Are You Tough Enough?!?!? Tough Mudder Virginia Recap

I SURVIVED TOUGH MUDDER!!!!!!

Happy Tuesday everyone! Hope you guys had a wonderful weekend! This will be a mix of Tough Mudder recap and Weekend Recap, as I didn’t get to it yesterday. You will find out why shortly!!!

On to the Tough Mudder recap!!!

Can I just say, this event was AWESOME!!! Totally challenging, both mentally and physically! We had a bet in our group of how many times we would say during the course “ Why the hell are we doing this?!” (hell was a different 4 letter word, but you get the picture!) And yes, I’m sure I said it about 100 times during that 10 miles of muddy fun!

My friends and I decided that we wanted to do the Super Hero theme for this race, because, well, we would need all the powers we could to make it through this challenge! I love how we turned out! My Wonder Woman shirt and cape was a huge hit, and I got stopped so many times for it! I kinda want to wear this shirt all the time now!

I know you are thinking it, so I will just confirm, yes, my friends and I are awesome! 😉

 The course was just about 2 miles from our hotel. One complaint was that there were not a lot of signs to get us to where we need to go! Parking itself felt like we were competing in the Tough Mudder! But, after a few WTF’s, we finally parked and headed to the field! 

After we checked out bags in, we got in line. The waves were starting about every 20 mins or so. We waited about an hour before it was officially our time! With it being around 1pm and the sun coming out, that hour wait had us all dehydrated by the time we started!

When our wave came up, we had to go over this wall to get over to the starting line! That wobbly wall was just the beginning of me saying..”holy crap!”

The start line was awesome! Look at any Tough Mudder videos, and you see Sean Corvelle, King of OORRAHH! He gave us an amazing inspirational speech. He talked about a friend who recently passed away from cancer, I believe, and how his friend lived by this quote” When was the last time you did something for the first time?” Seriously, I was moved to tears! I totally was motivated, not just in my head, but my heart as well! I am also happy to report he said “hey Wonder Woman” to me and shook my hand! 

After the National Anthem, it was time to go!!!

Course Map and Obstacles!

While I am not going to recap each obstacle, I will recap some of my favs, or not so favs!

Kiss of Mud– I don’t know what happened here, but totally wasn’t mud when we went through. Dry dirt and rocks…and it hurt… boo on this one!

King Of the Mountain: Wasn’t an extremely tough obstacle, but it was high as hell up there! The only was I got up was using the wrapping that was on the bales of hay! Going down, Kita and I used the “butt and jump” method! LOL!

Hold Your Wood: This was not one that I thought would be tough. Pick up a log and carry it, right?! This was probably one of the toughest ones!! First, these “logs” were heavy as all hell! Even the guy standing there had told Kita and I to grab a different one because our original one was too heavy. Well, the second one didnt feel any lighter either! I could barely carry it! Like, I had to scream to Kita to put it down, and in the mix of that, hit her in the face with the log (sorry again!). Kita and I had an agreement that we would complete every obstacle, no skipping any! Several times we didnt think we would make this one! Luckily, 2 other girls came and helped us, and while we barely finished, we did finally finish!

Umm, yeah, wasn’t ready for this at all!!!

Arctic Enema: This one came out of nowhere! We were running and running, and boom, in the corner of this field, you see the Arctic Enema sign! I wasn’t ready at all! But, no going around! A lady that was running by us had done it before, and she said what everyone said..don’t hesitate, just get in and get out! While Kita seemed to do a mad dash to this event, I was taking my sweet time! Time to jump in….OMG. I cant even describe the pain of the coldness that ensured! Dump your head under water to get through….I came up barely being able to breathe! Just get out was all I kept thinking…..well…there was only one person there to help us out and Kita got stuck! If I could’ve cried I would have! I was begging her to get the hell out! My face looked something like this:

When the guy finally got Kita out, it was my turn! But, that extra 15ish seconds in that cold ice hell had stopped all brain function to my body! I couldn’t get my legs to move! Kita and the guy almost fell back in trying to get me out because I couldn’t move!! Finally, I got out! Face still looking as the picture above! Because then, the pain of needles started alllllllll ovvvvver my body! It was about 5 mins later, when the ice was gone and blood started circulating back through out bodies, that we were like, it wasnt THHHHAAAAATTTTT bad! But, feeling like badasses because we did it!

ICE HELL!!!

Berlin Walls: Every wall obstacle sucked. That’s all I can really say about that!

Electroshock Therapy: Well, final obstacle! It had to be done! I ran through with our group and thought I was doing good until I got a shock to my arm….Yup, went down something like that! After getting shocked a few more times, I was out of it! It was 30 seconds of hell, but then it was done!!!!

this wasnt on our course but I thought it was funny! And very true!

4 of us in our group crossed the line hand in hand! We got our orange headbands and beers and celebrated completing one of the hardest things either of us have ever done!  Even with all of us limping, bruised, scraped up, and hurt, I think the one thing we all said was, When is the next one!!!

Well that leads into why I didnt post yesterday! After my half marathon, I was limping for a few days as something on the side of my left foot was hurting. It hurt to put any pressure, wear heels, ect. It took about a week to feel better. Last week, I started my second round of training feeling fine. New shoes, was back in heels, no problem. Well, around mile 8 of the TM, I started feeling the pain and started limping again. I was in pain all Sunday, so Monday, I decided to head the to dr. just to see if anything serious was wrong. After some x-rays, and a scare of stress fractures, the doctor said I had a foot sprain and put me in a some shoe and crutches.

NOT COOL!

The doctor also gave me Vicodin. Um….I hate it! I was sick ALL DAY YESTERDAY! Will not be taking any more of that! So, I have a 5k on Sunday, which is now questionable, and clearly missing this weeks training. I had a “woe is me” moment, as running as been everything to me lately! But, I know my end goal is to continue running, so I will take this rest as needed, and be ready to get on the grind hopefully soon!

Have you completed a Tough Mudder? Did you like it? Have you had a foot sprain or any running injuries? How long did it keep you out? How did you cope?