A Good Foundation

I was watching some boxing the other night.  It's not something that I normally do, as I'm not a huge fan of boxing in general, and I didn't know either of the boxers that were fighting.  Something struck me though, so I wanted to watch a bit.  Specifically, I was taken by the knowledge of the announcers and how it didn't seem to match up with my own experience of the fight.  I was listening to them talk about how one of the fighters was clearly beating the other fighter and that it wasn't even close.  I didn't see the same thing they did, which isn't all that surprising since I wouldn't recognize the distinctions in performance in pretty much any sport that I don't follow closely.  I wouldn't see the fine differences in ice skating, fencing, or diving, for instance.  They showed slowed-down parts of the fight, and it became clear that they were right.  The fighter was clearly making contact with his punches that I didn't see with my untrained eye.

This got me thinking about the things that we take for granted.  We become specialists in so many things that just seem natural to us.  In fact, it's a hidden process most of the time.  We don't even recognize the extent of our own knowledge until we're confronted by someone outside that realm asking about it.  It's the water that we swim in, but others are looking into the fishbowl from the outside.  I think this may be why I'm always surprised by how other people react to the crazy things I do.  What would make a seemingly normal 40-something guy drive silly distances to run around in the cold and the mud?  What kind of madness would make someone want to run ultramarathons?  As I've told more people than I can remember, inside my head I'm a 16-year old kid - and what 16 year-old boy doesn't want to run around in the mud if they're given the chance?  This is my foundation, so it's difficult for me to imagine someone who wouldn't want to do this stuff.  The problem is if we start to feel precious about our foundations.  That's when we feel as if we're the only ones who truly understand our little corner of the world.  If we are too tightly identified with that knowledge, then we doubt anyone else who might have a slightly different perspective.  At that point, our foundation becomes the lens through which we judge all other participants, and we start to doubt their ability to measure up to our standards. All of which is counterproductive to understanding each other, and should be avoided if possible.

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Mania and Perseverance

I've been thinking a lot about Batman lately.  I realize that's a weird way to start a post on a blog about the educational lessons we've learned from running mud runs, but bear with me for a few minutes.  Hopefully, it will all make sense.

So, back to Batman.  I'm pretty sure that anyone reading this has at least a passing knowledge of who and what Batman is.  If not, here's his deal.  He's a rich guy who witnessed his parents get killed when he was a kid.  He went a bit crazy and dedicated his life to fighting crime.  He dresses up as a bat to scare the criminals.  That's usually about the extent of what people know about Batman, but there's an interesting concept that Batman, through his very existence, caused his villains to come into existence.  That's not in a "if you dream hard enough, things will happen for you" sort of way.  Rather, it is in the "crazy attracts crazy" sort of way.  If that's the case, then an argument could be made that the world (at least the comic book world) would be better off if there had never been a Batman. 

Anyway, I'm certain that I could go down this rabbit hole all day long, but it's not really why I was thinking about Batman, but it did get me started.  I started to wonder what it takes to be motivated to peak performance EVERY day.  That's what it takes to be Batman, after all.  You definitely can't skip leg day - not even once - if you want to fight alongside Superman with nothing much more than a pair of tights and some gadgets. 

I had always thought of Bruce Wayne (as if I have to tell anyone that he is Batman's alter ego) was an intense and driven guy, but pretty much just that.  Anytime anyone would tell me that he was legitimately as crazy as any of this nemeses, I would kind of laugh it off.  After all, we don't want to think of Batman being as driven by mania as the Joker is.  But, the more I think about it, the only way that you could really maintain the kind of physical and mental regiment it takes to be an otherwise human comic book hero is to be broken in some fundamental way.  It's not all that hard to keep motivated when you're in your 20s and 30s and the physical exertion is relatively easy, but where is the motivation coming from to maintain that pace into your 40s and 50s when the aches, pains and minor/major injuries start to take their toll?  Slowing down is a natural experience.  Even witnessing the murder of your parents would eventually fade a bit (not that you'd forget it, but the visceral nature of the event would blur over time) when confronted with your 4th knee surgery and recovery.  It's tough to get motivated every day if the only thing driving you is a memory that has lost some of its hard edges.  The alternative explanation is that he isn't being driven by that memory as much as the memory is the starting point of his sickness, and the sickness is what's pushing him forward.

