Full disclosure: I was filled with very dirty intentions.
They led me to maximum exertion. Psychological exhilaration. Physical exhaustion. Full enjoyment.
When it was over I needed a cold shower, colder beer, a hot meal and some time to recover before doing it all over again.
Get your mind out of the gutter and your body into Tough Mudder, the grueling, rewarding, obstacle-course challenge event that made an international tour stop in DFW last weekend.
My 13-mile, 26-obstacle journey began in June with a simple self-assessment: “When’s the last time I did something for the first time?”
As you’re likely experiencing right now, it took me a while to deduce my answer. Creatures of habit leads to routine leads to repetition leads to mundane leads to boredom leads to … Shame. Right?
Why just stop and smell the roses on the road less traveled when you can stop, drop and crawl through off-the-grid mud, under barbed wire and across your boundaries?
I mean, sure, I could’ve settled for a new adventure along the lines of learning French, dancing Salsa or playing Fortnite. But I’ve long dabbled in, not physical achievements, but more so physical attempts. Track, basketball and baseball in high school. Ran the White Rock Marathon many moons ago. These days, when I’m lucky, I can still win a tennis tournament.
I heard about Tough Mudder at my gym, Lifetime Fitness in Dallas. I go a couple times a week to combat my love handles and my hate belly and to be 55 without looking or feeling 110. It was there that a trainer named Lindsay uttered those haunting words of promise . . .
“C’mon!” she exclaimed, with a fire in her eyes I reserve only for that magical moment when the pizza is delivered exactly five minutes before Cowboys kickoff. “It’ll be fun!!”
Initially – as to most sane human beings – the thought of running a half-marathon wrapped around an American Ninja Warrior course and accessorized by Navy SEAL hobbies didn’t strike me as “fun.” I’d have rather rotated my tires, binge-watched C-Span or introduced my sister to Antonio Brown.
Searching for strength in numbers or at least someone to sweat and suffer alongside, I instead received various versions of folks attempting to talk me down from the ledge. “Um, you know that’s college football season, right?” a buddy said in declining my offer to sign up. “I’m nauseous just reading those stats,” my brother offered about the distance and obstacles. Said my wife of the $119 entry fee, “Eww, I’d rather spend that kind of money on a new pair of shoes.”
I just wanted to challenge myself. To feel alive. To momentarily – potentially gloriously – put some distance between me and that relentlessly chasing bastard known as the Grim Reaper. But with my theory of a support system giving me the collective side-eye as though I was asking them to spend a weekend cataloging my 33-year library of writing from A to Zzzz, I returned to the source of my inspiration.
“So,” I said to Lindsay, “fun, huh?”
“Yes!!!!!” she exclaimed while doing a herkie, the last of which I’d seen performed by my high school cheerleader girlfriend, circa 1982. “I’m recruiting lots of members. And we’ve got the coolest name … ”
That was June 27. By race day – Saturday, Sept. 21 – Team “Fit ’n Shit” (gotta admit, it is a pretty cool name) was a army gaggle of three. Lindsay. Justin, a Lifetime trainer at the Flower Mound location. And me, the sucker.
I didn’t sojourn to Cabo to train with Zeke. But consistently for three months I did deny myself the comfort food, the shortcuts and the nightcap. Salmon over steak. Brown rice over buttered rolls. Dates over donuts. Protein shakes over Diet Cokes. Stairs over elevators. I even substituted my Night Owl for an Early Bird, awaking at 5:07 a.m. at least three days a week, all in hopes of running, lifting and willing myself into avoiding embarrassment – and, hopefully, death – in the Tough Mudder.
I had recently touched the best shape of my life, but in the past two weeks there had been, um, hiccups. A week’s vacation in Ireland led to drunken days. A car broken into and a laptop stolen upon return prompted sleepless nights. As I drive to the event, I am a smorgasbord of jet lag, Jameson and jitters.
