MANSFIELD, Ohio — My colleagues are apathetic, narcissistic and boast an unwarranted sense of entitlement.
At least that is what the mainstream media would lead me to believe about the Millennial Generation.
Before I go any further, I should offer a lay of the land inside the Richland Source newsroom.
At 43, I am the graybeard of our reporting team and a card-carrying member of Generation X. I was sitting in seventh-grade social studies class when the Challenger exploded, feared I might get drafted when the first Gulf War started and watched O.J.’s slow-speed chase play out live.
The Beastie Boys, Nirvana and Pearl Jam provided the soundtrack to my formative years.
The remainder of our reporting team here at the Source was in grade school when the twin towers came down. I’m not sure what music they grew up listening to, but a quick Google search of popular music from the early 2000s suggests a boy band or pop princess could have been involved.
So when two of the Richland Source’s 20-somethings, reporters Emily Dech and Dillon Carr, expressed an interest in joining me for this year’s Tough Mudder, I wasn’t sure what to expect.
Professionally, they are diligent multi-platform reporters and talented writers — none of which matters when you are up to your knees in freezing mud. How would they react to the ice bath that is Arctic Enema or the jolt of Electroshock Therapy, two of the more sinister of the 20-plus obstacles littered across the 10-mile course at Mid-Ohio?
If their performance Saturday morning was any indication, all those terrible things you’ve heard and read about Millennials — I’m pretty sure a lot of those same terrible things were said and written about us Gen Xers and will be said and written about generations to come — are completely unfounded.
Our five-person team — Emily and Dillon’s friend, Ton, joined us, as did a high school buddy of mine — spilled onto the Tough Mudder course shortly after 9 a.m. and reached our first real test, an obstacle called King of the Swingers, a couple miles later. King of Swingers requires participants to scale a 12 foot tower built over a man-made pond. The object is to leap from the raised platform, grab a metal arm that swings out over the pond and tap a bell suspended from a rope before plummeting into the water below.
There is a significant concession to be made in order to ring the bell: Entry into the pond is going to be painful. After letting go of the swinging arm, you must contort your body to reach the bell. That generally means hitting the water on your back or side (if you are lucky) or doing a belly-smacker.
None of us entered the water gracefully, but we soldiered on.
The next major challenge was a new obstacle called Block Ness Monster. Participants are required to go up and over a pair of rotating square barriers while working their way through a water-filled trench. In theory, half of the people in the trench would keep the blocks rotating while the other half grabbed the edge of the barrier and rode it over. The people turning the block would then catch a ride when the next wave of participants jumped in behind them and kept the block moving.
What happened was something akin to chaos.
The neck-deep water was so cold that nobody wanted to stick around long enough to rotate the obstacle. It took a few bone-chilling minutes to get organized, but we all finally made it up and over.
Eventually we staggered to Arctic Enema 2.0, which is essentially a retrofitted industrial dumpster filled with icy water. Participants slide into the dumpster, briefly submerge, then scale a wall in the middle before climbing out the far side. The goal is to get in and out just as quickly as possible.
No amount of training can prepare you for the the ice bath that awaits. Muscles, fatigued by miles of abuse, instinctively lock up. To my relief, everybody successfully navigated the obstacle. The last thing you want to do after exiting is go back in after a struggling teammate.
We finally made it to the finish line, where the most devious obstacle of all awaited. Running through a muddy field overhung by live wires is a fools errand. As a multiple-time participant (a Legionnaire in Tough Mudder parlance), I was able to bypass Electroshock Therapy for an obstacle called Frequent Flyers Club.
I was required to climb a 15-foot wooden structure to a platform, where I would leap onto an oversized crashpad below. From atop the platform, I watched as my teammates mustered the courage to charge through Electroshock Therapy.
Each of them did it with only the slightest bit of hesitation.
Roughly three hours after we stormed onto the course, my teammates and I wobbled across the finishing line. We shared war stories over a beer and took part in that most customary of Millennial traditions: the group selfie.
On the way home, we listened to Pearl Jam.
