Tough Guy & Gal Mud Run; Auckland 6km Recap

I had heard of the Tough Guy & Gal Challenge as well as Tough Mudder and thought they would be cool to try at some point, yet have never been living close enough to an event to participate so far.

When I discovered that my work would pay for anyone wanting to enter I put my name down straight away. This was prior to damaging the ligaments in my ankle when I rolled it at Netball over four months ago. I put my name down for the 12km thinking that it wouldn’t be an issue however my plans changed as the day got closer and the ankle was still not 100%.

I had seen pictures of people who had participated in the event the year before and still thought it looked like a lot of fun. I didn’t really consider the fact that it is the middle of winter and that I haven’t run in a very long time.

I Picked up my colleague who lives nearby at 9.30am after running around making sure I had everything ready for the run, a complete change of clothes for afterwards and towel (It would’ve sucked to find out I’d left my underwear behind or worse, a clean pair of pants!).

After getting everything together at the last minute I was started to wonder why on earth I had signed up to this event! The event was held at Woodhill Sands Equestrian centre which is a decent 30-40minute drive from the city, we got their relatively quickly and headed straight to the registration desks. I had the longest wait at the 12km registration line where the others had a short wait at the 6km line.

We received goodie bags which included a little sample pack of sports jelly beans (they were yum!), a tough guy and gal challenge 2014 mug, some laundry powder (at first I thought it was odd but I guess it makes sense given how dirty we got!), and a few little snacks.

After what felt like the longest half an hour ever the 12km participants headed towards the start line (I stayed back with 6km participants as I’d decided that it wasn’t a wise move to test my ankle out on a 12km on uneven surface – the 12km was just two laps of the 6km circuit so wasn’t an issue at all) and we begun a little bit of a stretch and nervous chatter while we counted down to the start time.

Once we finally were under way it was the usual dodging  of people that you always get at the start of events like these and I quickly lost my colleagues, one headed out in front of me and the rest were behind me somewhere. Going around the outside of everyone was a good idea as the grass wasn’t quite as wet and muddy as the rest of the path that everyone was going on. 

I came to the first mud pool and hesitated a little (which is the wrong thing to do), then I grew some balls and just jumped on in and hoped for the best. The first thing I noticed was how blimmen cold the water was!! It was a lot colder than I had expected and the mud was so much stickier than I imagined it would be. It was right about now I was super glad that I had duct taped my shoes up so they were more likely to stay with me for the duration of the race. 

After a couple more mud pools and people sliding everywhere I was starting to wonder why on earth I had decided to enter the mud run! It then began to rain which dampened my mood even further until I told myself to shut up and that running in the rain was usually my favourite, so what was my problem?

The course then started to wind through some forest which was pretty cool even though the track was still very slippery and it was hard on the ankle running on the hills. It must have been about this point that I heard a “Oh hey!”, I had caught up to the colleague that speed ahead at the start. He was finding the run harder than he expected as well and we continued the race together. 

There were obstacles that you had to climb over and jump down into mud pools as well and some mud slides down hills where you could either attempt to run down them and then inevitably slide down to the bottom at some point collapsing onto the ground or you could just go the whole way down on your bottom (from what I saw the later is the safer option). There were also some obstacles where you had to crawl on the ground under barbed wire and through tunnels which I really enjoyed as I was reasonably quick at those. 

We finally made it to the end, exhausted but glad we had done it (and I was super glad I wasn’t silly and just did the 6km as I’m fairly certain my ankle would not have made it the full 12km). There weren’t actually that many people around when we finished surprisingly so we headed off to the shower to beat the rush that was sure to come in the next 10-20 minutes when everyone else started finishing, especially when the 12km participants started coming through. 

After a cold shower outside to rinse off the bulk of the mud and a quick hot shower inside trucks set up especially for that purpose I was still feeling a bit muddy but felt so much better and was dry and in clean clothes which felt awesome! We headed back to the finish line with a hot chocolate each to cheer on the last of our crew to come through the finish line. 

Overall I did really enjoy the Tough Guy & Gal Challenge and would recommend it if you like to give new things a try. It isn’t the cheapest event at around $70 each (hence me jumping at the opportunity when work said they were paying!), however it was really well run and I’d do it again if I was with a group of people who would run it together as it’s not really the type of run that you just run off and do by yourself (you can, but it was more fun for the part I was with someone else). 

Next week I’ll pop a blog post up with my top 5 tips for surviving a mud run. 

Have you ever done a mud run before? Would you consider doing one? – Comment below and let me know 🙂