My Tough Mudder Memoire

Obstacle # 1

Amused but not egotistical enough to sprint up an incline, I continued my jog with occasional walk and eventually found the top of the climb. And obstacle #1 Kiss of Mud:  Eat dirt as you crawl commando-style under barbed wire set 8 inches from the ground. Dirt suggests a level, dry crawling ground. What I instead got to go belly first through was thick, sticky, slippy mud. I have hip length hair and had braided it back for the day, and part of me feared getting it tangled in the very real barbed wire. Instead it promptly dove under me, dragging through the mud. Many of the females around me were parading about in tiny shorts and sports bras, but I was thoroughly grateful to have pants on as my naked elbows found the sharp edges of rocks concealed by the muck. Sadly enough, to my right was a gentleman trying to set a crawl mud speed record and his foot slid through the goo of mud to solidly nail my abdomen, just under the rib cage. It was accidental and he apologized profusely for it, but I sounded rather like a seal barking as I tried to remember how to breath while I continued to crawl. By the time I reached the other side of obstacle 1, I realized why they suggest you don’t wear cotton as my pants were stretched and coated in mud. I shrugged it off and kept running, having it pointed out to me that I was already bleeding. My elbows and those rocks had a brief, passionate love affair that cost me some skin it seemed. As we ran towards the next area, many of the Mudders around me were joking about it going to be dissatisfying cold. I’m a rather sarcastic person by nature and cracked many other up by commenting out loud that “I don’t even have balls and mine are already starting to retreat!”