Tough Mudder 2017 done! (2 of 3)

It's been a few days, so I figured I'd better keep up with the rehash otherwise the memories will really start fading. Surprisingly, I'm feeling pretty good minus my traps which are still a bit sore. I'd say by tomorrow I'll be 98%, and that's a grade I can live with.

Back to the recap!

After summiting Everest, the next obstacle was one that most of us called our favorite. It was pretty fun, although the water was cold! The Block Ness Monster is as fun as it looks, and apparently is the highest rated obstacle in the Tough Mudder arsenal.

After running for a bit and warming our bodies back up, we hit Mud Mile 2.0. This obstacle really put your teamwork to the test, and is one of those obstacles I have no idea how someone could do it solo.

Pyramid Scheme came up next, and is as insane as it looked. I didn't time it, but I bet we got through it in about 15 minutes, maybe even more. It was one of those obstacles that was more about strategy rather than brute strength. We were all getting gassed at this point, so the wait to tackle this was welcome.

Quagmire was a lot like Mud Mile 2.0, but steeper and taller. Again, teamwork was key.

I don't have video of the next couple of obstacles since it was another area with no spectator access. Mineshafted was first up, and I don't remember what that was. I'm sure it was excruciating though. That was followed up by Six Feet Under, which was a lot like Quagmire except the bottom of the mud pit was super soft silt that was about halfway up your knees. Kind of a variation on a theme. I guess it is called the Tough Mudder after all.

At about the 7 1/2 mile marker we encountered Birth Canal. I was feeling pretty gassed at this point, and this obstacle was a fair bit more difficult than I thought it was going to be. Basically each of those sacks of water is about 100 pounds, and it wears ya down a good bit. Three of the obstacles had two paths, one for first-timers and the other for Legionnaires (previous TM finishers). This was one of those events, and the Legionnaire obstacle was called Black Hole. It is almost identical from what I could tell, except you crawled on a slippery tarp and the tarp holding the water is blackout, so you're crawling in the hot, muddy darkness.

As you can see in the video, I was so gassed I didn't know where I was going and tried to go in the exit of the Black Hole instead of continuing on. Whoo boy, ya gotta breathe!

The last obstacle before mile 8 was the Show Me State Slide. It was the worst slide ever. You basically shimmy down a drainage culvert with sticky mud in it, into a pit of mud, and then have a four foot hop out back to ground level. I bet as the day wore on and hundreds of people went through it that it got more slippery, but that wasn't the case for us.

I'll wrap this up tomorrow, and my phone is already going off with hooligans trying to get me to sign up for next year.