Posts Tagged "Tough Guy 2010"
Tough Guy 2010 Report – Part 3
Here is Part Three of my report on Tough Guy 2010 – Year of the Original Hero.
Part One is here.
Part Two is here.
Below is a video taken by a crazy racer who strapped a camera to his head. It covers pretty much what I cover in parts 2 and 3, and by the look of the state of the track, it looks like he was among the earlier group of finishers. I think anyone considering doing the race HAS to see this video. If you can’t see the video, click here.
Brandenberg Wall
I barely remember going up this thing, but I remember coming down the amazingly long blue and green net that is placed up high on the other side, and was happy to climb a little extra to reach it, because it meant I was able to avoid the pond below entirely. I was in no shape at that point to get wet again. When I stepped off of the netting onto dry land, I was extremely proud of myself, happily jogging back around the pond towards whatever the next hurdle was they wanted to throw at me. The race organizers are sneaky bastards though, because you don’t see what the next one is right away, so I was not at all prepared mentally when I came up to…
The Death Plunge
This thing really just snuck up on me. I rounded the corner of the pond and there it was. There are a series of planks of varying widths and lengths along this structure, all of which are meant to be jumped into the next pond. It’s maybe an eight foot drop into five feet of water. I was thankful there was a queue of people already lined up, as it gave me a moment or two to consider what I was about to do and decide which plank I ought to try. People were struggling with their balance on all of them (I saw one guy fall into the water halfway across), but I opted to go on a long, thin plank to give myself a few less feet that I would not have to swim once I was in the water.
While not the most gifted athlete by any means, I am happy to say I have a pretty great sense of balance, and still wasn’t trembling at this point. What that meant is that I was across that beam WAY faster than I expected to be, and had to decide on my entry. I had bragged endlessly to people before the race that I was going to cannonball into the water, but the reality is that once you are in that position, the notion of showing off is far, far less of a priority. Still, I hoped that a photographer would catch me pointing up in the air with both hands before I jumped weakly into the water. What the photographer actually caught though, was this:
Ah well. So much for hoping. When my head emerged from the water, I immediately went back to the whole growling at the water thing I had been doing before, while swimming as fast as possible towards the other side. I saw people taking a footbridge around this obstacle and recall wanting to throw them into the water and wring their necks. Once I could set foot on what was waist-deep water, I heard one guy yell out “My bollocks!” Yeah, no kidding buddy. At least you can feel yours. A volunteer we passed at this point shouted to us “Ten minutes, and those medals will be around your necks!”
Holy crap, that made me move.
Dragon Pool
On the way to Dragon Pool, I passed under a structure that no one else was going over. On looking at the map, this looks like Dan’s Deceiver and in retrospect, I probably should have gone over it despite everyone else skipping it. You should note in this video, even this guy who was much closer to the front of the race, skips it as well, as does everyone his camera picks up, so I don’t know if we were meant to skip it or not. Either way, I feel a bit guilty. As I made my way up this structure, I overheard a walkie talkie go off, the voice on the other side saying “We have a water situation. In twenty minutes, we will not have any water left.” which amused me only because I knew I had less than twenty minutes to go before I would be finished. The Dragon Pool is a nice sized pond with the longest ropes of the race draped across for us to use in the crossing. I had a feeling this one would be a nightmare, as the ropes are loose, and make for extreme movements back and forth, as if the rope had a mind of it’s own, trying to shake you off of it. No one looked like they had an easy time of it, but some were troopers and trudged along slowly, looking like they would make it. I went straight to a far rope where there were the fewest people trying to make it across, and actually made it a little more than halfway before enough people came up behind me that I was being thrown left and right like crazy. Rather than sap what I had left for upper body strength, I decided to drop into the pond and use the bottom rope to pull myself quickly the rest of the way. Apparently I was on to something, because I saw at least two people drop in after me and do the same thing. Others I had seen before this had dropped in and just walked across, it made no sense to me not to use what was on hand to help move me along.
