Tuesday, February 17, 2015

(Sub)Urban Mudder

The latest trend in racing these past few years has been the themed race.  It started with the Tough Mudder, a race with military boot camp-like obstacles.  This attracted me for five minutes because as you might or might not know, I consider myself to be a hardcore poser.  The idea of wall climbing, mud crawling, and burpees is strangely attractive to me.  Electrocution and tractor pulling, not so much.   The popularity of the Tough Mudder races quickly led to the Spartan Races which led to the zombie races to the color runs and so on and so forth.   Who knew there were so many fellow masochists out there?

The older I get, however, the more prone I am to injury.  I could break a hip!  I also seem to be training for a marathon every year so the last thing I want to do is sprain an ankle (or break a hip!) in the months leading up to a big race.  So basically, I am adamantly against racing any of these obstacle events...unless your name is Slim.  And you ask me.  Actually, Slim texted me the other night about doing the Urban Mudder in New York City this July.  I said yes (immediately) because, well it's Slim.  He is one of my best friends in the world who also happens to also be an amazing athlete.  He holds the 800 meter record at our university.  Not a college, but a university.  Meaning a lot of students.  He probably could have gone to the Olympics if he hadn't torn his hamstring in his junior year.  Today he no longer is the long and lean track star he once was in college, instead he is a buff gym rat and former United States Marine.  Essentially, the guy I want on my team.

The Urban Mudder will take place on Randall's Island under the Ed Koch Bridge.  Mr. Freighbor, Pete, and I ran the Nike Human Race there in 2008.  The course was reminiscent of the original Escape From New York.  I expected Kurt Russell to jump out from behind a graffitied pylon wearing an eye patch and snarling.  This seems like it will be the perfect setting for the Mudder race.  A partial urban wasteland, chock full of abandoned cars, broken bottles, and the place where concrete highway dividers go to die.  As long as I don't have to rub city rats all over my body or swim in an ice cold 12 feet deep pool  of mud - with rats, I think it will be blast.  We already have about ten other people wanting to be on our team.  More likely they want to be on Slim's team.  I'm just along for the pain.




Friday (2/13/15) - 5 miles outside
Saturday (2/14/15) - 6.5 miles outside
Monday (2/16/15) - 6.4 miles outside.  What treadmill?


8 comments:

  1. That race would be even more hard core if they did it on Riker's Island. I'm sure you'll have a great time and you might be the team to beat. How many people are on a team? Jumping across buildings seems scary, but I guess that's the point. You might be upgrading your status to "former hardcore poser."

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  2. And all through the first part of this post I thought you were going to be mudding with Kurt Russell. Lost all it's appeal now.

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    1. Mudding with a young Kurt Russell is definitely appealing.

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  3. It's also exciting that you'll be racing with Fatboy Slim. I guess he's your weapon of choice.

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    1. I think if he were Right Here, Right Now, he would not Praise You for referring to him as Fatboy.

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    2. Just as long as no one's calling anyone a Rockafeller Skank.

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  4. Don't know anything about Urban Mudder, but Tough Mudder wasn't half as hard as its made out to be. My only problem was getting over my disdain for heights on a couple of the climbing and jumping obstacles. It was otherwise a lot of fun, and a good portion of the people take their sweet ass time walking from obstacle to obstacle, which I thought was rather lame. The electricity at the end is no joke, however. Some guys took a lot of voltage right to the face while running thru the obstacle, and face-planted real hard. If they have that at the end, just go thru easy and protect your face with your forearms. And if Urban Mudder is anything like Tough Mudder, start doing pull ups now.

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    1. Urban Mudder is put on by the same people as Tough Mudder, I think. I watched a couple of videos and was surprised at how many people were shuffling along to the next obstacle. I don't mind the heights, but swimming in mud might kill me. Is there a way to avoid electrocution?

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