What does this all have to do with tough mudders, though?  Well, as I approach the second half of my 4th decade on this planet, I am confronted with the inevitability of my slowing down.  I'm not planning on retiring anytime soon, and I can easily see myself out there on the course a decade from now.  The difference being, at that point I'll have to be happy with a different pace and ability to complete the events.  I don't have the same kind of sickness that pushes Bruce Wayne every day, and so I have to become comfortable with the effects of the aging process.  I'll check back in a decade, but my guess is that I'll be running fewer races (assuming mud runs are even a thing in a decade) and I'll be moving slower at the races I do run.  I'll just have to find a way to be okay with that.

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First Event of the Year

The 2018 Year in the Mud season is officially off and running.  I was all alone running a Terrain Race in Myrtle Beach, but luckily I purchased the unlimited laps pass, so I got to run as long as I wanted.  That ended up being 5 laps of the 5k course.  I thought I would give a quick summary of the obstacles, and my general thoughts overall.

Obstacles:

1. Water - the first obstacle was at the starting line.  This was a dumpster-sized pool of water that you had to jump in before getting underway.  Pretty inventive having it right at the start, but it kinda sucked first thing in the morning when it was 35 degrees outside.  This got better over time, though, as the day warmed up.
2. Four foot wall - get used to hearing the word "wall" because there are plenty more to come.
3. Six foot wall - like I said, we're just getting started with walls.
4. Rope climb over 15 foot wall - at tough mudders, this is called Balls to the Wall, but it was different in that you actually had to use the rope at the Terrain Race.  There were foot holds, but they weren't wide enough to climb, so the rope had to be used.
5. Rope climb rig - this was a pretty straight-forward climb.  At the top you had to ring a bell.  I'm not the strongest climber since I don't have the technique right, so I ended up failing on this for the last three laps.
6. Tire flip - pretty standard.  Participants had to flip a tractor tire two times out and then two times back.  It became pretty chaotic over the course of the day with tires pretty much left everywhere.  
7. Sledge hammer tire - this was an obstacle I'd never seen before at any other race, which was fun.  You had to hit a tire with a sledgehammer about 15 yards out and then turn around and bring it back.  Pretty tough unless you could hit it just right and make it jump up and roll.
8. Twelve foot wall - more walls.
9. Tunnels and Mud - the tunnels were pretty short, and they ended in a mud pit.  You had to wade across, climb up a mound, go down into another mud pit, and then climb out the other side.  The mud itself was about mid-thigh deep, and the mounds were pretty small.  Pretty standard stuff for a mud run event.
10. Sandbag carry - another pretty standard event.  Grab a sandbag and carry it around a flag and then back.  The sandbag itself wasn't all that heavy though, so it wasn't too bad.
11. Cargo net rig - climb up one side, cross over about a 10 foot span, and then climb down the other side.  Not too bad unless there were a lot of people on it.
12. Rope/Rings Rig - this was one of the more challenging obstacles.  You started on a rope, swung to a ring, swung to a second ring, and then finished by swinging to another rope.  The rings were pretty low, and you weren't supposed to touch the ground, so this was almost impossible as the day progressed and my grip strength went.  I failed this obstacle on all laps except my first.
13. Water bucket carry - carrying heavy stuff is pretty standard.  The carries themselves weren't all that far at this event, and the stuff wasn't all that heavy, so these weren't too bad.
14. Cross-shoulder tire carry - two tires attached to a pole, which you had to carry across your shoulders.  Another obstacle I hadn't seen before, but since the carry wasn't too far, this wasn't too bad.
15. Rock-wall traverse - I usually have a pretty tough time with rock-wall obstacles, but this ended up being doable since it was situated on an A-frame.  There were three different rock-wall sections connected with handhold pegs and then a walking board.  Pretty fun and challenging over time.
16. Standard rig - start with a hanging grip, then swing to a hanging ball grip, then a second hanging ball grip, followed by three foothold rings.  Since my grip strength left me, I failed this obstacle on the last three laps.
17. Tire pull - pull a tractor tire on a rope, and then drag it back to its staring spot.
18. Fifteen foot A-frame cargo net - pretty standard obstacle.  The net was hung pretty tightly, though, so it ended up being easy to get over.
19. Monkey bars - standard incline/decline monkey bars over water.  The one wrinkle was that some of the bars would spin.  Only failed this on the final lap, and that's when I knew my grip strength was truly shot.
20. Cargo net - the final obstacle was an inclined balance beam up to a 20 foot cargo net.  The wrinkle on this one was that there was a fireman's pole at the end that you got to slide down.  

