A 12-mile course. Rolling terrain. Long slogs up steep slopes, wades through mud bogs, crawls through corrugated pipes and under barbed wire, climbs over vertical walls, traverses on rope bridges and a drop from a plank into a cold pond. Plus, a dash through dangling electrified wires. Some that carry a 10,000-volt shock, enough to knock a person to the ground.
And mud. Lots and lots of mud.
Evie Clercx experienced all of this May 18 when she and a group of other Vermillion athletes took the plunge and participated in the Tough Mudder event held in the Minneapolis, MN area.
Tough Mudder events are held at different times at various points across the country.
Anyone who views photos or video of Tough Mudder may get the impression that it’s a training exercise that a special forces group in the U.S. military may use, and they wouldn’t be far off.
Tough Mudder is a hardcore 10-12 mile obstacle course designed by British Special Forces to test one’s all around strength, stamina, mental grit, and camaraderie. As the leading company in the booming obstacle course industry, Tough Mudder has challenged half a million inspiring participants worldwide and raised more than $3 million dollars for the Wounded Warrior Project.
Tough Mudder bills itself as more than an event, noting that it’s also a way of thinking.
“By running a Tough Mudder challenge, you’ll unlock a true sense of accomplishment, have a great time, and discover a camaraderie with your fellow participants that’s experienced all too rarely these days,” states the event’s web page.
Evie found that claim to true in every sense.
Evie, 35, married and the mother of three, participated in cross country in high school and more or less decided to hang up her running shoes after that. She dedicated herself to getting back into shape through running after her third child was born four years ago.
She set her sights on participating in Tough Mudder in the last year or so as a way to fulfill a desire to become involved in something more physically demanding than long-distance running.
“It was really incredible,” Evie said. “It was, first all, just an enormous event, with thousands of people. They start people in waves, so there is a very large group, with a couple thousand people per wave, that start.
“This particular course was 12 miles, with different obstacles along the way,” she said. “Every course is set up a little bit differently because it’s set up based on what the terrain is.”
Evie noted that Tough Mudder course in New York differs from the one in Colorado, which differs from the Minnesota course, mainly because of the lay of the land.
“It was an enormous challenge, but it really was an amazing event,” she said. “I come from the marathon world, so I’m a racer. In a marathon, on race day, you’re all by yourself. You’re trying to better your own time, and it’s a very individual thing, and Tough Mudder is very different than that.”
All of the participants in Tough Mudder are asked to focus more on simply finishing the course. They are also urged to help each other along the way.
“You aren’t competing against time,” Evie said. “It’s based on completion and working together, so this is an incredible camaraderie-and team- and relationship-building event. It is really,
really great to be a part of.”
Evie was a member of the Vermillionaires, a team made up of Matt and Carly Heard and Erin and John Vogel, all of Vermillion. John’s sister and her boyfriend, who live near the site of this particular Tough Mudder event, also participated with the team.
Evie and her teammates began preparing for the tough run well in advance.
“We did Saturday training,” she said. “Every Saturday, we’d get together for an hour and run through a circuit that was based on a lot of the obstacles we thought we might face.
“We worked on challenging our strength and cardiovascular levels, and we did this for a couple of months prior to the event,” Evie said. “We knew that this would require a lot of upper body strength, and a lot of cardiovascular strength, so those were the two areas we really focused on.”
In other words, a lot of lifting and pull-ups became part of the team’s fitness regimen.
Some aspects of the event were impossible to train for. The plunge into ice water, for example.
“It’s something that you just can’t adequately prepare yourself for,” she said. “In the marathon world, when I would finish my long runs of 18 or 20 miles, I would come home and take an ice bath to relax my muscles. That’s nothing compared to having to dive under these obstacles filled with cold water and stay in that for five minutes at a time.”
Tough Mudder is much more about running through obstacles and testing one’s endurance. It also is a source of assistance to veterans and their families.
“The proceeds of the event go to the Wounded Warrior Project that helps wounded vets,” Evie said. “It helps provide therapy for them, and helps their families as the veterans are struggling and recovering from their injuries sustained in battle.
It’s really an amazing program to be a part of.”
Evie, a U.S. Army veteran, said this cause was particularly “near and dear to my heart. As a veteran, I just felt it was so important. What’s often neglected is … these veterans that are wounded in battle. We hear their stories, and we think it is so wonderful that they sacrificed so much for us, but we never hear about what happens afterward. They have to live the rest of their lives with these injuries, and often times they are debilitating.
“The Army can help a little bit, but they still have to live their lives, and deal with those injuries,” she said. “It really is an amazing cause, and it’s something that was widely promoted at the event. I think we all felt a little bit of pride that day, collectively, coming together, really challenging ourselves and knowing that the proceeds were going to a really important cause.”
The physical challenges of the course, the hard training that is involved, the unique hardships that participants must endure – and all of that mud – have hardly deterred Evie. Not when you finish Tough Mudder brimming with pride and a sense of accomplishment.
“I’m so excited for next year, are you kidding me?” she said.
“I have friends, when I tell them about it, who are intimidated about it, but I just feel like it would be such a great accomplishment for them.
“I want to bring a huge team next year,” Evie said. “You just feel so good at the end. You all work together, and there are people who you don’t even know who are helping you when you can’t get over that wall. They’re not leaving you; they are helping everybody out, and it’s really an amazing thing. To be with thousands of people who are working together is really a spectacular situation.”
