I’m back, fingers are well and truly rested, unlike my body which is still covered in bruises and scratches from that fateful day. Anyhow, onto the next obstacle, eh?
Obstacle 7: Prepare To Drown
As if crawling through a tunnel the width of a straw wasn’t unbearable enough in the last obstacle, we now had to fully submerge ourselves in murky water and swim under 4 consecutive horizontal pipes. They certainly weren’t conservative with the width of these I can tell you that. Trying to weakly swim under each one felt like an eternity, another millisecond longer and I would’ve needed scuba gear or a lawyer for suing purposes!
~ ~~jog jog jog about half a mile ~~~
Obstacle 8: Is Your Log Bigger Than Mine?
It was time to buddy up and start doing a bit of slave labour in the form of hauling a big mighty fallen oak trunk up a hilly field. Working in threes worked well, I was at the back and was substantially shorter than the other two. Result = a log as light as a feather.
~~~walk walk walk about half a mile~~~
Obstacle 9: The Devil’s Beard
A rather cute term for what looks like a fisherman’s net sprawled across the side of the hill. All you had to do was crawl under it to the top, quite a fun little exercise in baking degree heat.
~~~walk walk walk about half a mile~~~
Obstacle 10: The Wall Of No Return
If there was anywhere on the course to croak it at, here was the obstacle you could atleast leave us with your head held high. For this was no match for man, woman nor beast. The wooden wall dominated the mountain top, grown men fell from its neck-breaking heights, at such an altitude I swear I could hear someone scream they’d just burst an eardrum. It’s safe to say this obstacle had me by my metaphorical balls. No Fosbury Flop was getting me over this beast let me assure you. So deforming someone else’s skull worked the trick as I catapulted my wispy body from the springboard of a rather frustrated looking chap. Who I’m forever grateful too. If you’re reading this now I thank you and would be partially willing to donate to your gofundme hair transplant campaign thanks to my srambling footwork on your head now leaving your once thick luscious locks without an owner.
~~walk walk crawl about half a mile weep ~
Obstacle 11: The Playground
Bringing us all back to the swings and roundabouts days, here we were faced with clambering up a meshwork of rope lattices in a rather ungainly manner. It paid off if you have big feet in this one, they’re less likely to fall through the gaps in the lattices and secondly good for kicking off the sloths of the challenge so you could get two feet back on solid ground as quickly as possible. (NB: I do not endorse (intense) violence)).
~~~weep weep sprint to the Goddamn finish~
Obstacle 12: The End Is Nigh
I could almost smell the sweaty bodied finish line as I tripped into a trench full of murky scummy water, only to baptismally arise to see a non-grip slope which needed more than someone’s head to lunge off to get to the tippy top of. So what’s the alternative – 2 heads! Thank God my brain was still functioning by this stage of the course and my team managed to form a human pyramid and not a human centipede. And with this we clambered to the top of the ledge with enough time to take in the chaos that had just unfolded!
**P.S. I think I missed one obstacle out, sorry blame the concussion. Look our for pictures in the coming weeks of the event, I’ll be uploading soon!
So I think the moral of the story is if you’d like a few battle scars and a lifetime of trauma jam-packed into 90 minutes then take on Tough Mudder!
The Neon Squid 