One Million Mudders

I just received an email from Tough Mudder saying that they've registered over one million participants for Tough Mudder events.  Considering how many no-shows there probably are, I doubt that they've actually had that many people participate, but it's a very powerful indicator of how popular these events have become.  We'll see what happens over the next few years to know if there's real staying power, though.

In celebration of their reaching this milestone, they've set up a website for people to tell their stories, get a discount code for any 2013 event, and possibly earn a season pass (http://millionmudders.com/).  I don't need a discount code since I already have a season pass, and unless the pass is for 2014 I wouldn't need that either, but I thought I would tell my (our?) story.  This is what I submitted:

"I got into Tough Mudders on a lark. I read an article in ESPN the Magazine and thought it would be fun. I talked some buddies into doing Wintergreen in 2011 and we got crushed by that course (up the mountain, down the mountain, rinse and repeat). But we also fell in love with the camaraderie and challenge. We took our time doing our second event (Pocono, 2012), but that got us primed to run two laps on Sat in South Carolina a few months later.

After that, we decided we were going to get a season pass and try to qualify for WTM 2013. We even started a blog dedicated to our efforts (http://yearinthemud.blogspot.com/). We ran Sat and Sun in Miami, Sat and Sun in West Virginia, and we plan on doing two laps on Sat and one lap on Sun in Virginia Beach (our home town) in a few weeks. So far, we've run 8 laps at 5 different courses, and we're planning to run at least 6 laps at 3 more courses during the rest of 2013 (with the possible addition of running in Australia in August if everything works out). We're lucky that we've already qualified for WTM 2013 based on our time at Miami, but we aren't resting. We're working towards making the best of what we have.

In a very real sense, we can say that running in Tough Mudders has changed us. We started out thinking that this would be a fun, one-time challenge, but it's gotten into our blood. People ask me why I do these events. The answer's not easy, but it boils down to the fact that although I'm 41 physically, mentally I'm 16, and what 16-year old male doesn't want to roll around in the mud? Tough Mudders gave me the opportunity to do that. They (& my teammates) have pushed me further than I ever thought possible, and, for that, I thank Tough Mudder."

Kinda cheesy, I know, but the word limit is pretty severe.  I'd like to have said more (perhaps about being electrocuted, or the beauty of yoga pants, or learning to enjoy running, or getting warnings on the course, or the firm belief that some people have about Miami being our coldest event, or the West Virginia Saturday run ending with me being so cold that I couldn't even finish my beer because I was shaking so badly, or the girl in South Carolina that actually deserves the nickname "gazelle", or the infatuation that one of our members has with Amelia Boone and Junyong Pak, or any one of a thousand other anecdotes) but there wasn't enough space for the details.