Stalag Escape
After navigating Somme Surprise, a pool with a zig-zaggy path of beams to navigate over (which I did with no problems, thank you great balance o’ mine), I arrived at the obstacle I was looking forward to the least. Stalag Escape is small, just three small trenches filled with water, with a net of barbed wire overhead you are meant to crawl under commando-style. I had not given this part of the race any thought until I saw it the day before at registration, where I saw almost a foot of water covered in at least two inches of ice, which made me deathly afraid of the potential pain I might be in for in this stage of the race. Maybe it was the fact that I knew I was near the end, but more likely it was because more than two thousand people had warmed that water up by the time I got there, but I trudged through Stalag Escape like a rock star. There was no more ice, and the water didn’t feel that cold. When I stood up, I felt invincible. You could feel that everyone was aware the end was coming.
Tyre Torture
This is another part of the race that is probably more hazardous for the more elite level athletes. I navigated this tire littered part of the race safely, if a bit slowly, the end within reach.
Anaconda Sting
This is a series of cement pipes draped across the trail that were maybe four feet tall that one needed to get over to continue. I wish I had video of me doing this one, because it would have been hilarious to see a heavier set guy basically jump chest and stomach first onto each one of these, followed by throwing my legs over to one side and sliding off on the other side. I was really just going for results and not form on this one.
The final stretch is an uphill jog, another pool to wade through and then grabbing a rope to ascend a steep hill located near the start of the race. Once you are at the top, you slide back down the other side (I nearly took out some poor girl who had gone ahead of me) and proceed the last thirty meters or so to the finish. I finished at a good run with a time of 3:29 (three and a half hours) which is not that impressive, but actually faster than I expected. There were many cadets at the finish armed with space blankets and medals. There were yellow and red straps for the medals, and not knowing if there was a difference, I headed to a guy holding a red one (It seemed tougher than yellow to my addled brain). FINISHED!
The Aftermath
I then headed into the chaos that was the Horse Showers, a large barn where everyone had placed their belongings on pegs, and at the end of the race, also had volunteers giving out coffee, tea and hot chocolate with biscuits (cookies, for American readers). There was also a series of warmish showers on constantly. After pounding a coffee and a cookie, I waded under a showerhead to get come of the mud off of me. The water was up to my ankles, there were space blankets and coffee cups strewn everywhere, and there were people in various stages of disrobe throughout. It would have been a little revolting if I wasn’t dealing with the simultaneous feelings of elation at having finished, coupled with the cold finally creeping into my bones and making me tremble. I wasn’t the worst off in that regard though. I had seen several people who simply couldn’t hold their hot drinks steadily, seemingly unaware of the fact that the drink was spilling all over their hands. One guy actually poured the drink all over his hands on purpose, which I felt was a horrible waste of good tea.
There is more to this story, like the fact that my jacket fell in the mud and I forgot to bring dry pants so I basically looked like a homeless person as I rode the train back to my hostel in Birmingham, but this is pretty much the important bits of the race. I thought for such a large event, it was extremely well organized, the volunteers there worked their tales off, there was not a rude person in the bunch that I ran into, everyone was extremely supportive and cheered us on just when we (or at least when I) needed to hear it most.
My gear did it’s job amazingly well, though my boots essentially fell apart between the end of the race and my return home. The tech layers kept the heat in, and the hat wasn’t to hot when I was heated, and kept my head warm when I was cold. If I had to do it over I would probably do the exact same thing.
As far as recovery, I found that my body was basically fine three days later. I never ran hard enough to really do damage to any joints (though I wailed my right knee on a rock while wading through some water), and I would say for sure that the ten miles I ran took alot more out of me physically than Tough Guy. Mentally however, it wasn’t even close. Putting one foot in front of the other is alot harder than you would think when your legs feel dead and you feel completely wiped out. I feel humbled and fortunate to have taken part in this race, and proud I finished it at all, let alone faster than I had expected to. I don’t know if I will do Tough Guy again, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I probably will.
Tough Guy 2010 Report – Part 2
Here is Part Two of my report on Tough Guy 2010 – Year of the Original Hero.
Part One is here.
Part Three is here.
