Ok sorry for being so lame. Can't find a single photo of me sigh...
We (the team being Tom, Fionn, the two Bens and me) got our starting time of 9.40am on the Saturday morning alongside about a few hundred other people, with having to register and park etc and get to Corby, it meant I had to go down the night before taking four trains to get there (changed at Derby, Beeston and Kettering) - marvelous. Got to the hotel around 10pm, had a quick shower and went straight to bed so I could get up around 6.45am the next morning, have a quick breakfast (I had an oatmeal flapjack, an apple and a banana for breakfast and drank a shitload of water. The previous day I'd had fish and chips for lunch and then pasta for dinner, carb loading ftw!) and meet up with the rest of the boys who drove from Manchester and London the night before. We were all in pretty good spirits and there was quite a few people in our hotel also doing Tough Mudder, everyone seemingly in lycra (honestly it's absolute godsend for an event like this).
After a short drive, we got to the Boughton Estate around 8ish and headed over to register, get our runner numbers, hand in our death waivers(!) There were quite a few people in ridiculous costumes, a group of hardcore guys in just jockstraps and there were way many more women than I'd have thought, they made up about 20% of the field. Also, I was surprised how many people doing it who clearly weren't super fit, I mean I had done a lot of training for this and would say I'm in decent shape but there are people who are way stronger/fitter/more athletic than I am yet there were people who I just looked at and thought, you're probably going to struggle.
Tom and I both had a shot of Jack3d to help while Fionn gave me one of his spare gels for later on, I also got my right knee taped up for support as it was still a little sore from a 7.5 mile run I'd done a few days before. We managed to miss our 9.40am start time due to everyone needing the bathroom for a second time so instead we jumped into the 10am start time - and I mean literally jumped, you had to climb a big wall just to get to the start area.
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After taking the Tough Mudder pledge (which is about just helping each other etc) and doing some last minute stretches we had the countdown to 10.00 and then we were off! The five of us had planned to stick together but it was dependent on how fast we felt we were capable of going. The first 500m or so was a gentle jog until we saw our first ditch...
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You had no choice but to just run and jump in, the water was about 6ft at it's deepest and absolutely freezing cold, it was a quick scramble to the other side where people were helping each other out of the riverbank which was quickly becoming pure mud. All accounted for we carried on towards the first obstacle, I was already numb from the cold water and yet after about 5-10 minutes more running it was back into another freezing cold river again...
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This photo was taken before we got there, but that grass you see under the barbed wire? By the time we got there it was just mud and nothing else. Halfway under the barbed wire, it took on an incline of about 30 degrees as we flapped around in the mud struggling to get to the top. The bandage on my knee was falling off, Fionn's gel that I had in my shorts had disappeared and the number on my chest was also AWOL, I was also covered in mud from head to toe. At this point, I hit my first mini wall and wondered if I was going to manage but after a couple of minutes back running I managed to get back into the swing of things and we carried on running to the next obstacle. I've already mention I've been in the cold water twice but these did not prepare me for the next obstacle which was basically an Artic bath where you had to go underwater, GOD IT WAS COLD, LOOK HOW MUCH ICE THERE IS.
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After this, we had our first wall obstacles where everyone helped everyone else climb over these massive 15ft walls onwards, this wasn't so bad to do and the running continued. There was a lot more running involved than I think some people had thought, in fact from this point onwards I passed a fair few guys who were easily more muscular than I was but who clearly hadn't done enough cardio/running work and were really going to struggle in between objects. Btw, when I say running, there were lots of spots where we were running through a mixture of trenches, wooded areas and just pure mud, it wasn't all roads and pathways! The next obstacles were a massive stack of bails of hay that was about 20-30ft high which we had to climb over followed by a slightly easier section where we each had to carry a log for about 1km through the woods. By this point Fionn and Tom had pushed on ahead while myself and the two Bens were going at a slightly steadier pace. We seemed to be in the woods for absolutely ages, there was a lot of trenches we had to jump/go through and a couple of cargo nets we had to head under (that were also on an incline). We saw the first casualty around this point as well, a 40-something guy who looked to have pulled a muscle in his leg and was in a bit of pain but was being looked after by friends, apparently around 10-15% of people don't finish Tough Mudder, I was adamant that I would not be one of them.
Part 2 to follow...
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