Approaching Each Obstacle: Part 2

This is a follow-up post to Part 1. As with Part 1, I'll be a bit more specific about my approach to the obstacles that a Mudder might include.  In this case, I'll take the obstacles as they happened in Society Hill, SC last October.  I'll describe each obstacle, give my impressions, and then define my approach to that particular one.

Official Course Map from Toughmudder.com

1. Log Jammin': This obstacle is made up of a series of log walls that you have to navigate.  The walls themselves are high, but they are staggered so you have to do some crawling.  The intention is to get you to climb over one wall, then go under the next, then climb, then crawl, etc.  If it's busy, and lots of people are going through, then you'll have to suck it up and do the climbs and crawls, but there is another way if the challenge isn't all that busy.  I'll do pretty much anything I can to avoid crawling (if I can), since I hate getting my knees and legs all scratched up, so my method for this obstacle is to climb over the walls, and then lay down and roll under the crawling walls.  This works pretty well if there aren't many people there, but you should be careful to look at the ground where you'll be rolling.  I actually got a pretty big rock to the lower back on this obstacle in SC, so be careful.
2. Mud Mile: This tends to be a large open pit filled with mud.  In SC it was a little bit different, but not so much so that it makes a difference.  The key is to just keep moving (you'll want to make sure that you have your shoes tied on tight though).  I will say, the SC mudder was the muddiest mudder we've participated in, and it really showed up on this event.  I had a blast getting into the mud and slogging my way through.
3. Dong Dangler: This event requires you to get across from a stand on one side of the water to the other shore climbing across a wire strung between two locations.  I've seen two ways to do this.  The first is to hang below the wire and shimmy hand over hand.  The second is to balance on top of the wire and pull yourself across.  The first option requires a good amount of upper body strength as your entire weight is suspended and all of the effort is put into moving the shoulders and holding on with your hands.  The second requires you to straddle the wire with one leg hooked on.  The SC mudder was the first that I attended that actually had this obstacle, so we went with option number one.  Needless to say, it didn't go very well.  We all made it a good distance across during our first lap, but barely made it any of the way on the second lap when upper body strength was gone.  I vividly remember thinking "just get past the rocks at the starting point so you can let go and fall into the water".  Prepare to get wet, though, because I didn't see many people making it all the way across.
4. Underwater Tunnels: This is a little misleading, because there aren't actually any tunnels involved.  Rather, you have to swim out to a series of barrels floating on the surface of the water (don't worry, they're tethered in place) and then go under them in sequence.  It's not too tough, but if you're not a good swimmer, then you may want to skip this because the water is deep enough that you'll have to swim.  The key for me was using my hands to hold on to the braces holding the barrels in place and use them to pull my way.
5. Kiss of Mud #2: Same as Part 1, but it's much more likely that the crowd will have thinned out a bit by now so rolling should be possible. 
6. King of the Mountain: This was more fun that I thought it would be.  It's a series of two "mountains" made out of hay bales.  Each side was stepped, so you can climb, but my approach was to lift with my arms and then twist so that I ended up sitting on the edge of the bale.  Then I would get up and do it again with the next step.  Going down the other side was a pretty simple slide from one level to the next.  The final part of the obstacle was the large roll of hay (maybe 5 feet tall) that you had to climb across.  They gave us plenty of room to get a running start, so it wasn't too difficult to jump, grab on and pull yourself over, but one of our team members (none of the authors of this blog) was so beat by the time he got here that he couldn't get over and an un-named mudder got down on hands and knees to let him step up on his back.  Talk about taking one for the team...
7. Hangin' Tough: The Rings Obstacle.  If you are of a certain age, you'll remember having to navigate the rings in gym class.  This is basically the same thing, just over water.  There are about five or six rings hanging down from a wooden structure, and you have to swing from one to the next to make it across.  I've seen people actually put their whole arm up to the elbow into the rings and hold on that way, but we chose the simpler grab with the hand approach.  Brian made it across during the first lap (although he did lose his balance on the other side and fell into the water, so I only give him partial credit), and he saved a dude's life on this obstacle during the second lap.  Since neither Danny or I made it across in either lap, Brian is the unequivocal winner of this obstacle for SC.
8. Funky Monkey: This is the bane of my existence, and there is visual evidence of my failure.  It sounds easy enough...monkey bars in a slight inverted V shape.  You get from one edge to the other without falling in the water.  The first mudder we did in Wintergreen had this, and I missed a bar and fell pretty quickly.  The second mudder in Pocono I made it to the very last bar, which I missed and fell.  As disappointing as that was, I was horrified to see my failure advertised in the official Facebook pictures of the Saturday Pocono mudder (I'd link to it, but the memory is too painful).  Imagine hoping that your picture would be one of the chosen ones to be included in the official set of Facebook photos, and then seeing that the chosen image is actually of your biggest failure.  Unfortunately, SC didn't go much better.  I actually made it most of the way across, but a guy next to me was swinging pretty badly and caught my leg (throwing me off stride).  I have yet to make it all the way from landing to landing, but I absolutely plan on crushing this event in Miami.
9. Boa Constrictor: A set of tube tunnels that you have to get through.  The first ones are angled downward towards a pit of water, and the second set are angled up from that pit.  The ones going down are pretty easy...get in, and you can almost slide down.  The ones going up are more difficult.  The tubes are too tight for most people to crawl, so you end up having to scrabble using whatever method you can to get up.  I tend to struggle on this because I try to bring my knees up.  It works, but it's slow going.  I know other people who go up on their sides or on their backs, but I've never been able to master that.  In SC, at least during the second lap, the mudder support crew put in place ropes on some of the inclined tubes so you could pull yourself up, but that seems a little too much like cheating for me so we didn't use them.
10. Everest: The quarter-pipe that you have to climb.  I've seen two distinct approaches to this.  The first, which most people employ, is running and grabbing for someone's hand.  The second, which is used when people are having real difficulty or are in special need, is that a group of people will lay down on the quarter-pipe to create a makeshift ladder that people can climb.  I've come to realize that the key to this is that you need to run through the obstacle.  Don't run to the goal...run through the goal.  Don't run just enough to get to the hands (or the support 2X4 along the edge).  If you run just to reach those, you'll probably fall short.  The key is to run through those things.  Don't think of reaching for a hand...keep running.  Don't just try to reach the edge...keep running.  We all made it up this obstacle both laps at SC, and it's become much less daunting.
11. Electroshock Therapy: This has been talked about before (Brian has a whole post about leadership lessons to learn from it).  The thing to realize is that you will be shocked, but you have to keep moving.  As with electric eel, the faster you move, the less the effect will slow you down.  As this is the last obstacle in every Mudder, we've gone through it in several different ways.  We've gone fast, we've gone slow.  The only thing we haven't done (yet) is to go through with your arms spread wide out.  The shocks aren't all that bad, in that they don't last long, but the will get you. If you want to minimize their effect, go fast.  If you want to savor it a bit, walk through and embrace the effects.

Anyway, that's the end of my post about how I approach the various obstacles at Mudders.  I'm not sure there's much to learn here about leadership or education, other than maybe to embrace the challenges that come your way.  Prepare for them, obviously, but embrace them regardless.  It's only by confronting them head on that you can actually succeed consistently.