#27 and #72 - Check

Number 27 on my list of 101 things to do in 1,001 days was to watch Justin complete a Tough Mudder race.  Justin and I along with our friends Matthew and Nicole drove to Athens, Georgia this past weekend so that the boys could do the obstacle course along with a couple other of our friends that drove up from South Alabama.  We left on Saturday around noon and got to Athens around 5pm.  After unpacking a little bit, we all met up and drove to dinner on UGA’s campus.  We decided to go to DePalma’s for some yummy Italian!!  The race was on Sunday morning and their wave began at 9:20am. 

If you’re not familiar with Tough Mudder, let me explain.  This isn’t like any ordinary 5k or 10k.  It’s an 11 mile course with 27 obstacles along the way.  These obstacles range from somewhat simple, such as jumping over holes in the ground filled with mud, to incredibly challenging, such as swimming from one side of a construction dumpster to the other in ice cold water.  There were tons of water obstacles in the course and if you live in the area, you know that the South had an unusually cold weekend this past weekend.  In Washington, GA where the race was, the temperature at the time of the race was 22 degrees with a 19 degree wind chill.  Can you honestly imagine swimming in anything at all in that kind of weather?!?!?  There were numerous cases of hypothermia during the race and tons of people ended up skipping obstacles because it was just way too cold to do them. 

Nicole used my camera to take pictures while I used my video camera to take videos.  Nicole took over 300 pictures.  I could share some, but honestly the videos show you much better what the race entailed.  So instead of putting up pictures, I will share numerous videos of some of my favorite obstacles to watch.  This is Justin’s second year to do the Tough Mudder and he absolutely loves it.  He plans to make it an annual thing.  Georgia has been the closest location to us for the past two years, but starting next year, they’re actually doing one close to the Birmingham area.  Justin’s really excited about it!

Here’s some pretty spectacular videos:

This obstacle is called Kiss the Mud.  Racers had to crawl under barbed wire in mud. 

This is Arctic Enema.  This is the obstacle I would have had to skip right on past.  In the 22 degree weather, racers had to swim in a dumpster full of ice.  There was also a board running through the middle of the dumpster forcing racers to have to actually submerge their entire bodies in order to get from one side to the other.  Most racers were taking layers of clothes off so that they would have something to put back on that wasn’t wet.  There weren’t any stands or bleachers that I could get on to get a good shot of the inside of the dumpster.  I was bummed about that. 

In the Funky Monkey obstacle, racers had to cross a pool of muddy ice water on monkey bars.  Doesn’t seem too bad, but realize that hundreds of other racers with muddy hands have done it before you, causing the bars to be VERY slippery.  Also, they go upwards at an incline, so it was actually a difficult task even if the bars weren’t slippery and it wasn’t over a pool of ice water.

This wasn’t even technically an obstacle, but should have been!!  In order to get from obstacle 12 to obstacle 13, racers had to go into this trench of mud that was waist deep.  It was actually amusing to watch!

This obstacle is called the electric eel.  Racers had to “swim” on their stomachs under wires that were holding volts of live wire.  This was also very amusing to watch.  I bet you’re asking yourself at this point “who the crap would willing do this race?  Much less, who on earth would PAY to do this to themselves??”.  Answer – my husband and his friends.

As if the Arctic Enema water obstacle wasn’t enough, or the falling in water from other obstacles, racers were forced to “Walk the Plank”.  There was absolutely no way around getting wet on this obstacle!!!

Twinkle Toes is basically a balance beam over…you guessed it…ice cold water.  This was probably one of the most amusing obstacles to watch.  It was the second to last obstacle and at this point, all the racers are tired and so many of them were falling on purpose because they just gave up.

The final obstacle at Tough Mudder is called “Electroshock Therapy”.  Similar to the electric eel, this obstacle “shocked” racers with live wire.  10,000 volts of live wire.  Racers had to run through the wires dodging hay bales along the way. 

Those are just some of my favorite obstacles.  There were 27 total and I didn’t want to put up all 27 videos, but these are the ones that give you a good idea of the difficulty of this race.  Oh and number   72 on my list of 101 things to do in 1,001 days was to get 8 hours of sleep again.  Thanks to Nana for watching Carter while we were in Georgia for the race, this momma got a full 8 hours of sleep the night before the race.  Woo hoo!!!