Yorkshire Tough Mudder 2013
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| The wall we climbed to GET to the start! |
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| My game face |
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| My "OMG, what am I doing?!" face |
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| Clean and smiling :-) I kept smiling, but definitely did not stay clean long |
The Yorkshire Tough Mudder was a blast! I won’t do a blow by blow of
each obstacle, since you can easily Google images and descriptions for each
one, but I will say that, despite the difficulty of some of them, the hardest
part was the mental aspects of talking myself into continuing on when I was
cold, wet, exhausted, and spent.
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Ice being added to the water for Arctic Enema,
the second obstacle of the morning |
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| My "OMG that was cold!" face |
I know it sounds
crazy to voluntarily put yourself though something like this, but it is one of
the many ways to test your metal in a non-threatening, and fun atmosphere!
Knowing you can quit at any time and be picked up and driven to the finish
(minus the t-shirt and head band,) give you a safety net that can be good and
bad. Good because if you truly can’t go on, you have an exit, but bad because
you have any easy way to quit.
Even though I was
a lone runner, I had plenty of help when I needed it and everyone was
wonderful. That being said, I don’t know that I will do it again alone. Listening
to the banter of the teams made me feel a bit lonely at times, wishing I had a
team of my own, but it is tough to get involved when you register from half a
world away! I was invited to join a couple of teams, but they had very
different start times. So nice of them to invite me though :-)
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Another lone runner that I teamed up with for the "Buddy Carry"
Yes, I carried this guy piggy-back for a good 25 yards! |
As for doing a Tough
Mudder with RA, I won’t lie to you, it was not easy. Cold makes my joints ache
and I spent a lot of time in icy water. Plus, I was covered in bruises by then
end. Bruised elbows from pulling myself along on them through pipes, bruised
knees and thighs from climbing over walls, and other assorted bruises that I
can’t even guess the origin. I don’t know how it could all have been worth it,
but it absolutely was. I supposed proving to myself that RA does not stop me
from joining in on the fun stuff is the big draw. I like scaring myself with
new challenges and some of the obstacles were definitely scary! I have not jumped off a high dive in years
and I have certainly never pulled myself along a horizontal fence with just
inches between it and muddy water! I
only really failed at one obstacle, the monkey bars. I was just too cold, numb,
and tired to grip the bars and hold myself up, so I fell off the second rung and swam across. Hey, at least I tried! I also only
made it to about the second block on the one where there are floating squares,
strung across water on a rope. It did not occur to me to climb back up and try
again, probably because I was so shocked when I went straight in the water and
never touched the bottom, with a huge rush of mud up my sinuses.
How this company
makes being totally miserable so much fun is beyond me, but they have
definitely found a gold mine! While I’m at it, I should point out that my
husband, who is specializes in logistics in the Air Force, said it was
incredibly well organized and operated, and he is a tough guy to impress!
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| Getting zapped |
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| Finished at last! |
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"You are the first woman across the finish line"
"Seriously???" |