All that being said, I can unequivocally say that I had fun on the course.  I'm still not in 100% shape yet, and really felt sore afterwards (although that might have something to do with the fact that I drove 6 hours home immediately afterwards).  I started with the 8:15 wave and finished my 5th lap just around noon.  I could have gone out on the course for a 6th lap, since they had a noon start, but I would have failed every climbing/swinging rig and the monkey bars.  It wasn't worth a glorified three mile run, so I called it a day.

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Unfinished Business

I was recently working on a jigsaw puzzle, and came to realize a few things about myself.  Just as a little background, I've always considered myself to have a bit of an addictive personality. I remember staying up for several days on end playing games like Diablo and Warcraft (among many others, but Blizzard as a game-design company seemed to really build games that I could get into).  I would stay up all night, miss meals and skip classes if I was into a game.  I was, in many ways, exhibiting behaviors that are the textbook definition of addiction - with one exception: once I had beaten the game, I would lose immediate interest and would almost never even think about it again. I would be totally immersed while I was competing, but once the competition was done, it was done.  I didn't feel even the slightest need to revisit it.  In fact, I'm glad that I realized this about myself before the invention of MMOs like World of Warcraft (if that sounds like Greek to you, don't worry...it's likely that an explanation of those terms would just bore you).

One of the reasons that I try not to play video games anymore is because they don't actually end.  Online games don't have a final battle that you win and then the game ends.  Nope...now games just keep adding levels or quests or items, and can go on forever.  This is, of course, by design.  After all, you might have paid $50 for Diablo II back in the late 90s/early 2000s, but now you pay a $15 monthly subscription fee for World of Warcraft.  The business model necessitates that the game be addictive and open ended. I don't have the money or freedom to pay for the privilege to miss sleep and meals while killing orcs (not to mention, I'm an adult with a job and a family...tough to ignore those things for a game). Sometimes I slip, and get sucked into a game, and I end up losing way too much of my productive time.  I was really addicted to a Facebook game called Marvel's Avengers Alliance, which (thankfully) Disney discontinued or I might still be playing it instead of doing more productive things (like writing blog posts).

What does this have to do with jigsaw puzzles, though.  Well, my addictive personality hasn't gone away, and sometimes it needs an outlet.  The most recent outlet was a jigsaw puzzle, but not just any old puzzle.  I love puzzles, but this one, I think, was custom made to drive me batty.  The puzzle itself was 1000 pieces, and the main picture was Darth Vader's head.  The wrinkle that made the puzzle maddening was that it was the kind of picture that is actually made up of a bunch of smaller pictures.  If you focus on Darth Vader, you lose all of the other images, but if you focus down on the smaller images you lose Darth Vader.

The other thing to know is that this wasn't initially my idea.  My daughter, bless her 10-year old heart, decided to pull this puzzle out.  It was a brand new puzzle, and I saw her open the bag, so I knew that all the pieces were there.  She dutifully started on the border, and promptly lost interest after about 10 pieces.  I was, however,  hooked by that point. The border ended up not being too difficult, but once I started working on the internal parts, there ended up being no clear lines or color changes to help guide where individual pieces would be put.  There were some clearly lighter blue sections to the puzzle, which were relatively easy to complete since those pieces overall had that color, but outside of that there wasn't much to go on.  Luckily, the puzzle came with a foldable, oversized picture that I could use to guide where individual pieces would be.  Picture me, holding an individual piece up and trying to match it to its location on a paper version of the puzzle.  Each piece might take one or two minutes to find on the image (if I could find it at all).  Now, picture me, in all my addictive glory, doing that over, and over, and OVER again for 800-900 pieces. 

