Zen and the Art of Tough Mudder
How do you know who you are if you don’t do hard things?
I’m not an athlete. I’m not even sporty. I didn’t play sports at school because I was smaller and skinnier than everyone else, and consequently, I was scared. Actually, if I’m honest, I would have been scared no matter my size.
This legacy of physical inferiority and the albatross of mental cowardice has hung around my neck for decades and, consequently, has left me with a need to both punish and prove myself at all times — a masochistic insecurity that has never really gone away.
Long story short, that’s why I ended up running a Tough Mudder. Something to prove. Something to punish.
And I want to tell you about my experience running a Tough Mudder because, mostly, it means I get to tell you I ran a Tough Mudder.
Insecurity isn’t ever insecure about hanging around, is it?
I don’t know if you’ll find any valuable life tips or takeaways in this essay – perhaps you’ll find something relatable at least – nonetheless, this article is me writing about that hellish experience and nothing more. Let’s begin.
I’m 46
Forty-six is the kind of age where you have to pre-fix every story about physical activity with “I’m 46”.
It’s an age that feels old. Not decrepit old, not Zimmer frame and bent back old, not Joe Biden attempting to string a sentence together old, but how-on-Earth-am-I-this-old-old. It’s the sort of age when you hear about a man on the news being arrested who is 41 and you picture an older man, then realise you’re five years older than who you’ve just pictured. It’s the sort of age where you feel someone must have stolen years from you with cunning and guile and you’ve only just noticed you’re shortchanged a decade or two. The math ain’t mathing.
Anyway I’m 46. This fact seems relevant when applying to do a Tough Mudder.
My friend and I eagerly signed up to it off the back of another obstacle course race we ran the year before – A 7k run through woodland, muddy ditches, lakes and fields called The Nuclear Race. It was hard but we did it, and that achievement felt great, so why wouldn’t we want to feel great again?
We booked the Tough Mudder on a wave of chest-puffing delusion.
Besides, I thought, what’s the difference between one obstacle course race and another?
Lots, I was about to discover.
The Lead Up
I’m bad at admin. You know, all the tasks in life that involve diaries, organisation and logistics. Because of this, I knew nothing about the race in the lead up to it other than I had to drive to my friend’s house the night before as it was somewhere in the British midlands (“it” being both his house and the race, I didn’t know where either of them were, such was my state of unpreparedness).
In my defence, I have ADHD, but besides a mostly made-up disorder, my very real and very pressurised corporate job had been kicking my arse so much I had no room to think about anything else.
The race lingered in the back of my mind over the next few months but I didn’t pay it much attention. Too many emails. Too many meetings.
I knew I should have been training properly, but I was so mentally beat up by corporate bullshit that I failed to put the hours in.
Shamefully, I will admit I didn’t even know the distance we would be running. I just guessed. 7k?10k? Whatever. One of the k’s. Who cares? I went to the gym three or four times and week and I ran on a treadmill quite intensely here and there, I’d be fine, I figured.
When the woman checking us into the race gates that blustery morning gave us our wristbands she informed us it’s 10 miles. That’s 16k.
“Ten miles!?” I shouted at my friend Ed, as if it was his fault I had underprepared and not remembered what I’d booked the year before. “I couldn’t remember what we booked either” replied Ed, equally surprised at the distance.
I hadn’t gone to the toilet properly that morning, despite a black coffee and a fibrous bowl of cereal to encourage the process, but something about the phrase TEN MILES had me visiting the porta-loo twice before the race began.
Also it was cold that day. I should mention it was cold, windy and wet; about 10 Celsius (50 Fahrenheit) when we got out the car and made the long walk to the check in desk in the early morning.
This wasn’t Artic conditions I grant you, but it also wasn’t be-in-and-out-of-cold-water-for-several-hours weather either.
Fuck it. Two shits and a lot of complaining later and they blew the whistle for our group of runners to cross the line and start.
The Race
I’m not sure if it’s better to know what’s in store for you or not with these things. I’d not looked at a course map, I’d not read feedback from previous runners and knew nothing about the upcoming obstacles. Well, almost nothing. I’d seen one, on a teaser email, where runners have to drag themselves through muddy water with a cage above them, with only their face sticking out to catch breath. I was thinking about that bastard obstacle as we began running, it loomed large in my mind.
