This weekend, I participated in my first obstacle race. The Rugged Maniac is “more than a just a mud run,” according to the website. And, after this weekend, I agree! The event consists of 25 obstacles spread out over 5 km / 3.1 miles. Obstacles included ones that you run over, run under, run up (or attempt to run up), and run down. There are also obstacles that are essentially large/high monkey bars suspended over mud pits (of course). For example:

• Quadburners (basically little dirt hills that you run over)
• Commando crawl (crawling through mud under barbed wire)
• Jump start (run up to the obstacle, jump up and grab onto a rung, then climb over the top and down)
• Claustrophobia (crawl through dirt tunnels)
• Accelerator (basically a giant waterslide and the last obstacle of the course).

I did the race with a group of people from my gym and it was really fun! None of us trained for the event and none of us were “in it to win it,” i.e. seriously competing. We just wanted to have fun and get a good workout.

My favorite obstacles included all the ones where I had to get into the mud (i.e. Commando crawl), the “Hell and High Water” (jumping from floating surface to floating surface while dodging swinging mats), and the Accelerator (I like waterslides!).

Other fun elements of the day included pull-up contests, a pie-eating contest, food trucks, beer vendors, and local merchants giving out free samples of their products. Anyone out there want to do this with me next year? You get a finisher’s medal, event t-shirt, a free beer, and a good workout! 🙂