Tough Guy 2009
Posted on February 4, 2009 in Blog
On Sunday January 32nd (more commonly known as February 1st) I set out to take part in the 2009 Tough Guy event.
What is Tough Guy? Tough Guy is a competition where thousands of people come together and run through 150 acres of farm land which has been fitted with numerous obstacle courses to put participants into a test of physical and mental endurance. The competition starts off with a run through wild terrain to get competitors warmed up and then moves on to The Killing Fields where it truly is survival of the fittest. Some may view this as a race but most people see it as a competition between yourself and the obstacles in front of you and are only determined in finishing the event. To get a better view of the event here are some news reports:
Telegraph’s report on the 2009 event:
ESPN’s report on the 2007 event:
Why did I partake in this insanity? I first heard about the event from some people in Boot Camp back in Iceland and there was a sizable enough group from Boot Camp that was planing on going so since I was already moving to London and was close by, I thought why not give it a try. Unfortunately shortly after the decision was made the financial crisis hit Iceland hard and the currency pretty much went down the toilet. As a result everyone backed out of the competition but I decided to keep on going just to proof to myself that I could do this.
How did I prepare? From what the guys in Boot Camp which had taken part in the 2008 event had told me the biggest problems with the event were the possibility of going into hypothermia and running up and down gruesome hills. Other issues I knew were going to be a issue were the fact that I am prone to get cramps in my calves when running in cold weather and the fact I am really afraid of heights.
To work on the hypothermia I did a couple of runs outside both in Iceland and the UK where I spilled cold water over myself and then ran for up to one hour. I also minimized cardio exercises to keep my body fat constant at around 14%. To work on the gruesome hills I ran the Himnastigi (Stairway to Heaven) in Iceland numerous times before moving to the UK and when I went back home in Decemeber. I also squated a lot to put more muscles on my quadriceps and gluteus so I could better handle the hills. For the calves I couldn’t think of anything to prevent it other than keep the blood flow circulating during the competition and for the fear of heights I could do nothing (I’ve tried conquering it numerous times to no avail. I’ve even forced myself to go sky diving but despite that I still get nervous at heights as low as 5 meters…).
Getting to the event. On Saturday before the event I put every thing I needed in a backpack and headed to Euston station in London to catch the last train of the day to Wolverhampton. I had made the mistake of not ordering a room because I thought I could take the morning train to Wolverhampton but if I had done that I’d have arrived late so I went there with nothing but the hope of things working out somehow (“Þetta reddast maður” that old Icelandic saying). Upon arrival I set out in a Taxi to go to the event area where I met the security guys who were half a sleep by the time I arrived (around 1 am). The security guys suggested I go see if someone was awake and see if I could get some place to sleep. After scouring the whole event area I ran into Billy Wilson more commonly known as Mr. Mouse the events head organizer who offered me to stay in the barn overnight which I accepted. The barn was a tad bit cold since I didn’t have a sleeping bag but there were some gas heaters which keep it fairly much okay. The problem was however that the barn is right next to the dog kennels and apparently dogs are not much fans of sleeping and barked through out the night resulting in me getting maybe about 90 minutes of total sleep. In the morning I signed up and started preparations for the competition which started around 11 am.
The competition itself. There were around 3.500 participants this year so it was an insane amount of people that started out running down the hill at the beginning to start the country miles. The weather was freezing at around -2 degrees celsius and cold wind. I started off in the third relay by sliding/running down the starting hill and running through the fields where we went down to some small trenches which gave the first taste of mud and water for ones feet. After running for a short while we came to The Tiger (K1) (the KXX refers to the number of the obstacle in The Killing Fields, more info on each part is on the Tough Guy homepage) which is usually the first obstacle but had now been added to the run as well. The Tiger is two 12 meters high frames out of logs with nets on that you must climb over with a number of electrified cables in between the two frames. This wasn’t hard at all but the lines to get over the obstacle was horrible and I think it took up to 30 minutes to pass it.
After The Tiger the run continued to some logs to jump over and then on to The Slalom
where we ran up and down a hill about a dozen times with the hill getting steeper and steeper as we went further along. The hills were not that bad except for the amount of people that were packed together so you couldn’t move very fast. Next was a run through Big Bear Wood and the Ghurkha Grand National where we had to jump a series of fences, ditches filled with mud and water and move under cargo nets. This was then followed by The Jungle Obstacles where we jumped into and climbed out of a dozens of trenches filled with mud and water up to chest level in some instances.