Although it was a new puzzle, and I knew all the pieces were there, I was building it in my living room, so there was the potential that pieces would be knocked onto the floor and lost that way, but I was pretty sure that they were all there.  As I got closer to the finish, I found one piece that I couldn't find a place for.  No big deal, I thought...after all, I had a bunch of these kinds of pieces that I couldn't find, so I would put it aside and move on.  As I neared completion, I was a little worried about that piece, but I counted all of the open spaces and all of my remaining pieces and it matched up, so, again I soldiered on figuring that it would find it's place in time.  Eventually, I had only that one piece left and one available spot, all I had to do was put that piece in, and I would be done with this monstrosity of time-suckage.  Imagine my horror when the piece didn't fit.  There was no mistake, all other pieces fit snuggly.  The piece that I had in my hand was definitely from the puzzle, since I could see the smaller images on it.  It simply did not fit in the space that I had available.

I sat and stewed with this for a while.  I went through the puzzle piece by piece to make sure they fit properly.  I looked around the coffee table to see if there was another piece (perhaps the designers had decided to do the IKEA thing and include a few extra pieces, just for fun).  No luck.  This made no sense.  There was a piece that belonged.  There was a space for a piece.  They didn't match.  I went to bed very confused.

The next morning I showed this to my wife.  She laughed and said I had done something wrong but couldn't find evidence to back that up (which was infuriating in its own way).  I showed it to my 15-year old son.  He shrugged in all his ennui-induced glory and shuffled away.  I showed it to my daughter.  She looked as flabbergasted as I felt.  Each of them took their opportunity to try and fit the piece in, all of them eventually realizing it didn't fit.  Eventually, my wife "hammered" it into place and said she'd figured it out.  The fact that the colors didn't even match up correctly or that it distorted the rest of the pieces around it didn't seem to bother her too much.

Earlier, I mentioned that doing this puzzle lead me to realize a couple things about myself.  So, what are those things?  First, I felt as if I was cheating somehow by finding each piece's location on the larger picture.  I'm not sure why that felt like cheating, but I'll definitely have to get over it if I'm going to tackle the Luke Skywalker puzzle next.  Second, I reflect back on the unfitting piece, and I would expect to be more frustrated than I am.  This seems like the kind of thing that would throw me over the edge, but I'm not feeling that at all.  Rather, I'm actually feeling pretty sedate about the whole thing.  I've come to realize that there's a difference between unfinished business and unfinishable business.  One of those things is beyond your control, and that's why I am rather accepting of that piece of the puzzle.

Mud-runs, working out and general healthy living all seem like unfinished business to me.  I have set the goal to reach my 50th event this year (ideally that would be at WTM), and I think I would be disappointed in myself if I didn't do everything I can to reach that objective - barring injury, of course.  Frustration comes from not finishing something we think we should.  Acceptance comes with realizing when something isn't finishable.  In educational settings, we have lots of unfinishable business that we get frustrated about as if it was simply unfinished.  I'm pretty sure we would not only be a lot more successful if we did more to realize that distinction, but we might even end up with better outcomes.

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Pride - A Few More Thoughts

I've been reflecting on the thoughts I posted earlier about pride, and I'm pretty sure that there is more to say on the subject.  Perhaps it's because I'm having difficulty sleeping in the middle of a snowstorm that's got me so contemplative, but that earlier post has been rattling around in my head like a song that I just can't shake.  So, I thought I would take a shot at putting some of those "rattlesome" thoughts down.