Then, rising from the barren Hellscape of mid-nowhere Midlothian, there she is. Mudderhorn. The mammoth, cargo-net of a pyramid that serves as Tough Mudder’s grand centerpiece. From the vacant pasture of a parking lot, with humans appearing merely as flies on the window screen, the thing looks 500 feet tall and altogether intimidating.
“Oh,” says Lindsay, trying, I think, to calm my fears, “that’s nothing.”
The TexPlex setting 30 miles south of Dallas is one only a cow could love. Perfectly drab and barbaric, with sprawling, featureless, brown hills as far as the eye can see and only a cement plant or two on the horizon. Imagine being an ant on the bottom of your oldest pair of dress shoes. You get the picture.
It’s hideous. And, yet, wholly gorgeous. Not because of the place, but rather the people.
Tough Mudder attracts a community of crazies. Like-minded strangers that, if you’re lucky, will over the course of about four hours become some of your most trusted friends. Roaming around Mudder Village and sprinkling mirth to what is surely impending malaise, there’s a not-so-fit guy wearing nothing but a tiny, black Speedo. To balance him out, there’s also a bevy of females in bun-hugging bottoms and sports bras. (At some point – cue muddy thoughts – they will be wet, and possibly in need of assistance.) A man is dressed in full Deadpool costume, and another ensconced in a green, inflatable alien seemingly more fit for storming Area 51 than Mudderhorn. Over there is the University of North Texas men’s basketball team, ready to embark on a little team-building.
And then there’s me, the dorky, old newbie attempting his first Tough Mudder. With two professional fitness trainers half his age. Gulp. Lindsay is a complete crazypants that has completed two Mudders, is married to a fireman and does something called Acro-Yoga just for kicks. To activate his legs and glutes before his inaugural Mudder, Justin wanders over to the U.S. Army promo tent and dead-lifts 220 pounds 25 times.
“I gave up my tickets to SMU-TCU,” he says, “because this is going to be epic.”
The challenge – organizers don’t use the word “race” and you are not given an official time – goes off in waves of a couple hundred Mudders at 30-minute intervals. It is 9:25 a.m., and suddenly I’m spellbound by William Wallace. To the eerie-yet-motivating sound of bagpipes, Tough Mudder’s version of Braveheart emotionally addresses our group under the starting gate. Commence gravitas.
As he passionately stalks and talks, the group of 9 a.m. Mudders traverses the winding trail off to the left. Some are already walking. All are completely covered in brownish-green, ghoulish mud. Double gulp.
Preaches Wallace:
You will be faced with your fear of being shocked. (Wait, what?!)
You will be faced with your fear of heights. (Well, I’d rather be 50 feet up than 5 inches under water, so …)
You will be faced with your fear of water. (Dammit!)
You will be severely tested, mind, body and soul. (Check, check and check. Yes, already.)
Strangers will become saviors. (Go onnn … )
You will become stronger. (Yess!)
Together, you’ll become a Tough Mudder, and leave this land a more caring, more confident, better human being. (Charrrrrrge!)
With that, we hug the strangers next to us, place hands over hearts and sing the National Anthem, A cappella. There are no colors, no religions, no races, nor political affiliations. We’re all just Mudders, trying to get from here to there in one healthy, happy piece.
My goosebumps have goosebumps.
Annnnd we run … the first two miles.
At 78 degrees and cloudy with a mild breeze, the weather is perfectly comfortable. Our strides, however, are not.
The drought-ravaged terrain is littered with weed-camouflaged crevices and cracks, just begging for a misstep and, in turn, a sprained ankle. Or worse.
It’s one thing to train via nine-mile runs around the groomed paths of White Rock Lake or up and down the asphalt Katy Trail. It’s another to have to intensely focus on every imbalanced, imperfect step, forced to follow an exaggerated long stride with quick, little ones – or vice-versa – as if hopping to lily pads over a pond of hungry piranhas.