The run finished off when we reached The Tiger (K1) once again and went over it once more. Once past The Tiger came the Scaffold Bridge (K2) and The Colditz Walls (K3) where we had to get over three progressively higher walls (2,3,4 meters). All in all pretty easy but there was a que at the last one and standing around after the Jungle Obstacles wasn’t very comfortable.
Following the wall climbing was The Behemoth (K4) which was made out of four platforms connected with ropes which one had to cross. There were two horizontal crossings and one which was downwards to ground level but there was no safety net under the last one and it was about 9-10 meters down which really spiked my fear of heights and it didn’t help that below me were multiple people helping to remove a person who had fallen shortly before I arrived there who I later found out had broken her neck. But I managed to get down safely by holding a tight grip and taking it one step at time.
The next obstacle was Battle Of The Somme (K5) where we jumped from ground level to some bales floating in ditches filled with water and then into the ditches themselves only to get up on the other site and between each of the ditches there were fires which we had to jump over as well. The Tyre Crawl (K6) where we crawled through a tunnel of tyres which was really short and easy.
By this time the temperature had fallen a bit and some people around me said it was minus 4 degrees now according to the marshals and we started getting some very nice hail, which was all we needed. Dead Leg Swamp (K7) was next and the swamps did their best to numb ones legs before arriving at the Vietcong Tunnels (K8). The tunnels were split into two parts the first fittingly wide but the second quite tight so movement through the second half was kind of slow.
Once out of the tunnel I was almost feeling okay because I had gained some warmth during the tunnel crawl but that warmth was soon diminished by The Skywalk and Paradise Cimb (K9) which had a nice pool of water to go through before starting the climb. When I was jumping in the pool someone who was next to me fell into the pool nocking us both head first into it diminishing any ounce of warmth I had regained. The skywalk went by slowly and many people skipped the rope walk over freezing water at the end of it and chose rather to decent directly to the ground. At this time I started getting cramps in my right leg so I had to stop every couple of minutes to massage it to get the blood flowing again.
After the skywalk there was a small pit stop in a pool of water called The Splosh Pool (K10) and then came the bane of my existence The Underwater Tunnels (K11). In the tunnels we had to dive underwater which felt so horrible and coming out of the water I felt really bad. At this time I was kind of out of it and the marshals requested that people take the bridge over the next lake because they had run out of ambulances to take people that got hypothermia away and the heat was down to -8 degrees. So I did not climb the Brandenberg Wall (K12) nor take the Death Plunge (K13) into the lake.
Having crossed The North Face Lake (K14) via bridge, the small wall of Dan’s Deceiver (K15), the ropes crossing of The Dragon Pool (K16) and the barrel bridge of Somme Surpirise (K17) we were confronted by The Stalag Escape (K18) where we had to crawl through mud under barbed wire which was pretty cool. Once we were out from under the barbed wire it has started snowing.
Next was The Tyre Torture (K19) which wasn’t bad but did have one ditch filled with water which brought my already freezing body temperature down even further. We passed The Pedestrian Bridge (K20) and moved on to the Anaconda (K21) which was a series of concrete pipes which we had to get over. This would not have been a hard task at all under normal circumstances but every one was on the verge of hypothermia so jumping gave most people horrible cramps in their calves. I had to vault myself over the pipes using only my hands because I could not jump at all from cramps and I saw people falling down in pain all around me from cramps. After the pipes came The Green Rolling Hills (K22) where a there were dozens of people receiving massages left and right to fix their cramps so they could finish. By the time I got to Viagra Falls (K23) which was a slide into a pool of water they had closed it off because they couldn’t take on any more cases of hypothermia and just wanted people to finish the race so I ran along to the Glod Foot Hill where the race began and climbed up the ropes there and then unto the finishing line.
The ones that didn’t make it. There were over 600 people struck down with hypothermia during the competition including the guy that came in first place. There were numerous people that were hollered off with broken or dislocated bones and there was one person that fell of the Behemoth and broke her neck but fortunately there were no fatalities.
The attention whores. Like in pretty much every competition there are those that need the added attention by racing in thongs, speedos, suites or what ever costume they can think off. Here are a few of them:
I really glad I managed to finish the competition althought I wasn’t allowed to do three of the obstacles I finished everything I could and despite feeling horrible during it’s satisfying to have finished. From now on I’m just going to stick to the easy competitions like marathons.
Some more images are in the gallery.
Videos -- Robin & Emily
Related posts from the blog:
How long was the race in km and time ?
Sleeping in the barn before is hardcore!
The run at the start is 6 miles but I guess it’s about 8 miles total. My time was somewhere past 2 hrs 30 min but people were getting anywhere from 1:15 to 4:30