Tough Mudder Lake Tahoe: GO TRX!

Tough Mudder Lake Tahoe: Mission Complete.

My dear friend and TRX coworker Hayley Hollander wrote a fantastic blog about the event and conquering fear. Following her theme I wanted to summarize some of the great lessons I learned through this amazing event.

• Things never go as expected
• Elevation changes the game
• Many muddy men in speedos and underpants is not always a good thing
• Gravity isn’t always helpful
• Electricity will always be scary
• Not EVERYTHING in life is a competition
• Peter is one special person

Things never go as expected:
We left Kim’s beautiful house in Tahoe City for the race about 2.5 hours early. With event traffic, parking lot closures, and rerouting we FINALLY arrived at the race 1.5 hours after our wave had already begun the race. Many of us (okay, mostly me) started to stress out and worry, but as a team we decided to take a deep breath, get to the venue, regroup, and start the race. We quickly found out missing our starting wave was no big deal at all and life (and the race) went on just fine.

Elevation changes the game:
“Have fun at 6,000 feet elevation!” said Wisconsin Mudder and fellow TRX instructor Kari Woodall. “Bah, I’ll be fine” I thought. WRONG. My goal was to run the entire race with no walking. HA. Not when the first four miles of the race went up about three thousand feet in elevation. But despite the burning in our lunges, we did jog most of the time, thanks to the guidance of multi time Ironman Kortney.

Many muddy men in speedos and underpants is not always a good thing:
No explanation needed.

Gravity isn’t always helpful:
During the last few miles of the race, we were blessed with some downhill terrain. I made the mistake of thinking to myself how wonderful it was that nobody on our team had any injuries. Moments after that though process my right foot hit a rock, which launched me head first down the trail. Thanks to the steep incline, I didn’t stop sliding until my shoulder, arm, hand, stomach, and knee were nice and bloody. The obstacles were fine, apparently it’s the jogging I need to work on. :)

Electricity will always be scary:
As a small child my parents found it funny to give me static shocks in my Great Aunt’s house during the dry winter. From those scarring moments on (okay, they really weren’t that horrible) I’ve been scared of any sort of electric shock. During this race I had to face and accept those fears and go head on (literally) with the electricity. In my recent blog post about race day prep for Tough Mudder I remind everybody to remove all metal piercings from their bodies to prevent electricity from entering and exiting those points. The morning before the race I took my own advice and removed my earrings. Shortly after doing that I then thoughtlessly added metal hair clips in my hair. Not brilliant. During the electric eel (crawling through water under electric wires) an enormous shock jumped right into my head via my hair clip. I don’t think I was 100% knocked out, but it was close. For a moment I had no idea where I was or what I was doing and actually thought a bee had stung my head. Shortly after the big head shock painful waves of electricity zapped in 2 second intervals through the water until we were able to make it out. Still not sure how this is legal or safe, but I was happy to say I made it through. Maybe I will notice some amazing new talent or odd tick sometime this week…

Not everything in life is a competition:
Did those words just come out of my mouth? In my world everything is a competition, from eating to exercise to belching. Throughout the event I had moments in which I wanted to sprint ahead, push through pain, yell at those blocking my way to move and finish fast as possible. Thank goodness I had Peter there to remind me this was about all of us finishing as a TEAM. The world would not stop if we waited at obstacles, walked with sore friends, or stopped to help out another team. And let me tell you, the event was much more enjoyable because of that.

Peter is pretty amazing:
I was already well aware of this one. As written above, there were many times I wanted to speed ahead, get the best time possible, and not wait around. But the common theme of the race was, “Where is Peter?” He was always behind, helping people through obstacles, going back for teammates who had to walk, checking on others and cheering on those struggling. Everyday I learn from him and Tough Mudder was no exception. I will always continue to strive to be the person Peter is.

Finally, THANK YOU to Meagen Schumacher for, despite being injured, joining us on this adventure, cheering us on like crazy, scrambling up the mountain and capturing all of these amazing photos.  I am so lucky to be surrounded with wonderful people.