Last December I did my first ever obstacle race. 12 miles of running, climbing, crawling, balancing, diving, and being shocked. The Tough Muddder. It was awesome. I can't remember the last time I had that much fun. Almost as soon as I got home I started looking for other similar events. Last weekend I did the Spartan. For my own brain it would be worth comparing the two events. I have in mind to eventually try all of the events like these that are within reasonable driving distance which is probably less than 4 hours drive.
The Tough Mudder was north east of Tampa. The race took place over a Saturday and a Sunday. They release 600 runners every 20 minutes. There wasn't a lot of communication prior to the race but as soon as we arrived they were ready for us. Ample parking and polished logistics. The race itself took place on a large farm/ranch. Beautiful area. Mud was dark and rich and probably 20% mud, 80% poop. The 26 obstacles were well spaced out. We ran between 10 - 12 miles and probably never more than 1 mile at a time due to the spacing of the obstacles. The finish line greeted us with Cliff bars, bottled water, builders milk, gel blocks, a shiny tough mudder t-shirt and the highly coveted orange headband. After race events included live music, lots of fried food, tattoos, showers (i.e. hoses laying on the ground), a free XX beer, and the entertainment of watching people run thru the electroshock therapy obstacle. After the race you could search look up photos of yourself by entering your race tag number. If that didn't show up you could look thru the 3,568,742 pictures that were not labeled in hopes of seeing yourself or one of your teammates.
The spartan was held in north Miami at a state park. Same deal, the race took place over a Saturday/Sunday. Only a couple hundred racers were released at a time. As soon as you signed up for the race they started sending your daily workouts, VERY challenging daily workouts. We parked at a local college and rode a bus over to the race location. Lots of people were late for their heat because they didn't account for the 40 minute wait and the 10 minute bus ride. Bummer for them. I like to be really early. Beautiful setting again at a state park. The one bummer to the setting was that most of the course was on mountain bike single track. Lots of rocks and roots which wouldn't be a problem if I were a runner who wore normal shoes. I wear 5 finger shoes with vibram soles. After a mile the rocks starting calling to mind all of the colorful ways I learned to use profanity in the Army. There was a big swim at the beginning of the race. I'm a bad swimmer - not fun. The obstacles were not evenly spread out. At one point of the 8 mile race we ran 4.5 miles straight. The worst grouping of obstacles was at the end when we low crawled thru tar-like black mud and then had to traverse some vertical walls. I couldn't do it, not many people could. Any obstacle that you failed required 30 burpees. Bah. The finish line greeted you with bananas, powerade, some kind of funky green bar, a spartan medal and a cool t-shirt. Food and better showers followed the event. They gave every runner a chip which signaled cameras when you approached and tagged pictures with personal ID's. That should be really cool once they get the pictures up on their website.
Both events were great and totally worth doing again.