I’m number 6532. Not at all looking happy to be there.
The Tiger
I was thrilled when I hit the first major obstacle, the “Tiger”. To me it meant that I was at least halfway done with the course, and I was now doing the tasks that I had researched the most about. As monstrous a structure as the Tiger is, when you finally reach it, you just put your head down and climb up the thing like a slanted ladder. It’s not until you reach the top that you realize you are three or four flights of stairs up in the air, which was a little shocking, but then once you are over the top of the first of two A-Frame structures, your head is down once again and you are simply doing the same thing you did before but in reverse. I successfully navigated through the electrically charged dangly bits in between structures and scaled the second a-frame without incident.
Colditz Walls
The next hurdle was a set of three walls of increasing height called the Colditz Walls, and was the most deceptively problematic obstacle in the course, because by the time I reached it, the queue of people to get up was up to several dozen people, maybe more than a hundred people for all I knew. I came to a dead stop with everyone else and waited my turn to grab a rope and climb the first wall. once over the first wall, back to back people greeted me and more waiting was done. We were all quite wet by this point, and I knew that stopping while this cold and wet was not at all what anyone wanted to be doing. It gave time for muscles to stiffen up, but surprisingly, I didn’t get as cold as I expected to get, I think because the collective body temperatures in such a huddled space created some warmth. While waiting for my chance to climb the next two walls, I watched what I assumed to be the captain of a team of men, feeding each man part of a chocolate bar he had on him.
I don’t even want to know where he kept that thing before that point.
I also caught a whiff in the air of what I knew for a fact was whisky, and turned to see two men taking pulls from a silver flask one had brought. And I don’t care where they stowed that, I thought it was pretty genius.
The Behemoth
A massive structure that was an absolute blast to navigate over, The Behemoth mostly consisted of climbing the structure and traversing across a series of ropes. I thought I had done quite well through this obstacle as I reached the end, then one of the Spartans who I had been keeping up with yelled something in a booming voice to the crowd and vaulted over the wooden exit that I was about to crawl under. At the time, it was really more amazing to watch than it was humbling, I promise.
The Firey Holes
This bit is easily the most impressive to see in photos, consisting of flaming bales of hay that, in theory, one would jump over in order to reach the watery ditch on the other side (there are two of these fire/water hurdles in sequence). As you can see by the photo, this makes for very dramatic imagery. The reality however, is that when one is a somewhat-less-than-elite-level athlete like myself, you get a lot of people standing around the fire before proceeding so they can warm their frozen extremities. I was a good sport though, jumping through the flames that some others were walking around. It seemed only right. I viewed this part of the course as a rite of passage for the race (and also secretly hoped an official race photographer would snap a photo for posterity). There is also a floating block of… maybe hay, that is meant as a temptation to people who want to avoid the water, you just have to be able to leap about six or seven feet to reach it, something I was not about to try. I did see someone make the leap, but there was no real way to get to the other side, it was a longer jump with much less space to get a running start, so that guy was getting wet for sure either way (this is where I make the “nyah nyah” face as I trudge through each long trench like the rest of the group). This obstacle butted up against the next one, the Tyre Crawl, which I came into with a specific plan for that actually went very well. Being a little thicker around, I was worried I would have a nightmare time shimmying through the small “tyre” pipe, but by starting on my back, I basically moved worm-like through, and made it to the other side really quickly.
I don’t remember Dead Leg Swamp particularly well, other than there was one point where I said out loud “This is why I wore combat boots” because there were muddy bits where the mud reached almost to my knees. If I had trainers on, they would have come off my feet for sure.
Vietcong Tunnels
This was actually a little unsettling. I didn’t know how long the cement tunnels would be when I crawled into the almost pitch black opening. I still don’t, really. I know that after some shimmying, the four or so pipes dumped out to a middle area still underground where people got to choose new openings to new pipes to finish in. There was an air opening above our heads in this cave-like area where two young women, maybe military cadets, were cheering people on and apologizing for not having any more jelly babies to give out to tired racers. The last part of the tunnel is up a steeper incline with even less room to move, so it was a real slog using the toes and elbows to get to the end.