We started with a lot of running. About three miles of dirt tracks, woodland, ditches and grassy hills. It was tough (but not that muddy) and standard stuff. Running in such terrain is hard, but I could push on through, even when the rain continued and the wind pushed it sideways into our faces as the craggy landscape opened up into fields.
I was worried about Ed. He’d recently suffered a blood clot in his brain and this was his first physical test since then. We went to university together and all those years ago he’d suffered one then, too. It’s was only a visit by his brother who had dragged him to hospital where they discovered his double vision and pounding headache was an invasive clot that was creeping across his skull.
It sounds scary, and that’s because it is, but it cleared up then, as it had done now, with a course of blood thinning drugs. Still, I knew Ed had his own axe to grind with this course, along with me.
I hadn’t just been small and skinny, I’ve been through my own health problems too that made me feel inferior; infections and inflammation ravaging my organs, requiring hospital stays, scans, monitoring and minor operations. My health has always been up and down. Related to this I also went through a few years of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which later turned out to be glandular fever (Americans call it ‘Mono’), mixed in with acute antibiotic poisoning, candidiasis and a whole bucket of other crap.
Essentially, I had my fair share of feeling weak and powerless. As Ed and I pounded those dirt paths together, breathing heavily and wet with winter rain that decided to visit us in July, we weren’t just running, we were proving something to everyone else, and mostly, to ourselves.
Obstacles – in all Senses
At this point, about three or four miles in, there was an ominous lack of obstacles, conspicuous by their absence, we both started to ask each other what was going on.
We’d jumped over some hay bails, we’d climbed a couple of walls, but that was it. The Nuclear Race we ran the year before was obstacle rich, this seemed to be more about straight running and I needed a break.
Undertrained, my IT band syndrome had kicked in. It’s a common runner’s injury and I only found I was prone to it when I attempted to climb the three mountain peaks of the UK in a day (a challenge known to Brits simply as ‘The Three Peaks’) and I got stuck halfway down Ben Nevis when moving my knees became so painful I had to climb down backwards, on my hands and knees.
Ed was with me then too, and he stuck with me on that mountainside when others left as I slowed us down to a literal crawl. (To note, he did also film me on my hands as knees and sent it to our friend’s WhatsApp group.)
The first real obstacle encountered was a blessing for the leg pain I was experiencing. Rest. The obstacle was a giant sloping wall, and the only way anyone could get up was to climb on their fellow racer’s shoulders.
Full of bravado, I let a giant ginger man use me as a human ladder, his Nikes and Celtic weight crushing my shoulders as he scrambled up and grabbed the hands of strangers reaching down to help him.
I too did the same to someone else, but at 145lb I felt like stopping to explain to them how lucky they were they got me and not the guy I just had.
Ed and I helped lots of other people up the wall once we were at the summit. Working out my back and shoulders by pulling people over the top was a relief after my legs and knees had taken such a pounding.
Soon after, the obstacles came thick and fast and I had slowed down to a hobble – my knees had begun to cease up like an old tin man needing oil and each footstep became super painful.
The jocular group of men all dressed as Steve Irwin that we were determined to keep up with at the start had dwindled into the distance and runners passed us as I winched with every stride.
Oddly, I found skipping along meant I could move fast and the pain was minimal, so for a mile or two I sporadically broke into a skip as people laughed, or joined in, before I informed them it’s the only way I could move with speed.
Ed stoically battled on beside me, not skipping, but also with no complaints or requests I stop embarrassing him.
We came across an obstacle that was a pit of muddy water, five foot deep with two giant monolithic blocks stretched across it, both of which rotated with the power of group force. The idea was one group of runners pushed the block round whilst a second group grabbed onto the right-angled edges and let the momentum carry them over.
It was teamwork extraordinaire, and shoulder deep in that brown water I momentarily forgot how cold I was as I worked together with strangers to help everyone through.
The Nuclear Race had had no obstacles that required co-operation. Tough Mudder had plenty. Your body became a tool, and there was no wussing out. People counted on you. I liked that aspect. I liked working with people. Perhaps I would have flourished in team sports after a while.
