do it and move on” kind of thing.

Mud/barbed wire

And then we found the mud.  It was your basic belly crawl under barbed wire, with mud the consistency of Play Dough.  The wire was tied at a pretty safe height for a lot of it and at times I found myself going on my hands and knees with plenty of clearance.  The mud was pretty cooling, actually.  At the end of this phase there was a tighter squeeze over a log with the wire just above it, which dropped me into…

Mud slog

Now this was mud.  Roughly waist deep, with the consistency of oatmeal.  It wasn’t far, but the ground under the mud was pretty uneven with logs and branches peppering the way, so luckily I made it through without falling.  Apparently my back was pretty clean (I’m over six feet tall, which helped here,) so one of my comrades helped me out by slapping some more grime on me.

I don’t know how they made this mud, but it had to have been 60% glue.  The stuff wouldn’t scrape off.  My hands were like mitts for quite a while after and no amount of rubbing and scraping would help.  Lesson #2 of this race was to bring compression shorts.  My shorts turned into rough grit sandpaper on my thighs for the rest of the race.

I was really hoping for a water obstacle so I could rinse off, but that wasn’t in the cards…

Javelin throw

The next event was a javelin throw at a hay bale-based man-shaped target.  If you made contact, you could move on, and if you missed, it was burpees for you.  The target was huge, but I was terrified of making the javelin equivalent of an air ball.  Because that’s how coordinated I am.  Thankfully my spear hit the target.  It actually made contact sideways, but I said I stunned my opponent with blunt force so the next racer could finish him off.

Little wall hop

A four foot wall.  Probably vaultable. Pop up, get a foot on it, and jump.  No problem.

Sandbag haul

This was a refreshing break from the hills: grab a sandbag, pop it on your shoulder, and walk quickly through a trail circuit before handing it off to the next competitor.

Rollup weight lift

There were a few obstacles that didn’t really test strength, coordination, or anything and just took time to finish.  This was one of them.  Pick up a stick with a rope and weight tied to the middle, hold it shoulder height, and wrap/roll it up to bring the weight up to the stick.  Repeat, and you’re done.  A basic forearm exercise.

Deck crawl

This was another belly crawl but under a wooden platform.  It wasn’t hard, just… boring.  Like, my brain is playing tricks and saying “this isn’t a lot of fun, let’s stop for a while,” but there’s someone right behind you so you keep moving.  Getting out of these kinds of crawls is the worst part, because you want to stop slithering but then you don’t know if you’re far enough out to stand up without smashing your back on the platform.

Big wall

Another wall climb.  This wall was higher, but not so high that you can’t jump up and grab the top.  My teammate set himself up to give me a boost, so I went to the top and reached down to pull him up, but he did the pull up.  Again, I’m awkward with the leg swings, but happily I landed OK.  There was one wall with blocks of wood on it to help people climb up, but the line for that one was long so I’ve no idea if it would have been easier.

Wheelbarrow

Similar to the sandbag haul, this one had a wheelbarrow weighted down with concrete and sandbags that you took through a trail circuit.  I felt like I was grocery shopping.

Balance beam

The light at the end of the tunnel!  I saw this one during my warmup run so I knew we were close to the finish.  I also knew I’m not highly skilled at balance beams.  Plus, the wood wasn’t entirely stable after many heats before us.  I took the 25 burpee penalty, unlike my more graceful teammates.  You get 1 free fall on this one, but on the second you’re out.  That took me about 2 steps in.

Tire tunnel

A very short tire course under a bridge.  Maybe 12 steps and you’re done.  Just enough time to make a joke about being tired, which everyone around me appreciated since it meant I wasn’t using my now-hilarious rally cry of “halfway there!”

Fire jump

Literally, jumping over a fire.  As I got close, I caught a whiff and thought of marshmallows.  A split second after the jump, I thought of the rapidly warming sensation in my groin.  Er, from the fire, not from some marshmallow fetish.  Luckily, I did not ignite.

