Now volts are less likely than amps to kill anyone unless they have a pacemaker but they still pack a punch, especially once we’re drenched in water. Yeah, we definitely aren’t the sanest people.
We push through these and similar obstacles fine until we reach the last two miles and that’s when fatigue begins to kick in. Legs begin to cramp and we start getting a little sloppy with the obstacles, injuring ourselves unnecessarily. We pause once to watch one of our fellow Mudders be carried away by EMTs after breaking his ankle going through a mud pit, none of us thinking about the injury other than that it’s a shame he won’t get to finish the course.
Finally we reach mile eleven and the two toughest obstacles of the day: Everest and Electroshock Therapy. These two are staples of becoming a Tough Mudder, while other obstacles may be switched in and out depending on where the course is, these two are always there and are always placed at the point in the event when we’re meant to be at our weakest. Jogging up to Everest, a fifteen-foot high quarter pipe we have to run up, we see fellow Mudders attempting the ramp. Success is varying amongst the other participants, sometimes ending with injury but my team and I all gather up enough energy to make it up the ramp on our first attempt. After one last half mile of sand and mud pits we can finally see the finish line and it looks glorious.
Now we just have to make it through this last obstacle. The official Tough Mudder representative who is supposed to pump us up and encourage us, gleefully informs us that this time the wires have eight thousand volts compared to the four thousand we went through earlier, meaning that while earlier the shocks were enough to cause slight pain and a muscle spasm or two the ones we were about to face were enough to warrant the death waiver we had to sign before competing. I know that this sick bastard is himself a Mudder and has gone through everything we just experienced. He sees that we’re ready to face our final demon and gives us a quick countdown, “3, 2 ,1... GO!” without giving us any time to prepare and we charge ahead. The first five feet are a breeze and I think we’re going to make it through unscathed. The four of us leap over the first mud barrier and as we land I take a wire to my leg, my back, and my left ear all at once. It’s like I’ve just been punched and my vision blurs momentarily as I go down. I see that one of my teammates is also down but I’m too focused on getting past the pain and back onto my feet to tell which one it is. I start to get up and realize just how fucked I really am, the most conductive parts of the wires are the bottoms, all of which are now positioned right above me. I lose count of the number of times I’m shocked during the next thirty seconds, but I keep forcing my way forward and then suddenly I’m stumbling out of the course and I’m there at the finish line with my team. Our legs are shaking, we have a few welts from the wires and my left ear is screaming but we’ve done it. We see the staff waiting to give us our trophies for our hard work but we take a second and huddle together. “Holy shit. We fucking did it. We did it.” We say this to each other and to ourselves. We pushed ourselves to the breaking point and somehow made it back. It’s then that the staff gives us our official Tough Mudder headbands and hands us the free beer we’ve earned, and while these seem like trivial objects to outsiders, we know that they really symbolize the trials we had gone through that day and the level of camaraderie that was required of our team to be able to do so. As we limp away to shower off and head home, the only thing we can talk about is how we know we’ll be doing another one.
"Yeah, we definitely aren't the sanest people."
pg. 14
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