Wow.
What an amazing event!
12 miles. 25+ obstacles. Mud. Ice water. Fire. Electricity. Rain. Cold.
Pre-Event when we’re still clean. I would trust any of these women with my life!
7:00AM Saturday, April 14th… “Holy hell, what have I gotten myself (and four other people) into?” —-> My thoughts as we arrived at the event site.
We, a five woman team, plus a three woman crew, stepped out to the event site. It was cloudy and damp, a slight breeze, about 50 degrees or so. We checked in, got marked on foreheads and legs, attached our numbers to our shirts and then waited for our wave to start.
One of my biggest fears was not being able to scale the wall obstacles they had and guess what we had to do to gather to begin our wave? Scale a wall!! AAAHHHHHH!!!! I went first and my team helped me scale that damn wall and I went up and over! The MC did a great job warming up the crowd and off we went, running through orange smoke!
Nearly everything after that was a blur of trail running and mud and obstacles and cold… and it was fun and challenging and enlightening and affirming all at the same time.
You would not believe the mud. Seriously. Every kind of mud that you could imagine, every weight, every viscosity was represented: from watery mud to the thickest pull your shoes off as you try to walk mud. And just when we thought we were too muddy to move, we’d be forced into a ice cold water and you’d be wishing for the mud again!
We ran through fire, jumped off cliffs, shimmied through underground tunnels, were shocked with live wires, scaled walls, scaled mountains, slipped and fell while carrying logs and scaling mud mountains. You know what else we did? We helped each other through it and did it smiling nearly the entire time!
My team was amazing and I even amazed myself! I had no idea the awesomeness we were capable of!! The other participants around me were amazing too! Everyone helped everyone else and offered words of encouragement, cheered one another on, made each other laugh! I have not felt such a sense of camaraderie since I did the Avon Breast Cancer 3-Day walk with my dear friend Dawn. I know SHE knows what I’m talking about.
At one point near the end, we found our support crew (who were so AWESOME too!) and we wondered what time it was…we started at 9:00AM…it was nearly 2:00PM! We were out there for almost 5 hours and it didn’t feel like 5 hours because we just kept moving and conquering obstacle after obstacle and helping and cheering for others. Where else can you be wet and hungry and tired and bleeding and not feel the time go by?
At the finish with our earned orange Tough Mudder headbands!
At the end of the event we are all battered and bruised and bleeding, shivering with teeth chattering, exhausted and STARVING…but we are still smiling!
Two days later and this it what some of my body looks like:
Knee: (yes that shadowy tinge is bruise)
Arm:
There are other parts of me that look worse believe it or not, but I will heal. My girls look much the same, some of them might take more time and some medical intervention to heal completely, but we survived relatively unscathed with amazing memories and a belief in ourselves that never before existed. I know there are many of you out there that maybe don’t get how any of us could have possibly enjoyed this, but it is worth so much to push yourself some to know what you’re capable of, to trust in other people with your own well-being and come out on the other side in one piece knowing without a doubt that there isn’t anything you can’t get through. That with a solid plan, some training and some good pals, you can do WHATEVER your set your mind to.
Tough Mudder was truly was an experience of a lifetime.
HELLBENT TEAM- J, K, K, & S- I am so crazy proud of all of you! None of you hesitated for a moment when I asked you to take this journey with me over six months ago! You committed and trained and we EFFING DID IT!!! TOGETHER!!! BEST.TEAM.EVAH!
Shout out to our rocking support crew…KL, T and A…I can not say thank you enough for enduring the shitty weather for half the day while waiting and taking pictures and video and making sure we had everything we needed. YOU THREE ROCKED and make our whole Tough Mudder experience that much more embraceable knowing we didn’t have to worry about little things!! I will lovingly accompany any of you anywhere in the future that you might require support crew too!!
Tough Mudder Michigan June 2013 anyone? 