Rowing

This one surprised me: they had about 20 rowing machines on the course.  We had to do 20 strokes.  I felt a little bad for the machines in this weather, covered in mud – they ain’t cheap pieces of hardware.  I should have done shorter strokes but I don’t know how to cheat at rowing.  I mean, I know how, since I’ve logged a bazillion hours on the ergs and in boats, but cheat strokes have been excised from my DNA.  Which left my lungs and legs a bit wobbly for the last few obstacles.

Ice crawl (missing)

This was running when we started but it was tarped over when we got there.  It was another belly crawl under barbed wire, but through a bunch of ice cubes.  Maybe they ran out of ice.  I’m still working on my cold temperature resistance, but I was bummed to miss this one: it would have been a refreshing obstacle at about that point!

Ramp

A basic run & jump off a four foot ramp.  I think there were two when we started but one must have broken. This wasn’t hard, but I was worried about my landing – my ankles tend to get sore by the end of a workout.  No problem here anyway.

Hay bales

A climb over hay bales, assisted by rope ladders.  Climb up, hump down.  No real challenge, and you know it’s near the end, so no pacing required.  Just fun.

Gladiator Challenge

This one I knew from the promo videos.  Two Spartan warriors with pummel sticks.  I had no idea what to expect here.  Was I supposed to dodge?  Charge through?  The first guy made this elaborate slow motion move that probably was supposed to make sense to me, but I fell for it and he swept my legs right out from under me, flipping me head over heels.  The ground was soft and I landed fine, so it was mostly funny.

I came to the second warrior with a look on my face that said, basically, “hey, there’s nothing you can possibly do to me.”  I don’t know if there was just a one-hit quota or if he gave me an out but he high fived me and let me pass.

Rope-wall climb

The final obstacle!  Walking up a steep incline with a rope, then awkwardly transitioning to grabbing the top of the hill, lying flat on your belly, pulling yourself over, then dropping down.  Unfortunately this one was too crowded and I didn’t have room to do my awkward leg swing, so I hung out a while at the top and waited my turn before trotting across the finish line.

Finish

I got my medal, got my t-shirt, and then waited in line to get hosed off by the, uh, hose guy.  Who seemed to think everyone needed special attention around their groins, so it was soccer poses for everyone.  No amount of hosing was going to fix this mess.  A lot of people were wearing their finisher shirts, but for an even like this, finisher overalls would have been a nice touch.

Final thoughts

I think this is the kind of event that’s really dependent on the venue, but I had a ball doing it and would sign up again in a heartbeat.  I’m really looking forward to Tough Mudder in August now, which is more or less the same number of obstacles but almost triple the distance, so I’ll get to enjoy running a bit more (the run is the easiest part, but the obstacles are a great break to the monotony!)

There wasn’t a whole lot I would have improved with the event itself.  I know it’s a venue constraint but I was surprised how crowded the pre-race area was.  There wasn’t room for a lot of sponsor tents, and the food choices were… surprising (fries and pizza?  Really?) so I’m glad I packed some meals.  Organization was a bit off (we got in without handing in our waivers, and there’s no way they would have found my emergency contact info if there was a problem, etc) but the parking shuttles were great and there were more than enough staff and volunteers on hand, both at the start and on the course, if anyone needed anything.

As for improvements with my own performance, well… I felt good about the event while I was doing it, and afterwards, and right up until the time that the official results were posted.  Sure, I finished in half the time that some other people did, but there are people who can say the same thing about my time.  I went in with the mindset of having fun and learning, but I missed an opportunity to compete.  If I sign up again next year (and I don’t have many reasons not to,) I want to aim to shave 20 minutes off of my time.  I reckon that’d be 10 minutes off due to training, and another 10 from being in the right mindset at the starting line.

Going in, we thought it’d be a fun learning experience, and there’s no doubt that people with a wide range of fitness levels could complete the course, but there’s a lot of room in there to push yourself.  I’m going to be working on my unilateral movements (balance beam etc) for the next while as I gear up for Tough Mudder, and with any luck, at the rate I’m improving this year the marathon in October will feel like “just” running (more on the long runs soon!)

Photos by Peter Ledger