Tough Mudder Part 1

I'd heard about the Tough Mudder when I was sat in the pub chatting to Chris, who that mentioned someone he knew was doing it, so I thought I would look into it as it sounded like hellish fun. I opted for the November one as it would give me enough time to train and get together the money for competing. Well the training part never actually happened aside from fitness classes and hitting the gym.As it was going to be awkward to get to the event on the day, as I wanted to be refreshed, I decided to stay over on a campsite the night before. 

The morning arrived and as there were no buses or metros at that time in the morning, it was a taxi ride over to town, weirdly the taxi driver used to be our milkman way back when. I'm also glad I had a jumper with me as Newcastle central station is a cold place at 5am. Although I was waiting around I was glad to not be sprinting to catch the train like I normally am whenever travelling this way.

The journey went as most do, although a low point of the journey was managing to tear off one of the earpieces to my headphones, halfway into the journey leaving me with no music or video option it would also happen to be my better pair of headphones. A highlight would be getting off the train and finding a fiver on the platform at Manchester station.

I eventually arrived at Wrenbury and it turned out to be a tiny little village, so not very much there but it seemed nice enough. I got the tent setup in the site at the Cotton Arms and met Mark and Tom, two guys who did a Tough Mudder in Scotland, they told me the sort of thing I should expect tomorrow and how their first one went.
They've said a lift would be ok but might be cutting it fine for my start time, still its a lift there.

I decided that I would have a walk up to the Mudder site to see about pushing my time back which was a rather long four mile walk up to Mudder site road, a wander round looking for an official and then a long walk back via the Cholmondley arms, then after a pint and bumping into Mark and Tom, I headed back to the campsite when I noticed that Chorley was only a mile away from the turning onto the campsite road so I thought I might have a look and that's where the problems started. There is literally nothing there except some houses and a postbox, after a while walking down the road I decided to try crossing the field to get back onto my original road. This simple task took me the best part of two or so hours, I had no battery so couldn't check maps, I ended up walking in the dark and managing to step in several pools of mud, which made me glad I was wearing them for the run.

I managed to get sort of cleaned up and made some food, before heading to the pub to secretly charge my phone, make use of the WiFi and enjoy a few drinks, I did discover that I had crossed four fields and walked through a dairy farm, I didn't take part in the pub quiz and decided to retire to bed. This was when the problems started, it seems I'd forgotten to tie the tent inner to the poles and it had leaked in quite considerably. I managed to use a water bottle to bail out most of it and discovered it was still leaking in and realised what I had done, so after tying the inner up I went to bed. It was only when I was woken by a feeling of damp that I discovered more pools of water so I bailed them out again, this continued all through the night with either the church bells or feeling of cold wetness waking me up. It seems my plan of a restful night went right out of the window.

Eventually the alarm sounded and I decided to get up, try and get warm. I had a chat with the gents from another tent who were doing the run and borrowed a couple of carrier bags to line my shoes and warm my feet, this didn't quite work so I popped on a pair of socks which still had little effect but I knew it might help during the run. After my packing up my gear, I waited for Mark and Tom to arise before wandering over, for my lift. We got to the car park, as they were getting changed I said I would meet them at the starting area and wandered towards it. After picking up my participant pack, I quickly phoned home and got myself ready.

Part Two