The Ten Commandments of the World's Toughest Mudder: The Tenth Commandment

(10) Thou shalt never travel alone.

Scene: 8pm on Saturday night. My tent. I had just finished my second lap, and was huddling in my sleeping bag with MRE heaters at my feet, trying to get up the courage to get back out there again. It was cold. And miserable. And I was alone. WTM had set up the pit areas in a line about a mile long, and, while I had met dozens of fellow racers the night before, I had no idea where their tents were or if they were even in them. I had ran the first two laps on my own, not sticking with any particular person. While this was tolerable for the first lap due to the number of people out there, the second lap was only bearable thanks to the amazing Tom Keller that followed me, taking pictures, and encouraging me every step of the way.

But I was lonely, cold, and a bit depressed. My wetsuit and my shoes had frozen solid from being outside my tent for a half hour. And I was scared at the prospect of getting back out there for more laps. By myself.

The Ten Commandments of the World's Toughest Mudder: Part III

(7) Thou shall get your ass into the water
Standing there, staring at it, isn't going to make it go away or magically get warmer. It's December. In Jersey. Normal people don't get into freezing bodies of water at this time of year. And they definitely wouldn't do so, voluntarily, repeatedly, over the course of 24 hours.

So I have two musings on this point.

The Ten Commandments of World's Toughest Mudder: Part II

The guy in the red cap is doing it right.
Everyone else sucks

(4) Thou shall learn how to climb tactical ladders
Yup, those dangly nylon bitches are actually quite simple if you know how to climb them: reverse grip (palms facing towards you), stepping up wrapping your legs around and hooking them into the rear of the ladder. Coming into WTM, I heard horror stories of the "Rope a Dope" at Tri-State. People stuck, ass over backwards, trying to get up the ladders.

Come WTM time, once again, I saw the same thing at both sets of tactical ladders. [begin rage] On the first lap, I waited for 15 minutes at the bottom of the Massive Turd waiting for some dickwad to pull himself up the ladder. And he sat, spinning and spinning helplessly. It kinda reminded me of a fly in a spider's web. Except that this fly was giving me hypothermia from waiting for his ass to die. For the love of god, climb the effin ladder or get down so I can show you how its done [end rage].

The Ten Commandments of World's Toughest Mudder: Part I

What two wetsuits and a hood look like

(1) Thou shall respect the power of neoprene

While there were many different types of crazy at WTM, it quickly became apparent that many people underestimated the cold. Compression gear, whether CW-X or Under Armour, does wonders, but mostly only when it's dry. When the 40 degree water hits (as it did in the second obstacle), all of those wetsuit-haters began to realize that they had made a critical tactical error. I was one of them. Given that it was a sunny, mid-40's day, I didn't plan to put on my wetsuit until after the first lap. Needless to say, the first lap was perhaps the coldest, and most miserable, that I was during the entire 24 hours. Once I was fully armored in layers of neoprene: socks, hood, wetsuit (and 2 wetsuits in the later laps), my core stayed toasty, even during the full submersions.

Forgive me...

...because I am likely the most technologically-tarded person you will ever meet. Everyone said Blogger was the easiest platform to use, but I've spent precious hours trying to align text, cut out odd spacing, and find the perfect font.

There's a reason I'm a lawyer. If I can't call a firm-wide technology help line 24 hours a day, I'd probably never be able to get anything done.

So this blog will likely morph as I bribe my more html-saavy friends into teaching me a few tricks.

For the time being, I will continue to work out the kinks and perhaps actually write a post about the blog's subject: all things non-traditional racing. Your so-called mud runs or obstacle races or adventure races. Your Tough Mudders and Spartans and GoRucks or SERE challenges. And occasionally a standard (cough *boring* cough) road race.

Welcome. Happy reading (or not reading)