Welcome to the first post in the How To Series. In this edition we will be explaining how to become a Tough Mudder Legionnaire, and acquiring the new multi-coloured headbands that you may have seen around the Tough Mudder courses this year. Hopefully we will answer the many questions we have received on Facebook and Twitter regarding Mudder Legion. Lets first have a bit of a history lesson. During 2013, the Tough Mudder organisation started seeing the number of repeat Mudders grow and grow at every event. People were returning for more pain and glory at an alarming rate. Few Mudders were even making special hats out of their orange headbands, called "headband stacking" (see photos below). This got Tough Mudder thinking - how could they separate the outstanding repeat Mudders from the first timers? This was the point when Mudder Legion was invented.
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This edition of the Obstacle Series features an obstacle so notoriously feared, that is it the most skipped challenge at any Tough Mudder event worldwide. The crowd love standing around watching people attempt this obstacle, and it always appears right before the finish line. You can hear the music blaring at the end of the 20km you've almost finished running, and you know that there is only one more obstacle left to overcome. You rack your brain trying to remember what the only challenge is left that you haven't completed. Then it hits you, just as you round the corner. You finally realise that the screaming you can hear isn't the crowd going wild for the Mudders crossing the finish line - it is actually coming from the Mudders. Mudders running through the 10,000 volt wires in the Electro Shock Therapy obstacle. How fun. Obstacle: Electroshock Therapy
Objective: To run through 20ish metres of live electric wires, trying not to get shocked too much, while jumping over small knee height hay bales. Difficulty: Physical - 3/10 | Mental - 11/10 This is the most hated obstacle out of all the 25+ Tough Mudder obstacles available. It appears at every single Mudder event worldwide, seemingly always just before the finish line, as if running the last 19.5km For today’s post we have something a little different - the 7 most Deadly Tough Mudder Sins. Mudder veterans and Legionnaires should know most of these already, but for you newcomers to Mudder, these are the 7 evils which you must not commit on your first (or any) Tough Mudder weekend.
This is a list specific to Tough Mudder, so if you are running one of those lesser obstacle courses, you may have to find a different list of sins not to commit. So without further ado, here is your list of the 7 Deadly Tough Mudder Sins. You can hear the screams almost a kilometer before you reach your next obstacle. That can only mean one thing. The electricity is in the air! Today’s Obstacle Series post will help you overcome your crippling fear of getting zapped by 10,000 volt live wires. It’s not as bad as it sounds. Really! Obstacle: Electric Eel
Objective: As fast as you can, crawl through the water, with the live electric wires dangling down over your head. You can try and swerve around the wires, but odds are you will get hit by at least one! The obstacle is only about 20 metres long, and only lasts maybe 30 seconds to a minute – what’s a minute worth of being zapped in comparison to a lifetime of Tough Mudder memories and stories once you finish? Difficulty: Physical - 2/10 | Mental - 10/10 Physically, this is a simple challenge. Commando crawling through a few inches of water. Not hard at all right? It’s the mental aspect of this obstacle that gets to people. Anything to do with electricity is set to freak Everest. Just hearing that name brings fear to any Tough Mudder. As you round what you think is the final corner before the finish line, you almost walk smack bang into it. There it is, in all it's glory. Everest. You thought you were almost at the finish line? Think again! Arms hanging dead by your sides, legs dragging behind you, you're completely stuffed. Here is how to overcome one of Tough Mudder's most iconic obstacles! Obstacle: Everest
Objective: To get up and over the quarter pipe Everest. Once up the top, have a look around at the views, then help a few people climbing behind you. Difficulty: Physical - 10/10 | Mental - 8/10 Physically this is a killer. Having to run up a quarter pipe on a normal day is hard enough, but towards the end of a 20km Tough Mudder, all covered in mud and whatever else? Now that is tough. Anyone that has completed a Mudder will always tell 2 stories - one about the electric obstacles and the other about Everest. It truly is the iconic Mudder challenge. Mental difficulty is quite high on this obstacle, as it is almost always one of the last challenges on the Welcome to the third post in the Obstacle Series. This time we are talking about my most hated obstacle ever, the Trench Warfare. Claustrophobia setting in, feeling like the walls and roof around you are going to fall in - how do you overcome such devastating fears? Read on! Obstacle: Trench Warfare