Our running pace is manageable. Our concentration level is exhausting.
I’m cautiously clueless.
Annnnd we run … to the Kiss of Mud.
The first obstacle – Mud Mile – required us to wade in vile, chest-deep water and what felt like quicksand, then climb over walls of mud. This one makes us crawl through the mud, and under the low-hanging barbed wire.
As we resume running, Justin and I realize our mud-soaked shirts are acting as weighted vests. We lose them. Lindsay, the veteran who suggested, like her, beginning without one, snickers in satisfaction.
Around the corner we hear Wallace, energizing the 10 a.m. Mudders. They see us, covered in filth. We see them see us, eyes aghast in a combo of amazement and fear.
I’m starting to get it.
Annnnd we run … to Augustus Gloop.
The course takes us through more mud crawling, but this time with live electrical wires dangling overhead (we’re the bugs; they’re the zapper). Then comes the water. Lots of water.
There’s a tiny horizontal tube filled halfway with red water. A creek crossing of varying depths, including a drop of around eight feet near the finish. And a Cage Crawl, forcing us to float on our backs and keep our nose in the three-inch safe space between the top of the water and the chain-link fence ceiling above.
Gloop makes us duck under water and squeeze up and into a vertical, narrow, dark tube. There are holes for foot- and hand-holds that act as a ladder. Just for fun, while we’re climbing the tube is constantly being flooded with water from above.
Yoga meditation helps me immensely here, as did the documentary, Free Solo. There is no up, nor down. No yesterday, nor tomorrow. Just focus on the moment. The task. The breathing. One hand up. One foot up. One breath. One movement. Keep it simple, stupid.
Understandably gripped by the reality of drowning or claustrophobia – or both – several Mudders bypass the Cage Crawl and Gloop.
I’m beginning to embrace it.
Annnnd we run … to the Pyramid Scheme.
There is – duh – lots of running. Up hills. Downhill. Over rocks. Through creek beds. Laborious, tedious running. And, therefore, plenty time to talk.
Fit ’n Shit uses the down time to form a strategy in case of a Zombie Apocalypse, to appreciate our soldiers essentially doing daily Mudders while also fearing being shot at, and to meet former strangers from Houston, El Paso and even Kansas that traveled to DFW for the event.
“To know I can do this,” says an ER doctor from Tulsa, Oklahoma, “has literally changed my life.”
We are intermittently offered bananas, energy bars, water and Port-o-Pots. But we are also presented with obstacles forcing us to climb over 20-foot hay bales, crouch under 50-yard cargo nets, help a 300-pound stranger over a 12-foot wall (it took all three of us, with strength and strategy) and walk through a chest-deep, 200-yard long pond in which a Mudder “catches” a dead, eight-pound bass with his bare hands. At this point we all consider the real possibility that we’re sharing murky water with snakes or leaches or Rob Riggle or e-Coli, but no one dare speaks of it.
Here, a bridge is definitely a bridge too far.
Pyramid Scheme is the toughest of all obstacles, because it requires brawn, brains and a reliance upon multiple fellow Mudders.
Starting in knee deep sludge, we must get to the top of violently sloping, slippery, 25-foot high ramp. Since it’s impossible to “walk” up, we must build a human pyramid. With only three of us, we enlist help. Mudders lying flat on the ramp, with other Mudders literally walking on their shoulders. Enough people on the base, and the last person can make it to the top, where he or she can help the others.
May sound simple, but it’s pure chaos. Lone wolves ultimately fail, lose their grip and slide back down, often crashing into forming bases and sending multiple bodies back into the swamp. It blows. Worst part of the course. Lindsay and Justin eventually make it to the top, but I’m stuck mid-ramp, clawing helplessly at the slippery slope like a newborn giraffe on ice skates. I eventually grab onto a shoe and step onto a shoulder before being pulled to paradise.
At one point a desperate Mudder below pulled my shorts down, making me very happy I wore shorts under my shorts. Same thing happened to Lindsay, with Justin using her tights as a life raft.
