Definitely One Tough Mudder - Tough Mudder Norcal

Sometimes I really love my life. The past week has been one of those times. Within the space of barely over a week I participated in a Goruck Challenge with Class 057 in New York, ran Tough Mudder Norcal on the other side of the country in Tahoe, California and worked two 24 hour shifts at the firehouse running multiple calls after midnight, in between those two events. I went from one event at sea level to the next with climbs reaching peaks at over 9,000 feet high.



I had been assembling a small group of folks to run the Mudder with for a while, since these experiences are much better shared. One by one they all had to drop for one reason or another. I had found three more teammates through the Goruck Tough facebook group and was looking forward to doing the event with them with a buddy carry or two thrown in for fun. I checked facebook one last time before heading up to tahoe to confirm our groups 10 am start time. By then Joel from class 036 (and numerous other GRCs) who had gone on Saturday, had posted that this was the toughest tough mudder course he had been through. Joel has been through quite a few of these things so to hear that definitely caused a butterfly or two. Then I remembered that with all the challenges over the past year - last year's Tough Mudder Norcal and then two GRCs - I had butterflies with those too, but got through them all the same. This was simply my old friend the pre-game jitters. I'd get through this just as with the past challenges.

Once in Tahoe I lost all comms; no cell phone, wifi or landline, no way with communicating with my team. I figured this would simply be an exercise in resourcefulness and another little challenge for the event. Once at Squaw Valley I donned my Radio Ruck and GR Tac hat hoping someone from the team would spot me as I did laps around the registration area looking for them. When that didn't work I stood in the middle of the area and scanned the crowd for them. I didn't find my fellow GRTs but I did run into two friends from the East Bay. As we hiked up the hill for our 10 am start I still kept an eye out for the GRTs. Still no luck. As my new team and I charged up the hill at the start, I realized I had forgotten to tell them to wait by the obstacle if we were to get split up. There was a huge bottleneck of folks at the second obstacle, the mud crawl. Before I knew it, they were already up the next hill while I was still waiting to make my through mud. Last year's Kiss of mud obstacle was more gravel than mud. This time through I was able to float most of the way through before having to crawl the last little bit. The water was cold, but nowhere near as cold as the 38 degree pond during last year's. We continued up another hill until we got to a large tank filled with murky water. A plywood board and barbwire spanned across the tank, forcing us to dunk completely underneath it and surface on the other side. Again, cold, but not that bad.

Here I am right around 3 miles in. There was a sign on the side of the trail that read "WARRIOR DASH FINISH LINE. But this is Tough Mudder and you've only just begun."

We continued up the hill and over a few more obstacles until we got to a second dunk tank. I thought it was a little odd that they would repeat the same obstacle. Turns out they didn't. Sure it looked the same from the outside, but not until I climbed up the ladder to hop in did I realize they had poured bags of ice into this one. There was so much ice in the tank that after I ducked under the plywood I couldn't physically walk through the ice. I had to sort of breast stroke my way through until I could get a hand on the far edge of the tank pulling myself and climbing over the ice.



I've never understood those folks that do the polar bear events. Never had any inkling of a desire to join them, yet here I was.

After hiking a short ways I ran into another bottleneck of folks at the Everest obstacle. This obstacle looked very similar to half of a skateboarding half pipe or the warped wall from ninja warrior. Here I met the best ad hoc teammates I could ask for in Nathan and Katie. We struck up a conversation while waiting in line shivering and all decided to run the rest of the course together. One of the things that Tough Mudder emphasizes is teamwork among all participants, not just amongst your own team. People formed a human ladder at the bottom of the wall while people at the top of the wall would extend out there hands to help pull people up and over. I decided that once at the top I wanted to help 6 people over the wall, because 6 is a good round number. Once at the topI was having so much fun helping people over that I stayed for probably closer to 30 people. Every time someone that was struggling with the wall would make it over the crowd would erupt into cheers and clapping. As I finally stood up to continue on, someone else eagerly took my spot. I figured Nathan and Katie were probably miles ahead by now, so I'd go it alone once again. At the bottom Katie smiled and asked if I was ready to go again. They had been doing the same thing for just as long.

We set out together along the trail coming across fun obstacles like these monkey bars over more murky water.

Another fun obstacle was this year's boa constrictor. The boa constrictor obstacle is made up of corrugated tubes similar to the ones we use for low profile training for firefighting. This year someone had the bright idea to have them slope down into and out of a pool of more cold murky water. As I got up to the obstacle there were lines on both sides, but the middle was free. I figured I'd just hop through the middle one instead of waiting around. After inching my way through the first tube, I soon found out why the middle tubes were free. The water was deeper in the middle so I had to hold my breath and almost completely submerge my head as I crawled through the first part of the second tube. This was definitely not for the claustrophobic.

A few more miles in, Nate asked a few questions about the GRCs and wanted to take a turn with the pack. We started trading off every mile or two. Here, out of all the folks in the Tough Mudder, I had managed to cross paths with someone else that felt more comfortable hiking with a pack than without.

We came across numerous folks that were hurting out in the heat and altitude. Once again all three of us were on the same page. We stopped and asked them all if they were alright and offered gu's, hammer gels and water to those that needed it. For all three of us, this was less about racing and more about the shared experience. I can tell you their company and conversation made a world of difference. Last year's Tough Mudder was around 7 miles and took me around 2-2 1/2 hours to complete. This one was 11+ miles and took 6 1/2. Sure, we definitely could have shaved a bunch of time off if we hadn't stopped to help others out, but then we wouldn't have had this great experience together.

Katie and Nate, I thank you both for a great time and hope to do more GRCs and Mudders with you in the future.

More pics can be found at the NS6 Facebook page link on the right.