Tough Mudder & Father’s Day
The Tough Mudder. For those of you who have not heard about it by now, you should definitely look into it. A 10-13 mile long obstacle course design by British Special Forces to be one of the hardest adventure races around. I could describe it for hours of course, but please just visit their site and check out the events, the obstacles and find the next race in your area and join now: www.toughmudder.com
Colorado’s event was in Beaver Creek. We took advantage of our good friends the Schell’s generosity again and stayed at their house in Vail over this weekend. Arriving Friday afternoon to settle in and explore the area and to pack in as many glasses of water and carbohydrates as possible to prep for the race.
The next morning we headed to the event early to park and meet up with the team. So some background info here. The idea for this race started in my office back in August. Our fearless leader Lana signed herself and her husband Matt up on a whim to run this race. From that point on, she started convincing the rest of us that we should do it with them. Come early 2013 we had over 20 people signed up on team “Iron Geeks”. But this was no casual team, we actually trained together every Tuesday and Thursday we would run through the Tough Mudder training program at lunch to prep ourselves for what was coming (this was no easy training program either...try it: http://toughmudder.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/tough-mudder-boot-camp.pdf ). I also supplemented this training with plenty of running and weights at the gym thus achieving the goal I usually set out to do when signing up for something like this: getting in really great shape.
Anyway, we all show-up on a BEAUTIFUL race day at the base of the ski resort in Beaver Creek. All trying to remind ourselves why we would sign up for something that is not only hard, but guaranteed painful with dips into ice-water and runs through dangling wires loaded with up to 10,000 volts. Worse, the last obstacle is right at the start/finish line: Electroshock Therapy. We can watch for the next few hours as people run through this only to get hit so hard they fall to the ground convulsing.... YESSSSSS. So why are we doing this? Oh yeah, because it is awesome.
At 1pm we line up for our start wave and get a 10 minute pump-up from the MC before they set us off on what would be 5.5 hours of mud, grinds running up black-diamond ski-slops and obstacles designed to push us both mentally and physically. The scenery was amazing. Running through Aspens and on mountain tops all day. The team was great. Urging each other on and pushing so everyone one of us would finish. And the family was the best. Katy and the kids toughed it out for 6 hours in the hot sun waiting to find me and the team and cheer us on. Molly was sick as a dog and was miserable, but she stuck it out with no small effort from Katy keeping her happy. Caden was a rock star cheering everyone on and enjoying the ski-lifts and gondolas while waiting for dad to show-up. The course map is below. It doesn’t quite do it justice as I swear even though the start and stop are in the same place, the entire course was uphill. And here are some great pictures of the day too. I am so going to this again...and Katy is joining me next year!
Oh yeah. And even better for me was that Father’s Day was the day after! But after making the kids suffer through the previous day, I tried to make it all about them...even though walking was tough. Katy and the kids still spoiled me with presents and attention. No one has it as good as me....
Me and Brian after kicking ass and taking names on the Tough Mudder course