“Um, sorry for almost pulling your pants off,” Justin says sheepishly.
“It’s all good,” laughs Lindsay. “Whatever it takes. Now we know why the sign says that, right?”
Read the sign at the bottom of Pyramid Scheme: “Awkward moments encouraged.”
Oh yeah, I totally feel it.
Annnnd we run … to Leap of Faith.
Tough Mudder was created around 2010 by Will Dean, who apparently doubled as a British counter-terrorism officer … and an incorrigible sadist. Because there is a stretch of back-to-back-to-back-to-back consecutive obstacles requiring upper-body and grip strength that is irrationally demanding on the human body.
Funky Monkey dictates navigating steeply inclining monkey bars 20 feet over a pool of green water, then descending via three giant spinning wheels and a trapeze bar. So “fun” is this that Lindsay encourages us to – inexplicably – ratchet this shit up and do it twice. I somehow make it safely (there is no down, hand-over-hand), while Justin takes three involuntary water dismounts, including one which makes him resemble radically spinning debris powered by a tornado. Lindsay succeeds twice, but at a price. Her hands suffer multiple split callouses, exposing raw flesh. Otherwise known as the one thing you can’t afford when approaching the Gauntlet (a series of swinging hoops, various knob-holds and a 2-inch wooden ledge accessible only via finger grips) and Skidmarked (a sharp-angled wall that forces us to use only arms to pull up and over).
Using my bandana and her headband as makeshift “gloves”, Lindsay somehow clears the obstacles and then beats Leap of Faith – a 7-foot jump over a muddy moat onto a cargo net – by grabbing not with her hands, but punching her hands through the holes and hugging the net with the crooks of her elbows. She then shimmies down a 10-foot pole, using only her legs.
Says Justin to me, “I dunno, I might’ve … ”
“Tapped out,” I finish his thought. “Yeah. Guilty.”
It’s now coursing through my veins.
Annnnd we run … to Mudderhorn.
After three-plus hours, what once was a cool, cloudy 78 is now a sun-drenched, searing 90.
Piggybacking each other ¼ of a mile doesn’t help. Nor does running in slimy shoes up a warped, 20-foot wall and grabbing onto a slimier rope to ascend to the top. Same for sloshing through more mud, and dodging more live electricity that feels like a quick bee sting.
What we need is an Arctic Enema, a plunge in chest-deep ice water, then a duck under and through submerged tires. It both takes our breath, and fuels us for the finish.
After what I’ve endured, the 50-foot tall Mudderhorn has been totally defanged. Unless you have a fear of heights, it’s a relatively simple climb. One foot. One hand. One breath. And the view from the top is spectacular, as you can take in all you’ve accomplished, and those still on the course trying to duplicate it behind you.
Upon descent, we are finished. Presented with a sacred headband …
It is me, and I am it. I am a Mudder.
I can play multiple tennis matches on a 100-degree day, but the Tough Mudder is a different animal. The running on treacherous ground alone is arduous. The obstacles in and of themselves are diabolically dodgy.
That said, I must say that it was easier than I expected. A nod to the power of elevated expectations. Vacations and vandals be damned, I was – thanks to Lindsay – physically prepared. My growth, my value, came in the form of psychological expansion. Bye-bye, boundaries.
Final stats, courtesy of my Fitbit: 27,259 steps (including to and from my car). 15.6 miles. 3,726 calories. 4 hours, 40 minutes. 1 survival.
I am sunburned. I am bruised and battered, but not bloody. My hands are sore. Same for my inner forearms. I had mud caked in private places I never thought humanly possible.
The ultimate takeaway: Giving my Uptown douche persona a grimy kiss right on the cultured kisser. The camaraderie will help me be a better friend. The confidence will help me be a better individual.
Full disclosure: I am still filled with very dirty intentions.
Can’t wait for next year.
