World's Toughest Mudder- Part 1 - Conversations

Me- "You are walking a lot faster than earlier. Is your foot feeling better?"

Nathan- "That's because my foot has been frozen since lap three. I can't feel it".

Just a sample of the conversation over the course of 24 hours.  One would think that in an event where you spend 24 hours together, a good majority of it walking, that you would have plenty of time to catch up with your brother on everything, to discuss your kids, to discuss your wives, to discuss pretty much everything.

I learned a number of things during the World's Toughest Mudder competition. One of them is that when you are absolutely miserable your conversation is pretty much limited to things like "I am peeing now, that feels so warm!" (said about 50 times at least) or "watch that hole", "watch that branch", "you want to walk now?", "you want to run now?", "you want to get some chicken broth or keep going?".  Or something along the lines of "You have to poop?", "you know a real man poops in his wetsuit".  Pretty basic stuff.

But I suppose the most important thing about our conversations is that one thing we never talked about was quitting. Outside of the final lap, when we were trying to figure out if our current speed was going to be quick enough for a sixth lap, we never mentioned it. We didn't even consider resting as we knew from our research that the tents were where "people went to die" during last year's event.

I am going to write a handful of posts on the event itself. I almost feel obligated to pass on everything I have learned as much of our success is at least in part due to a number of blog posts from last years' participants.  This thing was as much about preparation, strategy, and experience (which we lacked) as it was about athletic ability.  In fact, I would say basic athletic ability is the least important of all four.

So anyway, maybe a post describing the course itself, our training/strategy, and one on the event itself?

Stay tuned for more.

-Loren