Thursday 14 May 2015

Tough Mudder 14

After a night where I kept waking as I thought it was going to rain into the tent, I woke and decided to get up, it was raining quite heavily so I packed up my bag and left the tent till the last moment, it took a while to get the tent down, so of course it was completely soaked through. I headed over to the main arena to meet Tom, Katrina, Anna and Yam. I got changed  and met Tom in the queue for the bag drop. We all met up in the main arena nexty to the warm up area, we hadn't heard from Yam, which was worrying, looking back I probably should have got in touch by text message.

We all headed to the warm up area for the usual jumping and shouting, it was raining but not too heavily and I hoped that it wouldn't be too cold but it felt fine. We headed for the start and did the health and safety talk and pledge taking, there was someone who was doing their 25th event which I was quite in awe of and thought I can't wait until I'm on number 25 by the wnd of the year, saying that I'll guess they'll be onto number 30+.

We got started and straight away I noticed that the rain had made everything really muddy so it was hard to run. We kept a nice pace and got over Skidmarked and onto Arctic enema, Katrina had a bad experience at her last event so decided to bypass, it was just as cold if not colder than the day before and Tom lost his headband, which was annoying. We headed onwards and struggled through birth canal, then onto Bale bonds and Quadmire which were still disappointing, then Hero carry, which I always worry I'm too heavy for the other person, then Sewer rat, which was quite warm and actually muddy this time. The Cry baby had a much stonger mixture this time which made getting though quite difficult but not imposible to see, then winding round to Pyramid scheme, which I helped get the other up before getting helped up this time.

Kiss of mud 2.0 was really muddy today so made it quite hard to get though, then The liberator, where I met Nolan Kombol, the course designer for TMHQ, to say I was a bit star struck is an understatement, he was running with other members of Tough Mudder, so once I cleared the liberator I chatted to Sarah Harvey from Tough Mudder for a bit as we were running and then chatted to Nolan which was really cool, he was asking what I though of the course and which was the best course, I mentioned that Wales was by far the hardest as far as the terrain goes and he told me that they couldn't build that one due to the amount of traffic and the roads being unable to cope, we did chat about Skipton which has great views but weirdly not much elevation, they really like getting feedback about where they are going right with the courses and obstacles, they also seemed to appreciate my tattoos and it seems I had met Sarah on Friday but I was talking to Will.

Once we got to  Mud mile 2.0 I could really tell I had no energy left, through lack of sleep and not eating properly, we had more hills to climb which started to wipe me out, I ate the energy gels I had with me which helped a bit. We managed Hold your wood quite easily and then a quick run onto King of the swingers, this time I managed to swing right up and hit the bell, the others said I managed a little jump at the end, which was quite cool, the water was cold but the air was warm so it wasn't so bad. Past Funky monkey 2.0 and back up the hill, I managed to get further than Saturday and got about halfway up the rungs before losing something and dropping into the water, Tom managed to get and on to Hero walls, which weren't too bad. Anna was really enjoying the event and will be doing another event, which if you're saying that whilst taking part you are having a good time taking part. We finally got to Everest 2.0 and we all managed to get over without too many problems and I decided to  skip Dead ringer as I knew I wouldn't manage it again, Tom went through Electroshock and Katrina and I decided to bypass, as I didn't want to fall in the mud again, Anna psyched herself up and went for it getting shocked a few times.

We posed for the photo at the finish with our drinks and headbands before collecting the t-shirts and getting changed. It seemed to be harder the second day, what with the mud and running on fumes rather than being fully rested, I'm aiming to do laps at Midlands, so we'll see how that pans out.


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