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Wrestling Mud – Tough Guy Challenge 2012

by Paula IJzerman » on Feb 07, 2012 1

Picture this: it’s the end of January, temperatures are around the freezing point, and almost 5000 men and women gather in a place just outside Wolverhampton, UK.

Then add: mud, 24 obstacles with names like ‘The Tiger’, ‘Chataway Chase’, ‘Colditz Walls’, ‘Behemoth’ and ‘The Torture Chamber’, icy cold water, logs, 8 miles of trail, more mud, pain, fear, monkey swinging ropes, underground tunnels, more cold water and more mud. That gives you a very rough idea of the Tough Guy Challenge.

The organisation says this about it:

Tough Guy™ is the nightmare of being chased by a herd of stallions.

Your only escape route is a mighty and revered obstacle course. Built from trees, 15 metres high with Tarzan ropes swinging. No hats and no hook ups. Just pure, organic grip strength from your cold and wet hands.

Belly flop beneath razor wire, the stallions still snorting at your heels, matching your every step. Look deep into the flames before diving through them straight into shoe sucking mud. Then something wakes you, or does it? Were the stallions just a nightmare?

No time to look back, the narrow tunnels beckon. You bravely enter to discover they’re filled with murky water. You can’t see. You can’t breathe. What chance of survival? Grope around and grab that rope. Pull yourself lungs bursting, into the light! You see the sun, or is it just another cruel mirage?

You are faced with a wall climb, as high as a mountain. No visiblity again. Is that smoke, mist or cloud? How do you get down? Take the netting or dive into the freezing lake. You suddenly realise that the sound of stallions behind is fading. You must go on. The only route is through the Arctic water.

A monkey rope, a barbed wire crawl, a rubber snake, a skin ripping snake, you can smell the finish. It’s familiar…..you recognise…..it smells like…..cocoa! You know you’ve earned it!

You wake.
You are alive.
Bloodied, battered but never beaten.
You are a Tough Guy™!

Why would anyone want to do something like this? Well, I can only speak for myself, but I did it because I can. Because it is there. Because I wanted to know if this would be near my physical limits. And maybe, just maybe, because I thought it might be fun and because I’m totally insane. Maybe.

But, having signed up for it, I had to do it. No questions, no doubt. So last Sunday, at about 10 o’clock in the morning, I entered the TG-site. The start would be an hour later, so enough time to drop dry clothes in a barn and to find out which zone I was to start. I ended up starting just behind the heroes that did it before: the Tough Guy Squad.

Fireworks go off and the game is on! And it’s Tough from the very beginning: going downhill or your behind because of the steepness. Then a gentle jog, easy enough. But that is just to deceive you…

There are trenches filled with muddy water and sides so steep you need help to get out and logs you need to jump or climb over. Another trench, another log. Then a nice jog again. No feeling in my feet or lower legs, but they seem to have survived this first part. More logs. And then the first pain starts: slalom. Uphill, downhill, uphill, downhill, the hill gets higher and steeper. Scrambling up, sliding down. Then suddenly the hill ends, but the slalom continues:  into a ditch, out on the other side, around a fence, into the ditch again, and out, over and over… it seems endless.

Next thing you know you’re crawling under heavy netting on your way to ‘the Killing Fields’. It sounds exaggerated, it’s not. Climbing onto 15 meter high structures made of wooden beams and netting, going down on the other side, jump over the flaming hay in between obstacles, and into a ditch again.

A gentle jog. Not for long, because you have to go into the water. Deep, so you have to swim. Then the watertunnels: complete submersion. The water is so cold you’ll get a screaming headache instantaniously. More swimming.

More obstacles, more running. And then, when you’re on the verge of breaking down, someone says: only 2 more obstacles, only 10 minutes. I can’t remember if I cried at that point, I just felt numb. Everywhere.

The face says it all...

Only a few minutes more. They seemed to take hours. Or maybe seconds. Crawling under barbed wire I hoped that the last obstacle wouldn’t involve water again. I was just so cold. I couldn’t stop shivering. But no way I was getting what I wanted: the last obstacle was a swim across a small pond and a scramble up a hill.

Then it all ends! The pain, the cold, the running, the mud, it’s all gone, you get a medal and you did it. I now am a Tough Guy! And I’ve got the medal to prove it!

The shivering stopped after about 2 hours, the feeling in my feet came back after 3 hours and my knees and shins still look like a battlefield. Was it fun? Hm, I don’t think ‘fun’ is the right word for Tough Guy. It was crazy, it was amazing. Will I do it again? Hell yeah!

Can it be done in VFF? Yes, I did!

1 Comment

  1. Carlo says:

    Great story, awesome Tough girl. I’m more scared about you after the whole story!!

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