Tough Mudder


The Tough Mudder is a Career for ambitious athletes. Cross-country runs 19,5km and includes 24 obstacles, which have to be overcome. With this, the Tough Mudder outperforms all others course runs that take place in Germany. For me it was a different challenge and a great change from riding a racing bike, even if running isn't really my thing.

It all started when a colleague asked me – and the other colleagues in our office – if we would like to join Tough Mudder to join. Taff Mader, please what? Luckily there is Google and the challenge could be identified quickly. An obstacle course - in New German: Parcours - over almost 20km with 24 obstacles that have it all. Cool, I thought so and said yes immediately. Aside from me, eight others volunteered spontaneously and wanted to take part.
A colleague did the registration for us. Since his account should be debited immediately after registration, he asked us to transfer the money beforehand. Suddenly we were still six, after all! After all, we had three months to prepare for the Tough Mudder.

The organizers offer a complete training plan to prepare for the Tough Mudder. However, I didn't have enough time to prepare for the event. I preferred my regular one Training to pull through, in the end it was enough. My normal training means:

  • Cycling (of course my focus)
  • Go for a run every now and then (between 6km and 10km)
  • Some strength training with your own body weight

So much for my preparation.

My colleagues probably saw the whole thing a bit more doggedly. One is ins Gym happened, the other one goes pumping four times a week anyway, and, and, and. Our appointment for the Tough Mudder Northern Germany was getting closer and my comrades-in-arms began to suffer. Achilles tendon here and hip there, so in the end there were only four of us. We all decided to make the run relaxed. 19,5km isn't a piece of cake and I have to admit that I've never run more than 10km in a row before.

Tough Mudder Obstacle Course

So we found each other on July 15, 2017 Seveloh farm, near Celle, a. At the car we got ready and changed. It was warm that day, but not too warm, but shorts and a t-shirt were fine. We got our start documents at the entrance gate and then only had to attach our start numbers to our T-shirts and leave our bags in the cloakroom. It was already pointed out in the information letter that the cloakroom costs EUR 3. In general, every little thing cost something and the Tough Mudder is not the cheapest event of its kind. The entry fee is approx. EUR 90 / including early bird discount!), the VIP parking ticket (near the entrance) EUR 25, cloakroom EUR 3. It makes you wonder why you pay so much money for it just to torture yourself. Well, cycling is no different.

Warm-up and starting signal

At 10:45 a.m. we were finally in the first starting zone. There was a small warm-up with animation. Actually a funny idea, because the atmosphere at the start was great! After the warm-up, we went to the right starting zone. Here we waited another 5 minutes for our starting block finally started.

The first few kilometers were run a lot, there were a few hurdles in the form of straw bale but not on the route. I guess it was about 4km until the first real obstacle got in our way. At the first obstacle it went straight into the mud. The task was to take a longer distance Barbed Wire through, crawling through the mud. So that nobody should manage to stay dry, there was a moat in the middle through which you had to crawl. The next six kilometers the obstacles came more sporadically, probably so that you could leave a large part of the route behind you. After the first 10 kilometers we had passed about five of the 24 obstacles and I felt very good. There were a few refreshment points where there were drinks and some also pickup bars as food. For the long distance, the type of food was clearly not enough, such a stupid chocolate biscuit is not enough for me. But you couldn't really take anything with you, after all you're crawling through the mud and you can't stuff your pockets full.

There were a lot of obstacles in our way, which cannot all be listed. We've walked through water, swum through a lake, climbed walls and built human ladders to get over tall plastic mountains. In the end there was Evererest 2.0. A quarterpipe with - I guess - 5m high. You had to start off with a lot of momentum so that the people upstairs could hold you down.

The toughest obstacles in Tough Mudder

When asked which are the most difficult obstacles in the Tough Mudder, everyone will probably answer differently. I'll answer for myself. I didn't find two obstacles to be difficult, but very uncomfortable. First, there was this ice bath. A pit with water was additionally filled with ice cubes 4°C held. You had to slide through a pipe so you didn't have a chance to escape the cool wet. In addition, you had to dive under a beam at the end of the pool so that no one could escape the brain freeze. The ice pool was uncomfortable, but unfortunately there was nothing against them electric shocks at the end of the route. My expectations of the electric shocks were actually not that bad. Thanks, there is a small one electric shock and that was it. puff cake! As the last obstacle, the electric shocks awaited us runners about 10m before the finish line. I thought the faster the better. So I walked through the carpet of thin cables and got an electric shock that I never expected in my life. My left leg was briefly electrocuted and stopped, but the rest of my body kept moving forward, slapping the mud. I was really shocked! While some people were apparently able to walk through it unmolested, I was hit hard. I got up and kept walking, unfortunately I got another hit. But this time I stayed on my feet and dragged myself to the end. But the shock was still deep.

After we were a little cleaner and changed, we got something to eat and watched other runners as they had to go through the stream carpet. It really does seem so - objectively - that some didn't get hit and others got a really big hit.

Conclusion

Tough Mudder 2018 I'm happy to be there again. It was just great fun to master the obstacle course as a team. I struggle through the ice pool again, but I don't mind the electric shocks. Never again!

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