Paradise Climb
This structure was close to the start of the race, almost the highest point on the farm, and overlooked the entire race area. This was lost on me though, I was busy climbing over rope netting, then I chose to not traverse the pond using shaky looking ropes, rather, I climbed down the structure and went through the icy pond. There were two ways one could go on this netted structure, one was clearly the more tough route, but I was so worn out that I went with the crowd who were, for the most part, happy to go the easier way. I do sort of wish I had gone the tougher path. It looked more fun for sure. I also need to say that at this point, I am seeing people visibly trembling from the cold, with no ability to control it or stop it from happening. This worried me, because I actually felt pretty okay. My feet and legs were terrible, but my body felt like it was holding up well, but what I thought at the time was “Oh crap, does that mean I am PAST the “I feel cold” stage and am into hypothermia? Aren’t you supposed to stop feeling cold just before it gets really bad?” But I kept on going, not realizing I didn’t really know what cold felt like yet.
Water Tunnel
After just enough jogging to get the blood pumping again, we came to the Water Tunnel, something I had been dreading. After wading into neck deep water, you come to a series of three logs that are meant to be gone under in succession. The logs are held together with planks that also held photographers and volunteers, who were there specifically to cheer people on and encourage them to keep going, something they seemed very effective at doing.
The feeling of going neck deep in freezing water sort of surprised me. It instantly chilled me to the bone as I got further in, but I guess adrenaline kicked fully into gear, because I moved with complete urgency of purpose, swimming when I thought it would get me through faster. I found I was growling at some point, I am not sure when that started, but I felt angry at the water for being such a bastard, hurting me so. HOW DARE YOU, WATER. As if feeling guilty about doing the less tough version of the obstacle before, I opted not to go to the nearest part of the tunnel, but rather waded over to the farthest one. I was very concerned going in that there would be a queue of people waiting and freezing while people struggled to make it through, but when I got there there was just one older man who had gone under the first log but seemed to be struggling to find the willpower to get through the next two. I think I shouted something encouraging to him, and the volunteers were pressuring him to continue because I was coming in behind him. He gave this horrified look back at me before plunging in once again. I was not wasting time at this point, so I immediately grabbed the log and shot under and back up as fast as I could.
I don’t quite know how to describe the sensation of being fully submerged, even for part of a second, in freezing water. For one thing, it truly and utterly wakes your entire body up. I watched a video before the race where someone was midway through this obstacle and was apparently asked how he felt. His response was “I feel happy. Because I am alive.” This is actually fairly accurate, at least in retrospect. If I was angry with the water for being cold before, I was FURIOUS at it when I submerged, and even more furious at the poor trembling older guy who was trying to brave the last log as I started screaming “YOU CAN DO IT! GO GO GOOOOO!” which apparently was enough to send him into panic and finish. I continued the next two as fast as possible, getting slightly colder with each dip, and swam furiously to the other side of the pond. I remember seeing people on the other side who did not look wet, and I was very very angry with these people as I continued to growl at the water. Someone helped me out of the water, and I took a couple of steps, and realized I didn’t have any idea what was going on or where I was meant to be going. I felt like I had brought the pond up out of the water with me. I kept taking steps though, and fantastically, my three tech layers and hat started doing what they were there to do, taking any warmth I had left and keeping it from escaping. I had the sense throughout the race to know that stopping would be the end of me, so I took more steps, thinking to myself “Ok, you can walk, can you at least pretend to jog?” and then I was doing the weakest slow-motion jog ever, then “Ok you can fake jog, why not move a little faster?” and then I was jogging again. Some people were not as lucky, there were those silver emergency blankets on a few who warmed up by another fire that had been made, but I trudged past.
This is the end of part 2. Part 3 will be posted on Wednesday. To tide you over, I give you:
Click here if you are unable to see the video
Tough Guy 2010 report – Part 1
Here is Part One of my report on Tough Guy 2010 – Year of the Original Hero.
Part Two is here.
Part Three is here.