But, first a digression.  I have worked directly in the field of instructional technology for more than a decade, and I've been involved with educational initiatives in general for nearly 25 years (just typing that makes me feel old, and my go-to line whenever that happens is to say that "I'm much to young to be this old").  I only say this here in order to give you some sense of scale when I talk about how often I've been involved with discussions of "BADGES!".  It seems like every few months I'm involved with some meeting where someone will raise the idea of badges as a way to provide feedback to students/identify mastery of content/provide a record for posterity/identify workplace skills for employers/etc... I could go on listing these justifications, but I won't, though it certainly seems like the reasons why people think badges in education are a good idea are as numerous as conversations will allow. 

My response usually ranges from mild interest to utter bafflement during these sessions.  Not because I think that badges are uninteresting or don't hold potential, but because I usually find that the people who are proposing these systems have a faulty sense of what motivates people.  For the most part, they have the "if you build it, they will come" mentality, and that entirely misses the point.  They believe either that the badges themselves will motivate individuals to participate or that the usability of the badges will be what motivates them (in other words, "my future employer will value my badges, so I'll take them seriously").  Both of these reasons are entirely off base, in my opinion.

The reality of the situation is that the only thing that would ever make badges worthwhile in educational settings is if students have pride in what they represent (I'm sure you were wondering when the digression would make it's way back around to pride).  That doesn't come from the badge itself or from a belief that future employers will value them.  It comes from an intrinsic value placed on achieving whatever the badge signifies.

As an example, I have received badges for some pretty kooky things.  I once received a "Conference Attendance" Badge because I picked up my registration at a conference.  How meaningful was that badge, do you think?  How much pride did I take in that accomplishment?  If your answer to that is anything more that "Zero", you're likely to love badging systems.  In fact, it had a negative impact on my affect, because I started really wondering about the quality of sessions I could expect to see at a conference that did something so transparently childish to its attendees.  After all, I may have been happy getting a gold star in Kindergarten, but I like to think that it takes more than a sticker to gain my affections now.

In fact, the only electronic badges that I've ever really valued were those from my early days participating in Tough Mudders.  I think they still give them out for participating in events, and while I don't do much with them anymore, I remember feeling tremendous pride in sharing those earliest ones on Facebook.  They represented something greater than a few pixels on a screen.  They represented all of the hard work that I had put into getting back into shape.  They represented my willingness and ability to engage with something difficult.  Most importantly, they represented my new passion.

But as I said, I don't do anything with those badges now.  They have lost that same meaning.  They no longer represent the pride I have in my abilities.  And, quite honestly, if badges for something that I'm obviously passionate about don't maintain their interest for me, then it's VERY unlikely that meaningless badges would.  This doesn't mean that I don't have pride in my accomplishments, it simply means that I get more enjoyment out of the tangible results of my participation.  This goes beyond my headband collection (which is quite glorious, if I do say so myself - and just to be clear, I don't want to hear any cracks about how many 10X headbands I have), and includes old Team Bad News shirts and photos from my events. 

I guess the lesson that I would take from this is to think hard about what badges, tokens, and mementos represent to the people we work with in educational settings.  As leaders and teachers, we can get away with some gimmicks for a little while, but unless the people actually value what underlays those gimmicks, they will grow stale very quickly.  Worse yet, they may backfire on you.  Learn from the "Conference Attendance" badge...don't assume that these things will be seen in a positive light.

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Pride in our Accomplishments

As 2018 gets under way, I've begun to reflect on my 2017 race and event schedule.  The first event of the year was the Virginia Beach Ultra 100k run, which was a glorious failure.  I didn't reach the 100K, but I did stay on the course the entire time and ran farther than I ever had before (92K in 12 and a half hours).  I also had my best 50 mile time during that race (9 hours and 40 minutes).  So, while I didn't hit my goal of 100K, I still feel good about my experience.  In fact, if I had hit the cutoff time with only one lap left to hit the 100K, I would have kept going outside of the race window just to finish.  But, with 2 full laps left, no headlamp, and pitch dark outside, I figured I would take the 57+ miles and call it a win.

This has got me thinking about what I'm most proud of from what I accomplished in 2017.  As I've already stated, I ran 92K in my first event, but additionally, I completed 15 laps at 14 regular Tough Mudder events, and I ran in the overnight America's Toughest Mudder (completing 20 miles in 8 hours) at the Atlanta course.  All of those are fun and I feel tremendous pride in them, but they aren't what I'm proudest of from this past year.  That would be my run of Hadrian's Wall in June.

