Tough Mudder 24 - North West

We wanted and early start as Susan and I weren't staying over this time, my kit was thankfully almost dry so no low morale before starting. We checked into camping to avoid the registration queues. Susan held onto my dry robe, as the day wasn't warm and slightly overcast. There were no crowd surf races but we did a highest pyramid off, against half of the crowd, I'm not sure who won. Bobby did the ages of the competitors and my Dad was the oldest, always nice to be in a winning team.

We got to the start line and I had a chat with Gil after everyone had set off he had done his first event the day before and walked the course, with only a bit of pain behind the knee to show for it. I'd taken my painkillers before starting but the injury I'd received on skidmarked the day before was uncomfortable when running, with no surface bruising, I knew it was bruised ribs/s or possibly broken.

We set off at a good place and had a slight bottle neck issue on the first part of the course and another just after bale bonds under the bridge, Dad accidentally pulled the rope up after himself. After that it was plain sailing most obstacles were relatively free of other people waiting, managed to avoid hurting myself on skidmarked which was good although breathing was difficult at times. Sewer rat was really deep and very muddy with the walk to the bank up to the house being knee deep and the bank being really hard to walk up. Cliffhanger had two routes an easy one and a harder one, I opted for the harder one again. Spotted Susan and my Mam on the way back round towards pyramid scheme, I was feeling really tired at this point but determined to keep going, there were some people helping at the bottom to get people up, so my Dad went first and got up, I went  up and ended up falling headfirst back down the surface of the obstacle and pivoted on my head which was uncomfortable and had me coming to the realisation people who aren't careful or really unlucky can actually die on the obstacles, it left me with a pain in my neck and Susan and my Mam being really worried about my neck, I felt well enough to continue so I did. Through shawshanked which was nice and cleaning.

Funky monkey is almost impossible when damp, so hands that are covered in mud aren't going to get far, so into the water for us. We reached swamp stomp and they had re-routed the course like they did in Scotland, as people were getting stuck on Saturday, I did manage to get a bomb into the muddy bath again, which is such good fun, though mud swimming round your eyeballs isn't much fun. Through the forest with the brick drainage roads which are hell on the ankles, my Dad was running one hell of a pace and leaving me behind quite a bit, he thought someone else was me and had taken off till he realised and waited for me to catch up, he did offer to walk but I thought that would cause him more problems getting warm than it would for me to keep going, it was hard but I'm glad that I didn't stop.

For someone who by his own admission has no upper body strength he did brilliantly on liberator, getting to the top with hardly any problems. We headed through crybaby which was much nicer than Saturday and I didn't feel as cold as I did, when getting out. I gave Everest a couple of tries before passing it by, I decided to skip electroshock but my Dad decided based on last year he would have another go and really regretted it, I didn't see him go through last year but this time he was zapped quite a few times, before we headed over the finish to collect our headbands and pint, another event under our belts, I took him off to collect his new blue headband and t-shirt.

It was sad that my brother couldn't take part again as he would have enjoyed this course but work being work, hopefully he'll be there next year.