About seven miles in we had to slide down a tube into an ice bath. The water was, well, icy, and it stole the breath from us as we plunged in. Once in, we had to swim under a barrier, the water dark, freezing and punishing. I emerged feeling wrecked as a huge man beside me also rose from the water at the same time. We made eye contact, his face full of shock. I must have had the same expression as we both burst out laughing and swore lots as we clambered out the freezing metal container.
I thought the ice would help my knees but it seized them up further, and after the cold dip, even walking became painful. Ed kept on suggesting corners we could cut to help me, but I refused. I told him if I had to crawl to the end, I would, but I’m doing the whole course.
In the midst of the struggle I kept thinking about David Goggins (who else?) running his 100 mile race, utterly destroyed by mile 80 and still completing. Surely I could do the same?
I once heard a phrase “How do you know who you are if you don’t do hard things?” It turned over in my mind, that and Goggins shouting “You don’t know me son!” as pain radiated up my legs and my neck felt like someone had taken to it with a baseball bat.
I was in agony.
I wondered why other people could do these races and not get destroyed like I was. I hated myself even more for my weakness and kept momentarily breaking into a run for ten or twenty metres just to punish myself, short bursts that were followed by surges of roaring pain up my legs.
There were other obstacles along the way, electric shock wires dangling over mud traps, monkey bars over water everyone fell into, that sort of thing. Then we got to the water tank covered in a cage that I saw in the email. It was the second to last obstacle before the finish line. By this point I was so ruined, and so determined to finish, I just got in a did the bloody thing without thinking. Floating in water with my face poking out felt like a holiday compared to the last hour I’d been through.
Finally, we climbed over what must be a fifty foot net before ending the race – but not before one last huge man climbed on me and Ed as we helped him to the netting. “He was heavier than I thought” said Ed. All I could do was nod.
When we finished, no one cheered, no one saw, and no one cared. It was just me and Ed, wet and covered in mud. I didn’t even feel triumphant, the discomfort all over my body was too distracting. I was so beat up that grabbing my medal and bag felt like I was still racing. All movement hurt. My knees were on fire but it was my neck and shoulders that were in agony most of all. How? Why? Too many people treading on me, I guessed.
We stumbled back to the car and drove home. It wasn’t until I got into a hot shower at Ed’s house that I felt it was over. I could relax. Everywhere ached and I’d defiantly done something to my neck, it was hurting far more than an aching muscle would, nonetheless, I had done it. Goggins pissed blood when he finished his 100 mile race, so what was I complaining about?
Sure, most people probably did the race without so much stupid suffering, or drama in their heads, but fuck them, this was my moment to feel pride and relief.
The Aftermath
I drove home that night in a desperate bid to be in my own bed for Sunday morning. Ed’s wife is a vet and their house is full of animals, one of which was a tiny rescue pug that was undeniable cute, but also barked throughout the night. So much so that the night before the race I had to bring it upstairs into my bed to get it to settle. I got very little sleep, disturbed by the cutest little barrel of heavy-breathing dog. I couldn’t have that again, post-race. I yearned for my own bed.
I came home to no fanfare or hero’s welcome. I tried explaining to my family what I had been through and one of my kids said “You want us to be impressed because you decided to suffer on purpose.”
I guess he was right. I decide to do it. Stop moaning. No one cared but me. But it’s in these personal victories where we find ourselves. “How do you know who you are if you don’t do hard things?”
Looking back, in the moments of pain and struggle throughout the race, I knew I’d finish it, no matter what. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind. If Goggins can destroy himself and recover, so could I. The human body can take one hell of a beating when required.
During the race Ed called me stubborn. And I sure am. I’m small, I’m weak but physical strength has limits, mental strength does not. Who knows where it can take us.
I did a ten mile run, it’s hardly touching the hardship of soldiers in the Ukrainian winter, or the troops in the Napoleonic wars of frozen Russia, or the men who climb Everest without oxygen tanks, or those who run through Death Vally during ultra marathons.
I didn’t do anything remarkable, but I didn’t quit. And that to me is good enough. That is my own remarkable.
And that’s probably why I’m doing it again next year. But this time, I might train a little more.
