Tough Mudder Run Part 3, The Height

I won't lie, after Electric Eel it was difficult to run. My head was ringing and I was trying to do a mental check to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything important. That may sound silly, but I was concerned, okay?


Trench Warfare

Directly after Electric Eel was another obstacle that I was dreading, trench warfare. Here you have to crawl through small, tight trenches that have been covered up on top so it is effectively pitch black and the only way through is to feel your way as they tend to zig zag. I have always been a claustrophobic person and I hate, hate, hate small spaces like this. But once I got in the hole and started moving I really didn't have as much of a problem as I thought I would. I was more concerned with scraping up my elbows and knees as this wasn't really dirt it was more like broken up rock that we were crawling on. At any rate I was glad to be out and so I continued.

I will mention at this point that even though there were twenty-three official obstacles, there were a ton of unofficial "little" obstacles. Usually this was trudging through mud, but sometimes it was jumping a large chasm or jumping into and scaling back up a ravine. I assume these types of obstacles are usually just based on what is in the environment, but we had probably about seven or eight of these in addition to the official obstacles. I only mention it now because it was during this point that we had to jump a large ravine and I jammed my knee landing. Fortunately I was able to walk it off and proceed.

Walk the Plank

Up next was a fun one, Walk the Plank. Here you climb up a large 15 foot wall and then jump off the other side into a (thankfully) deep pool of water. This one is to test your fear of heights, and they have marines at the top yelling at you to jump so you don't linger. This one was easy for me as I love the high dive at the pool and as a bonus it cleaned off a lot of the mud that I had gathered. Feeling refreshed, I ran on.

Wounded Warrior Carry

The next obstacle I hadn't read about and wasn't expecting. A wounded warrior carry. You had to team up with someone and carry them 100 yards and then switch off. Since I was alone I assisted a nice couple where me and the other guy were carrying the girl. When it came time to switch off it was obvious she couldn't carry either one of us and there was really no one else around for me to carry, so I just had to walk it with them. I feel bad though because I don't really think I fully accomplished this obstacle. After this we hit the second water station. Then it was more running! Yay!

Cliffhanger

This is where things get a little fuzzy for me, we were doing a lot of running and there were a lot of those little obstacles combined with one big one which was called Cliffhanger. We had to walk across the shallow end of a small pond and then scale a twenty foot rock face. Unfortunately the rock was not so much rock but densely packed dirt and mud so it was a bear getting up the thing without slipping down to the bottom. By going to the side where not as many people had gone and choosing my footholds carefully I was able to scale it successfully the first time. Directly after this we had to do it again, except this time there was a cargo net draped over the mud so it was a bit easier. Again, to the side and not up the middle got me up and over quickly.

Berlin Walls #2

Continuing on there was more running, and it was becoming apparent that this part of the course there would be a lot more running and less obstacles. We came upon the second set of Berlin Walls, significantly higher at 10 feet each and it was obvious that unless you were super strong you would need help to get over these. Again like with Spider's Web people were taking turns by climbing, sitting at the top and helping the next person up before dropping back down the other side. People were also helping others land on the other side because a ten foot drop is nothing to screw around with. I did my part helping a few people up and over and then continued running...

End Part 3.

Click here for Part 4.
Click here to go back to Part 2.

Note: none of these pictures are mine, my wife was only able to walk to the first set and last set of obstacles, so we don't have pictures of many of the ones in the middle.