Tough Mudder SoCal #1 Feb 2012

The SoCal Tough Mudder was held in Temecula, Ca. I have never been there but have passed it on the freeway going up to snowboard. Interesting to see what a beautiful place was within a stones throw away from the freeway. What is better than running along side a nice lake and seeing it from ground level or up from the mountains on a beautiful San Diego day. Not much.

One of the funny things I heard was while waiting in line for the shuttle. Close by were the port-a-potties and people were making good use of the wait time. One lady came out and said..."Obstacle one down". The few of us that heard it were cracking up. I do have to say I really do hate relying on shuttles to get you to the starting line. And I hate when they have school buses. They are designed for kids... not adults. I have my knees to my chest. I would suggest that they have a sign to let people know how far and in what direction the start lines it. No one really knew. And because there was such a back up with only three buses running, I know many people missed their set time to start. I am normally there, at the start, at least an hour before. I have my pre-race ritual and routine I like to do. I only had 20 minutes to handle registration, bag drop, load dump ;P, stretch and get in line before it was time to roll.

One of the things I knew would kick my butt was the huge mountain we needed to climb at the very start of the race. Everyone took off running strong being pumped from all the Hoorah yelling with the MC. Not many were still running after the first 1/4 of the way up. I was very happy to be up top. But was unpleasantly made aware that this was not the only hill. I failed to see that written any where. I would say at least 3/4 of the race was going up and down. So that put a hurt on me. It also slowed down my time for sure. Not to mention get clogged up behind people running down hill on single tracks was not helping either. I am surprised we did not have more people going down and taking other people with them.

I think it is a nice touch that on the Tough Mudder website they have a course map with the pictures and the descriptions of the obstacles. This a very cool bit of information to have. The pictures are close up and generic so they don't match up to the location so you can not see the actual terrain of the area. But it is still more information then you had if you have never done a Tough Mudder or not done one in this location. For this event though, the pictures were not as indicative of what I would encounter as I thought. I do get jazzed about the obstacles I see. Some of them were not there or were different. So I was a little unhappy about that. I was looking forward to having to get across on rings. No rings. I was looking forward to the wipe-out style platform run and jump. You did have the standard run jump but I thought the picture showed something different. No run and leap. Traversing across a wire while holding onto another one.... No traversing. Again no fire section to run through. Tough Mudder you are killing me here. Again this is the main reason I signed up to do your race in the first place. And two races later... .nothing. No Fire!

I was very proud of myself for being able to conquer every single obstacle on my own. The single runner. And to have stayed out of the water to complete some if that was the object. I made sure to motivate those that I passed. I gave helpful hints to how one might get through the next obstacle. Shouted encouragement to those that were having trouble jumping 15 feet into the water. I did help many mentally but none physically. All those around me at the time were handling it well or with teams.

I am not sure why they call this obstacle the Artic Enema. Or actually, it was called that in AZ but was called Blood Bath this time. This obstacle is a huge dumpster full of water. you have to jump in and swim under a wood structure in the middle. This makes it so you have to be totally underwater. That seems easy enough but to make it Tough Mudder material they feel the need to add a challenge, to this obstacle, by DUMPING TRACTOR LOADS OF..... wait for it.... ICE into it. I mean this water is cold. No really, you have no idea what cold is until you hit this thing. As soon as you jump in.... I am talking as soon as you even tough the water but have no where else to go but more into it... you are trying to get out. I mean your survival instincts kick in and your body hurts so bad that you dont even think about the small children and elderly folks you crawl over to get out. You have to get the F3*K out... and like 3 days ago fast. Having been through it.... they should call it "The Gender Changer". Every single person getting out was yelling at a level 10 times higher then they entered. All the guys were pulling on their shorts to see where our manhood had gone to hide. Every.... single..... inch of my body hurt from only 15 to 20 second exposure to that water. And talk about brain freeze.... FROZEN!
Before Ice BathAfter Ice Bath

Yes the calves were starting to get crampy. Right when I jumped into the rivers cold water one started to lock up bad. So I started to beat on it with my fist to let go. Then the other one wen. I had my feet on the bank with body floating in water grunting in some serious pain. I could not point my toe so swimming was NOT going to happen. "I seriously thought this race beat me down and I was out of the race". And with a mile to go.... lame. Well I dont go down like that. I sucked it up. There was a rope marking where to cross. I grabbed onto it and pulled myself through the water. The rope was loose so for most of the cross I was underwater pulling my way through. I was worried because I had three more obstacles but the skate ramp would be all calves having to sprint up and jump so major calf extension. I took a deep breathe, took off running yelling all the way and jumped knowing I had only one attempt let in me. So had to commit. Nailed it. So I finished the entire course, doing every obstacle unassisted and conquered all of them staying out of the water if you did not fall off obstacle. Awesome.
One of the cool things I really enjoy about the Tough Mudder. Well it is a challenge where you help each other through the course and you see that all over. Awesome. Helping each other over the obstacles. One guy came over and helped me stretch out my calves when I was down. People asking if you are ok if you are stopped. Encouraging each other as you run. There was even some people helping injured get through. Some even stopped the challenge to ride back with a team mate to medical. But also if you eat somewhere near by you running into other Mudders. The "Orange Bandana" is a sign of something we completed together. That brings us closer. And every single Mudder I saw always... always said hi and great job. And made sure to wave or say bye on the way out. Awesome.

Are you TOUGH enough? HELL YEAH! I plan to do more of these. I would like to have done every single location that they offer in time. So i will use this as a check list. SoCal and AZ down. Another one in Southern Californina, Texas and Utah would be the next ones up.

My time was 2 hours and 20 minutes. 20 minutes more for having to run a course that was mostly hills is not bad at all. We shall have to see what my time is next year.

My FIRST Mudder experience in Arizona
http://mudsweatpride.blogspot.com/2013/03/tough-mudder-arizona-2011.html