We survived. We survived already week and a half ago. Last week I was broken. This week I'm starting to feel human again and FORGET how seriously horrible it all was. We just got the official photos from the Tough Mudder and some of them show us looking like we had FUN. Like the photo of me and Annette above. Like we are fucking loving it.
The truth is I didn't love it. The truth is that it was much more horrible than I feared and I did fear a lot. My tactic was all along not to know too much beforehand so that I wouldn't panic too much. It worked. I'm happy I did not know how freaking horrible it was going to be. And how MUDDY! It's weird how you get used to jumping in mud pools and ditches. You stop caring about anything pretty damn soon. There were 25 obstacles plus shit loads of extra swimming in the mud. And I mean swimming. I swallowed mud, the mud went into my most private parts, the mud is part of my DNA now.
That's me crawling under BARBWIRE in MUD.
The one and only obstacle I was truly terrified of beforehand was the electro shocks. Those were nothing in comparison to some truly horrendous other shit that we went through. In fact I nearly liked being electrocuted. Well, I liked it because it was the final thing just before the finish line.
The obstacle I hated most, the one I would have definitely missed if I would have known about it, was Arctic Enema. Luckily(?) I was clueless about it until way too late. When I was on the starting line for this obstacle I started panicking seriously but it was too late to back off. I had to slide to a pool of ICE COLD water. It was more like a tank, less like a pool really. The only way out was to dive under big tyres. By the time I hit the water my heart nearly stopped and I really struggled to gasp enough air for the diving mission but also was very aware of the fact that there was no other way out. It was HORRIBLE. No, it was something zillion times worse than horrible. I might have shouted abuse at Jim after I emerged from this torture devise.
Bizarrely enough I did all the obstacles. I was the only one from our group to complete Everest, a super high wall. This has nothing to do with my amazing climbing skills though (mind you, generally speaking I found the climbing obstacles much easier than the other ones). Everest was impossible to get over alone. You had to rely on other people to pull you up after you've ran towards them as fast as you possibly could and tried to reach their hands. I was lucky enough to be pulled up by THREE fit guys. They left after they've dragged me up(there is no nicer way to put this) and I was left pretty much alone on the top of the obstacle whilst rest of my team was still down there. I didn't see how I was meant to help them up.
That's me and Abby being electrocuted.
Our race was not over after the finish line. We had to say no to free beers on offer, run past the queue to nice real showers and rush to our car. There in the middle of the parking lot we stripped to our underwear and poured water from big bottles over each other. Then we put some cleaner clothes on, stepped into the shiny and brand new rental car and started the real race towards Heathrow. After few hours Jim had made it to his flight and rest of us were sitting on Piccadilly Line finally on our way towards a shower.
These are some of my most epic bruises. Now most of them have faded and so is the certainty I had about never doing this again. All last week I have been telling people how horrid the experience was and how I would never ever under any circumstances do it again. Now watching the photos my mind is already much more open for a sequel. I must be a masochist.
No comments:
Post a Comment