A little bit of background first.  For those of you who may not be familiar, Hadrian's Wall was built between 122 AD and 128 AD under the orders of the Roman Emperor Hadrian to act as the Northern boundary of the Roman Empire in Britain (In other words, it was built to keep the "barbarians" living in modern day Scotland from invading).  It ran from Bowness-on-Solway in the West to Wallsend in the East, and effectively put a wall across the entirety of the country.  It is a very popular hiking destination for people who live in or visit England, and it has a very well marked path for hiking anywhere along its 84 mile length. For most of its length, the path follows the historic positioning of the wall, crosses through cities and countryside, goes through public and private property, involves crossing a large number of sheep and cow pastures, and at its most majestic will follow along craggy hills overlooking England and Scotland.  Much of the wall itself is gone now, with only about 30 miles remaining in the middle section of the country.  What remains is rarely more than two or three feet high, but it can be an impressive sight to see.

As for me, I lived in England from 2003 to 2005, and spent a good amount of time traveling around with my wife and son.  We visited Hadrian's Wall a couple times, and I even hiked about 10 miles of the wall in the summer of 2005 before I came back to the US.  It had always been a desire to hike the entire length, but once I moved back to the US I figured that wasn't likely to happen.  I wasn't going to make a trip to the UK just to do it, and no opportunities had presented themselves to get back there for any length of time.  So, I had pretty much resigned myself to having it on my bucket list, and perhaps doing something about it when I retire.  However, an opportunity arose in June that would allow me to be in England for 3 days on my way to Portugal for a conference, so I decided to take the jump.

There are several companies that will organize a tour of the wall for you (including the logistics of making hotel arrangements and moving luggage to and from various locations), so I found one that offered two day running options.  For a fee, they made hotel reservations for all three nights I would need, they sent me maps and information about the path, and they prepared me for the two days of running that it would take to go from East to West.  I started early in the morning on June 22nd from Wallsend, and spent much of the morning running through the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  I didn't actually reach any actual wall ruins until early in the afternoon, and stopped to take a picture when I first saw the wall itself.  It wasn't until later, when I was looking at maps of the journey, that I realized that the picture I took was approximately 26.2 miles from the beginning of the trail.  That's right, I ran a marathon along Hadrian's Wall path before I saw any of the actual wall. Not only that, I had another 16 miles to run before I was done for the day.

I reached my hotel in the tiny village of Twice Brewed sometime around 7 pm after nearly 11 hours of running, and promptly ate a huge quantity of food (actually, I shouldn't say "promptly" here because I did take a nice long, hot epsom-salt bath first).  The food and drink were particularly welcome after having run nearly 44 miles through some relatively rugged terrain.  The Twice Brewed Inn is legitimately in the middle of nowhere, but it was a nice stopping point for my first day.

The second day, I started my run in a drizzly rain at about 6 am, and had to make my way through the city of Carlisle.  I had visited this city before, while I had been living in England, but it was an entirely different experience passing through.  There was a bit of construction along the path, which shunted me off into main streets, and I had a pretty difficult time finding my way back to the path until I was about 6 miles to the West outside of town.  From there, it was a pretty straight run through some fantastic bogs to the end point in Bowness-on-Solway.  Having run several ultra marathons previously, I was pretty well prepared nutritionally and fitness-wise for the endeavor, but the last four miles were tough.  Even though the terrain was flat, and the path was clear, it was difficult nonetheless.  I had heard of people who run marathons talking about how they had to negotiate with themselves as they get along the race, and make deals with themselves to ensure they kept going, but I hadn't really felt that need in any of my previous events.  That changed for the last four miles, though.  I can unabashedly say that I negotiated nearly every step of those four miles.  And, while difficult, I found my way to the end point of the trail.