I remembered to carb-load the night before. Orange juice doesn’t go with anything non-breakfast-y FYI
Race Day:
“the only people doing this thing are athletes and nut jobs…” this guy Jurgen from Holland said to me as we sat down to eat lunch on the field the day before the race. “…and I’m not an athlete.”
Yeah, me either. I will say this, however, I was not fully committed to my nut job title the way some were on race day. I saw several Supermans, two Batmans, two Spider-Mans, a couple of nuns, a team of Spartans (who I hung with through most of the race.) I would imagine there would be a shot or two of me running alongside some crazy leather clad Spartans, I will post whatever I can find as soon as the official photos come out.
And then there was the mankini guy.
Several people had worn the mankini in previous races, but most agreed this year was much colder than previous years. Still, the guy walked right up into my personal space as we queued up in our starting gates. I was in the last group to leave, being designated a “late bugger” but in this last group there were also “ghoons” and “dickheads”. Fittingly I think, he was in the dickheads group. I don’t know if he finished the race or not, but I sort of hope he did. As a group mind, we were all in agreement that he was the craziest of the bunch, especially considering we stood waiting for the start for well over twenty minutes, long enough to have the cold hit most people’s feet.
I had forgotten about the “gallows” that I had read about months earlier. If you are caught in a starting group you are not supposed to be in, they take you to the top of the hill where the starters are, and put you in these gallow-like contraptions where you would be loudly shamed by the group. I saw drinks thrown in faces and on heads, pink feathers tossed and stuck to them with what looked like honey. After 5-10 minutes they would be let out, I don’t know if they were allowed to run the race or not. It was a nice distraction while we all tried to keep warm before the start.
The race begins:
The crowd begins to get more excited, and I knew something was about to happen. After several fireworks are set off, something very loud explodes (I found out later they have a starting cannon they shoot off that you can’t see from the back) and the first group heads out, cheering like mad. And faster than we realize, we are off as well.
They get you wet and muddy early and often.
I had this naive notion that the first four miles of the course would be a challenging countryside run on uneven ground. What I didn’t realize was that the organizers do not consider jumping in and out of water filled ditches an “obstacle”. I don’t recall seeing these on any of the maps! One quarter mile in, I start hearing laments and screaming, and look up to find the first ditch approaching way, way too fast. And then suddenly, you’re just in there, in an icy cold, water-filled ditch, scrambling to find an easy enough spot to climb out, maybe there is a rope, maybe not, and people are pushing your butt or legs up to help you. And then once you get up, you turn to the person behind you and offer them a hand, because that’s what the last guy did for you.
After about a half dozen of these, I was soaked well past my waist, but didn’t feel the effects of it until I ran a half mile with no ditches. From this point on, my legs felt like the waterlogged legs of say, one of Jim Henson’s muppets (which are useless even when not waterlogged), and my feet felt like I was klomping around in lumps of ice. Then we hit the slaloms.
These are nightmares for anyone who has done them before. Many claim it’s the worst part of the race. As a rookie, here’s my take:
There were eight total slaloms. A single slalom is one sharp uphill climb followed by an equally steep downhill. By the time I got there, there had been hundreds (likely thousands) of people who had already degraded the terrain, so when it came time to go down a hill, it was so slippery that everyone would slide down the first part on their rear ends until the terrain allowed us to stand up. Each hill required a longer slide than the one before.
By the second one, I was thinking “Hey, this isn’t SO bad.”
By the fourth, I was done. Had it. Finito.
By the sixth, I was convinced everyone was lying, that once we had finished these, there would be eight more when we rounded the corner at the end. I don’t even remember the last two, other than knowing I nearly twisted my ankle badly on the way down one of them. A guy behind me laughed quite a bit at my near-calamity.
Eventually it does end, and it’s more running, onto what is called the “Ghurka Grand National” which is a series of tight nets maybe three feet off the ground that you must go under, where your head is constantly butting up or very near to the butts of your fellow racers as you get as low as you can to avoid being tangled in the net. After that, more jogging until you hit hay rolls that must be vaulted over, as well as more water-filled ditches timed ever so perfectly to make sure that as soon as you can feel your feet, you are robbed of them once again.
