Welcome back Mudders! Here is the second installment of the Sydney Tough Mudder Review. If you haven't read the first half, you can have a look here. Nothing else needs to be said really, so lets just jump right back into it!
Only one word can describe the Sydney Tough Mudder this past weekend – Brutal. No course so far this year in Australasia has come close to the toughness of this event, and I for one am extremely happy about this. Extremely sore, but happy!
There was barely a foot set wrong the entire weekend, which is fantastic. It really shows that Tough Mudder Australia listens to us fans and participants. But you haven’t come here to read about the little things that went right or wrong, you’ve come here to read all about the most important part on any Tough Mudder course – the obstacles! So here is the Tough Mudder Tour 2014 review of the Sydney obstacles! Another Australasian Tough Mudder event done and dusted, another TMtour2014 Event Review! Find out how Perth stacks up against the rest of Australia, in their second Tough Mudder to date. How was the weather compared to the torrential downpour on the Sunshine Coast? Did it hit the comradery levels of Auckland? Was the course better spread out then Melbourne? Have a read, and see how the 4th Tough Mudder in Australia and New Zealand this year went! 26 days is not a very long turnaround time for two Tough Mudder events in Australasia – you wouldn’t think much would change in the time between Sunshine Coast in August, and Septembers Perth Mudder. But in all honesty, the two events were really worlds apart. For good or bad? That’s for you to decide. In this Event Review, the TMtour2014 crew will be fine picking the Perth Mudder apart, going through everything that Tough Mudder did right, and what they got wrong and should fix. We will also be rating the course compared to the other 3 events run this year, Melbourne, Auckland New Zealand and Sunshine Coast. Do you think you know which has been the best so far? The crowd favourite? Think again, we may just be a curve ball thrown at you! Welcome to the official Sunshine Coast Tough Mudder review, by TMtour2014. As you know, we are running every single event in Australia and New Zealand this year, and reviewing each one for you. If you want, you can check out the Melbourne and New Zealand reviews too. I have decided to give two reviews for Sunshine Coast this time around, one a more personal review including the day’s pre and post event, and which was more about my time up on the Sunshine Coast doing Tough Mudder, and then this Official Review, which will be going into detail only about the event itself. You can have a read of my personal review here. This Tough Mudder was marketed a lot more than previous Mudders in Australia. I feel this is because it was 111 days since New Zealand Mudder and Sunshine Coast, or 146 days between Australian Mudders Melbourne and Sunshine Coast. There was a long time between events, so obviously they marketed it a lot more than usual. Also, This Mudder weekend there was 5 events across 4 countries, on 3 continents for 2 days. 1 Mudder Nation. A lot of effort went into making this weekend huge across the Tough Mudder world, and it paid off, with over 60,000 participants globally. But enough about how good a business Tough Mudder is, let’s get into what you want to know – how the actual event went.
This is my personal review of the Tough Mudder weekend, including my thoughts, how I went and everything else that happened (including the non Mudder related) on the weekend. You may be more interested in reading my review of the actual event, rather than my weekend. That can be found here. That focuses more on the event, how it went, what was good and what was bad.
Pumped up doesn’t even start to describe how I felt Saturday morning when I awoke, even though it was at the ungodly time of 5:30am. I don’t think I’ve ever been up this early before, except for maybe the previous day when we had to be at Melbourne airport at 5:30. Not pleasant.
A quick hearty breakfast and we were off on the 45 minute trip South through Auckland to the Hampton Downs Racetrack, or so we thought. Turns out at some point we made a wrong turn on the highway, and started travelling east, which we didn’t realise for about half an hour. So we went almost an hour out of the way, and were very late for the first wave ever in New Zealand Mudder history. Unfortunately, we missed the first two waves, and had to settle for jumping in the 8:40 start. I was a little upset about this, not being able to be one of the first ever people to run in the inaugural Auckland Tough Mudder, but then things took a turn for the better. Bib: 11408
Start: 09:00 Finish: 12:45 Time: 3hrs 45min Obstacles: 19 Distance: 20km Steps: 37,254 Weather: Overcast After yesterday's run, and feeling as sore as I did last night when I went to bed, I was a little unsure if I would actually be able to run the event today. But when I woke up, I was feeling slightly better than last night. My left hip flexor had relaxed just a tiny bit, and wasn't screaming out in agony, which was a good start. The day started off the same as yesterday. An early rise, quick breakfast of avo on toast (the best), got ready and left the beach house with the boys. The boys, my running mates for today, are my housemate Tristan and our mate Craig. This will be Tristan's 3rd Tough Mudder event, and Craig's first. Craig was extremely nervous about the event, not knowing what to expect, and whether he'll be able to overcome all the obstacles. I was also a little nervous, for the same reasons as Craig, but because of my soreness from yesterday. We arrived at the Grand Prix track at about 8:30, and realised the two idiots had left their tickets at home. After standing in line not believing me for ten minutes that they needed them, we finally got to the front of the queue, and found I was right. So for the next 15 minutes, they had to manually search for their names on the computers the volunteers had. Good start to the day boys! Bib: 03497
Start: 08:00 Finish: 11:35 Time: 3hrs 35min Obstacles: 19 Distance: 20km Steps: 33,038 (thanks to my Fitbit Flex, which didn't die in the mud) Weather: Overcast and Rainy I awoke this morning full of energy. Now I'm not a morning person, I usually wake up dead to be honest, but this morning was different. I was jumping out of my skin as soon as my alarm went off at 7am, and I took this to be a good sign! My nerves from the last night had all but disappeared. I had a quick breakfast of avocado on toast, got dressed and ready, bummed around the house for a little bit, then eventually walked out the door. My plan was to run this morning with two friends of mine, Heather and Andrew. I left my phone at the beach house, so that I wouldn't lose it, and it wasn't until I arrived at the event that I realised how would I contact them? Didn't think that one through too well. After walking around for 20 minutes, taking in the event, and looking for Heath and Andrew, I finally just decided to jump in the starting wave without them; the 8:00am start, and run by myself and make some new friends on the course. So I ran by myself. Even though we were the first wave of the weekend, I was quite slow - close to the back of the pack, so by the time I came up to the obstacles, they were already getting muddy. As fun as the event is there was some extremely long runs in-between some of the obstacles, some well over a kilometre long. At one point, I was running by myself for over 10 minutes before I passed or someone passed me. This was fine, as the scenery out in Phillip Island is amazing. For about the first third of the event it rained quite heavily. Compared to last year's extremely hot 30 degree plus Tough Mudder, I was quite happy to dance in the rain. No sunburn for me this year! |