Exhausted and elated, I immediately picked up my bags at the hostel I had already paid for, got a cab, and drove to the train station in Carlisle that I had actually run past a few hours earlier.  I did this to catch a train to Lancaster, where I would be staying with friends from when I lived there 15 years ago.   An hour and a half later, after a shower, I was sitting at dinner with friends I hadn't seen in nearly a decade, and all of the difficulty of the run was gone.  I had successfully run 84 miles over pretty grueling terrain over the course of two days, and come out the other side stronger than before.  Back-to-back ultra marathons were never in my plans, but I wouldn't change the experience for the world.  Which brings me to the lesson that I took from this event and my reflections on what I accomplished last year.

Specifically, the lesson of PRIDE.  I was raised as a Catholic, and had always been told that pride was a sin (in fact, it's one of the 7 deadly sins).  As such, it was always frowned upon to be proud or to demonstrate too much pride.  I never really understood that when I was a kid.  Gluttony, Sloth, Envy...the other deadly sins, I could "get".  I understood why those would be bad, but why would pride be discouraged? Now that I'm older, and have things to be proud about, I'm able to put the world into less black and white terms.  Yes, pride can be a negative, but it isn't necessarily.  Pride in our accomplishments is usually what keeps bringing us back for more.  In educational settings, we say that we want to celebrate our accomplishments and demonstrate our joy in our achievements.  As such, it implies that we should be proud of those accomplishments and achievements.  There's nothing wrong with that, as long as we keep moving forward.

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New and Returning Obstacles for 2018

So, Tough Mudder just announced a couple new obstacles.  The first is called "Happy Endings", and appears to be evidence of the old adage that "bigger is better":

Not actual size

I'm on the fence as to whether this is anything more than a knock-off from various other racing organizations.  Savage Race has the Colossus, which is an oversized ramp on one side and then a slide into water on the other side.  Happy Endings tries to up the scare factor by incorporating electricity for one part of the slide.  I've seen a few people on Facebook saying "what's the worst that could happen" while posting the following GIF:

Because this dude looks disturbingly like me, I find it necessary to state that
no Gazelles were harmed in the making of this GIF.

However, having said all of that, I'm not all that disappointed that this is just a bigger version of Pyramid Scheme and Everest.  Or that it's just a knockoff of the Colossus.  After all, there's only so much you can do with obstacles.

The thing that disappoints me is that (based on what I've heard so far) this is pretty much forced to be a group activity.  I'm not averse to helping people up on an obstacle, or asking for help myself, but any obstacle that cannot legitimately be done individually is pretty crappy in my book.  I continue to try and make it up Everest 2.0 by myself.  I fail at that every time, but I give it a shot.  If the ropes are down on Pyramid Scheme, it's actually a pretty easy obstacle to get up by yourself.  There may be something I'm not seeing that would make this doable by yourself, but everyone who has attempted this obstacle has said that it takes a village to conquer.  If you go out in one of the early waves, it's likely you'll reach this monstrosity all by your lonesome, which means you're all alone in your shame as you walk around it (not that I would ever do that, though).  Of course, this is all conjecture, since I haven't actually seen this thing on a course yet, so it may be that there is some way to do it alone.  I would assume that the folks in charge of Tough Mudder have thought this through, and will do something to address it.  If that's the case, then I look forward to the challenge of beating this monstrosity.

The lesson that we might be able to learn from this for education is that it's important to take into account the context in which activities take place.  As Americans we have this mindset of being able to "go it alone" and to "pull ourselves up by our bootstraps" and become "self-made men".  All of this is BS, of course, since the reality is that we are the result of all our interactions.  Our successes and our failures are the result of all of the help that we've received along the way.  This would seem to counter my whole point complaining that this obstacle can't be done alone, but that's not quite how I see it.  The help that we are provided doesn't have to come in the form of a helping hand at the top of an obstacle.  It doesn't have to come in the form of a tower of people we crawl up as we ascend.  Rather, the help can come in the form of the obstacle designers understanding the psychology of wanting to test ourselves, and provide an opportunity to at least try.  We may end up needing help, but having that as a prerequisite for success can be counterproductive unless we are actually given the resources necessary to succeed.

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