Once you feel as though you know the rhythm, you hit the “New Jungle Obstacle” which amounts to one long ditch (naturally, with water that gets deeper as you go) that has many fences breaking the ditch into smaller sections. This was madness and chaos, similar to the earlier ditches with the pushing and pulling of people, only without the pesky running between each ditch. It was literally jump in, push someone up if they were in front of you, try to climb out before someone had to push you, haul someone behind you up, walk three steps, repeat. The water got deeper as you went, and it was just a crazy mess from top to bottom. Here is video of the early leaders actually blazing the path on this obstacle. It’s insane to watch, because they had to break through an inch of ice on each jump. I saw photos of these guys at the finish with their shins cut to ribbons.
Click here if you are unable to see the video.
At this point I am about halfway through the course, and feeling frazzled but still fairly strong.
This is the end of part one of my race report. Part two will be coming shortly.
I don’t know what these sad-sacks are looking so sad for. I was screaming at the water by this point for daring to hurt me so badly.
In the UK Day 7 – Wolverhampton/Race Registration
Don’t mind the melodramatic tone I put forward in this video. I am not worried this will be my last video for this, but man, I am indeed scared after seeing the place up close. Most of the structures are a bit smaller than I expected, and a couple were shockingly more fearsome up close than I expected to find, particularly the barb wire crawl, which was iced over with about 4-6 inches of water underneath the ice. That is going to be absolutely brutal.
I hope you have gotten a kick out of this whole deal. I know it has been really fun and rewarding to work so hard towards something. I just hope I do you all, and myself, proud.
Click here if you are unable to view the video. You know you want to. Bam Magera makes a special appearance!
There was a rumor that the race would be streamed online. I cannot confirm if this is a thing that is actually going to happen or not. If there is news about this, it hopefully would be posted on the race’s main page – http://www.toughguy.co.uk. To watch it live, most of you will have to get up damn early, 6am EST and 3am PST. There are 6000 participants, so the likelyhood of actually seeing me (assuming they do stream the race) is VERY slim, and I have no real idea what sort of quality they will put out, but if you are curious, check out the site to see if they put the stream up. I am not holding out much hope for it this late in the game.
It’s happening, people! Want to donate? I’ll draw you a portrait for your troubles!
This is the last time I will be asking for these donations or offering portraits at these rates.
In the UK Day 6 – Taking a bath in Bath
When Christine and I were planning my itinerary, Bath was towards the end of my trip. Now, my ADD affliction makes it hard to see pretty much anything through to the end, especially something like planning, something that Christine adores and that I loathe. I would like to think that by the time we reached this point in the planning, I was thinking that the race was only a few days away and I would need a low key days leading up to the Tough Guy. What was probably more accurately going on in my head was “Eh Bath. I’ve heard of Bath, let’s do Bath. ARE WE DONE PLANNING YET?”
What a surprise this town has been! I have to admit, this might be the most charmed I have been by any place yet. I could almost literally point the camera at anything and get a decent photo out of it. (Which is saying something, as I am a perfectly terrible photographer. My creativity does not extend to cameras or camera related equipment). Maybe because I had no expectations going in, or you know, possibly because I took a two hour spa session at the Thermae Bath Spa (The scented steam rooms were fantastic). But really, it is the most consistent town I have been too yet, evenly beautiful pretty much everywhere in the main part of the city, which is small enough to not overwhelm me.
The aesthetic is likely by design. Surely everyone there works quite hard to maintain the look they have going, but what can I say? I am a sucker for whatever it is they have going on in Bath. As a friend said correctly it was “very British.”
As I type this, I am on my way into London/Paddington, where I will meet up with some people I think I only know loosely through a message board I lurk in but don’t do much posting. It could be a quiet night, it could kill my liver, I have no way of knowing, but I think I will not be trying to write about it immediately afterwards regardless, so my “bath in Bath” is what you get for today.
Click here if you are unable to see the video
It’s happening, people! Want to donate? I’ll draw you a portrait for your troubles!
Lifestream
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