Just wanted to see if anyone in the region was doing toughmudder on sept 8th in frederick md. this is going to be my second one this year. would love to meet others who are doing this event.

 

Please explain what this Is? Is this a car related event in the mid Atlantic region?

 

My wife did one earlier this year in Charlotte. There is also one in Leesburg in August. I may do the one in August. They are a riot

 

i think the supersprint for spartan race is in august in leesburg. my friend is coming down from ny to do that one.

that's awesome your wife did it. my wife did the one in the poconos and swore to never do one again. she came out with 20 something bruises and hobbled for a couple days after. haha


sunir: toughmudder is more or less a leg race through trails/mountains with obstacles along the way usually lasting anywhere from 10-12 miles. there's a bunch of others as well. Spartan, warrior dash, etc.

http://toughmudder.com/

Check it out. I was able to set a goal for myself to train for this event and now I'm hooked.

 

I'm signed up for the 11:00 start. Did Warrior Dash back in May to kick off my training Never done these type of races before, but agree the're a blaast! At least the "1" I did so far.

Hilton

 

I've signed up with my lady. I'm not sure of the start time though. Where did you do the first mudder?

 

I did my first one at the poconos in april. It was brutal because at our start time (9:00) it was 39 degrees and windy. Getting wet in those conditions made it that much worse.

 

I could imagine. how are you training for the event?

 

Well if the md race is anything like the poconos race, the one thing i'm giving special attention to is cross country/trail running. 12 miles of various grades and terrain changes will wear you out more than the obstacles. I've been running on the treadmill anywhere from 3-6 miles on various inclines and also doing the stairmaster heavily. Next week, my group and I are headed to the local state park and running cross country trails. We plan to gradually work ourselves up to 10 miles on this course before toughmudder. There's an app called "map my run" which will help you accurately gauge your distance, elevation changes, and time.

As far as the obstacles go, none are really that bad. The worst thing was the ice bath. Immersing yourself in freezing water when its 39 degrees out is just painful. It took about a half mile of running to finally stop shivering. If you are going to the gym, I'd focus my attention on working your legs and back. Squats and pullups in high repetition/low weight routine will help with your muscle endurance.

Otherwise just have fun with your group. I ran with 15 people for the first one. We finished in a horrible time of 3 hours and 20 minutes because we took so many breaks and waited at obstacles for everyone to catch up. This time we've got our team down to 5 competitive people and our goal is to finish in about 2:30 min.

 

Your training sounds pretty intense! I've joined a local crossfit gym which I attend about 4 times per week. A lot of leg and endurance work which is my weakness but I'm seeing results after only a couple of months.

I'm running the mudder with a group of 70 people..not a typo..seventy lol. So I don't think the group is focused on breaking any time records.

 

I would like to prepare for one of these and make it a goal. I am not really in shape at the moment, how long or how far out should I plan on the event date to allow for adequete preperation?

 

i think cross fit is the perfect training program to get you prepped for an event like this. two of the guys i'm running with have been doing cross fit for 4 months now and their muscle endurance is out of this world. all the exercises they do definitely helps with muscle fatigue and recover.

70 is quite a number i'm sure you'll have a lot of fun.

sunir: I'm sure it varies person to person but i would imagine 3 months of preparations should be sufficient. making an event like this a goal of your is great. my first goal was to finish. now i'm making goals to compete competitively. good luck with training.

 

That was one hell of an event. So...how did you do?!

 

sadly, i hurt myself. i was crawling through the electric eel as fast as i could. i ended up hitting a really high voltage line which made me contort my body in a weird way. i shifted all my weight onto my left shoulder and ended up dislocating it. i had to go to the hospital since the onsite emt's couldn't pop it back in. i'm pretty upset that i couldn't finish. the guys that i ran with split off into two teams. first group finished in 1:50 min and second group (one that i was part of) finished in 2:15 min. we had a pretty blistering pace going. i'm glad we signed up for the saturday heat at 9:00. but b/c of all the traffic we ended up racing with the 9:40 heat. i was reading today that a lot of people didn't end up running for the saturday afternoon heats and sunday was apparently canceled because the mayor pulled their permits due to traffic.

i'm sitting on my couch pretty bummed out, esp since i came down from nyc for this event. but i've got my sights set on the toughmudder event in tampa. hopefully i can rehab my shoulder and be ready then.

how did you do? hope you had fun and enjoyed the race.

 

Ugh..sorry to hear that. It seemed like there were a lot of people getting injured that day. I ran the 8am heat and was lucky enough to avoid traffic in both directions. I ended up splitting from my entire group and paired up with just one other person from my group. We finished in about 2.5hrs.

I was rolling at a decent pace until about mile 8 when my calves started to lock-up badly in the middle of a mud pit. That in addition to swallowing a load of muddy water from the 15ft dive really slowed me down (i cant swim). I'm confident i could shave off another 20-30mins if i had the opportunity to run the course again..although im not sure i could touch your group's time of 1:50, thats just insane!

If theres anything id do differently it would be to train more on the running part and not eat any fruit snacks or bananas at the water stations. Im really lookin forward to the next event..