Objective: To crawl (on your hands and knees if you're small enough, or on your stomach if you aren't) underground through a winding tunnel approximately 20-30 metres long. This obstacle has been known to be partially underwater as well, although no Australian Tough Mudder has yet been so. Difficulty: Physical - 4/10 | Mental - 8/10 Crawling through tunnels would seem quite easy, child's play even. This is definitely not the case. Once again we have a mind over strength obstacle in the Obstacle Series (this seems to be a recurring theme so far). Those with claustrophobia and fears of being buried alive will have a lot of trouble with this obstacle. I believe this to be the second most bypassed challenge of all Tough Mudder obstacles, behind only the Today is Friday, which means only one thing - the next post in the Obstacle Series! This time we cover the Cage Crawl - another water obstacle, which was introduced into Tough Mudder in 2014. Being a relatively new challenge, it is good to see most of the kinks have been worked out before its introduction to the Mudder world. Read on to find out more about the Cage Crawl. Obstacle: Cage Crawl
Objective: Swim through cold muddy water on your back, with a cage above your head giving you only inches of room to breathe, for a distance of 20 metres. Difficulty: Physical - 5/10 | Mental - 8/10 Swimming on your back with not much room to breathe, and feeling trapped underneath the cage can be quite nerve wreaking for some people. Even getting into the water, and turning around to start the obstacle can be too much for some. People with claustrophobia will not like this challenge one bit (myself included), This is the our first post in the new Obstacle Series. There are upwards of 28 obstacles total in Tough Mudder's across the world, and we will be bringing them all to you. Twice a week (on Tuesday and Friday) our blog will be updated with a new obstacle, and will include what this obstacle is, its difficulty rating, how to train for it, photos and how the TMTour2014 fared on it. You will be able to see all obstacle posts by clicking on the "Obstacle Series" button under categories on the right of your screen. Obstacle: The Arctic Enema.
Objective: Some claim this to be the worst obstacle of all - even beating out the Electro Shock Therapy. Jumping into a skip of freezing water, filled to the brim with ice, is not anyone's cup of tea. But that's not all; you also have to duck your head under the wooden sign and under the icy water, and come out the other side. Then you have to wade through the rest of the ice and water, and jump out at the end. Simple concept, but very difficult to pull off successfully. Difficulty: Physical - 2/10 | Mental - 9/10 It's been a few days since my lost post, so I thought I'd better update you all with what's happening between now and the next Mudder, up on the Sunshine Coast mid-August.
With a bit less than 15 weeks left, I have upped my training. I am still doing my regular 6km runs around the block with my Training Mask (more times than not getting better PB's), and I've thrown in some longer runs mask-less. I am slowly upping these runs to 10km along the dirt track near my house. I try to do these longer runs whenever it's raining, as it makes the track muddier, and more Mudder like. I will be heading up to the 1000 steps in Mt Dandenong again this weekend, and get back into going there weekly. I haven't been in quite a while, and I've missed the scenery up there! I just hope my 1000 steps training partner is free this weekend! I've started implementing my newly acquired logs into my runs now too, which I wrote about a few posts ago. Auckland photos are finally up! Our friend Lisa, who also put us up for the weekend, came to the course on Sunday as our professional photographer. With around 250 photos to go through, compared to the approximate 15-20 that the Tough Mudder photographers took (I'm not even going to start talking about the price to get them!!), it's 100 times better to bring along a spectator to take photos of the event.
You know what, I am going to have a rant about the Tough Mudder photos they have on offer. Don't get me wrong, I love my Tough Mudders, but this is ridiculous. I had about 20 photos that I found on the Mudder photo site, total for both days I ran. There was a couple really good ones that I would like to get digital copies to put up here on my blog, so I clicked the few that I wanted. $29.95 for a single digital copy of a photo. Let's just take a second to let that sink in. 30 dollars for a single, digital copy of a photo. What. The. Hell? Or 70 dollars if you want to download all your images (note: all images means from 1 day, so if you ran both days, thats $140 for all images). This is ridiculous. We are all paying upwards of $100 per Tough Mudder (usually closer to $200), and they expect us to pay these prices for photos? I feel with the huge ticket price, any photos taken on course should be free to download. I know I can't be alone in thinking this... |