Why do that to yourself?
I get asked that question. A lot.
Why throw yourself into a dumpster full of freezing water? Why run through or wriggle under a field of live wires? Why jump over flames or slog through all that mud?
I’m not sure why, but I can’t wait to do it again.
I’ve got a dirty — or muddy — little secret. I’m an obstacle course junkie.
And my fix is less than two weeks away.
Tough Mudder returns to Mansfield’s Lahm Regional Airport for a two-day run on May 17 and 18 and, for the second year in a row, I’ll be among the first wave of participants to trudge through what event organizers recognize as one of the muddiest of the 60-plus challenges (they aren’t races, officials are quick to point out) they will stage all year.
For those of you unfamiliar with Tough Mudder, it is a 10- to 12-mile course choked with 20 to 25 obstacles, some more fiendish than others.
There is Arctic Enema, an industrial-sized dumpster filled with cold water and backloaded with enough ice to stop you in your tracks. There is a wooden divider topped with barbed wire, meaning participants must submerge to successfully negotiate the obstacle before climbing out the far side.
Then there is Electroshock Therapy, a field of mud and square hay bales with live wires dangling from a wooden frame overhead. Not all of the wires are hot, but the ones that are pump up to 10,000 volts of electricity through you certainly are. It is the final obstacle before crossing the finish line, where the coveted orange head band and, for the age appropriate, a plastic 12 ounce cup of Dos Equis, awaits. Both are well earned.
So what is the appeal of obstacle course racing?
“We’ve seen it resonate with a lot of different people,” said Ben Johnson, Tough Mudder’s head of communications. “The event really gives people the opportunity to … get out and do something as primal as possible with friends. The teamwork aspect, the camaraderie aspect, is most important for us.”
The first Tough Mudder was held in May of 2010.
“We had three events that year,” said 33-year-old Alex Patterson, Tough Mudder’s Vice President of Brand. “We had 14 events the next year, all in the US. The next year we had 35 with a bunch in the (United Kingdom) and a bunch in Australia, too. Then 53 the next year and this year we’ll do 60-plus events. We’re in seven countries, we just did our first four-event weekend on three continents with events in New Zealand, two in the U.S. and one in London.”
“And a million-and-a-half participants to date,” added the 28-year-old Johnson. “And six-and-a-half million dollars raised by our participants for Wounded Warrior Project, which is our official charity partner in the U.S.”
Last year’s Tough Mudder event in Mansfield attracted 11,000 participants who raised more than $50,000 for Wounded Warrior Project. They pumped more than $5 million into the local economy during the weekend of the event.
This year’s event has Saturday sold out and registration for Sunday is at 90 percent capacity, Patterson said.
“It’s a trend we’ve seen in the Midwest, which is really exciting because we had some of our best events in this region,” Johnson said. “There’s tremendous amounts of mud, great venues and cool obstacles.”
There will even be a few new obstacles for those of us who are repeat mudders. The new Mudder Legion program offers access to the Legionnaires’ Loop and, according to the Tough Mudder website, a brand new “heart-pounding” obstacle.
“The neat thing is this is a program that came up pretty organically,” Johnson said. “It creates a community-based interaction with people.”
Multi-mudders will receive a different colored headband in addition to the traditional orange one.
“When you’re on the course with your headband that is a different color, you definitely feel more responsibility,” Patterson said. “You can’t just get off an obstacle and not help people.”
It is that sense of community and shared experience that will bring me back year after year. At one point during last year’s event, as a teammate and I squeezed through a claustrophobia-inducing obstacle called Boa Constrictor, there came calls for help from a panic-stricken woman unable to free herself from the mud-slicked plastic tube she was trying to squirm out of — the pipe was set at a slight incline, making escape difficult. After my teammate and I had extricated ourselves, we made a human chain and pulled the woman to safety.
She thanked us repeatedly as we all set off for the next obstacle together, but her gratitude wasn’t necessary.
Helping each other is what members of Tough Mudder nation do.
Correspondent Curt Conrad will proudly wear his orange headband at Tough Mudder Ohio on May 17. Follow him on Twitter @curtjconrad.
