Are You a Tough Enough To Be a Tough Mudder?

In our age, there is a never ending quest to be the toughest and the mightiest, and it’s a battle to come up with events that are each harder than the next.  It’s no longer enough to run dozens of miles and swim dozens of meters. Meet the Tough Mudder.

What caught my attention was their 2.1 million Facebook likes. What was this thing called “Tough Mudder?” It’s wildly popular, and I dug in watching a video of the grueling 10-mile long course.

There are hundreds of TM events around the world that force participants to dive into icy water, crawl under torturous barbed wire, swim with big logs, run through four-foot high flames of kerosene and scale 12-foot high walls. At the end, wires with as much as 10,000 volts are the final obstacle.

A big part of the appeal is that the racers help one another get over the barriers. It’s a massive bonding event for the strongest men and women, and also benefits the Wounded Warriors Charity for veterans.

I have the same reaction to this notion as I do about the Iron man triathlon, or the race I heard about in Montana that takes three weeks and follows a course over hundreds of miles over mountains. I just must have missed out on the gene that makes people want it tough, bad, torturous, and to seek that satisfaction you get from overcoming such challenges. I keep thinking about getting injured…and they add a $15 insurance policy to the $200 last minute admission fee just in case.

If you’re one of the thousands of young people who would love something crazy like this, your chance is coming on May 5-6 at Mt Snow, Vermont.  Tough enough?