Done and Dusted

I don't care what you think about selfies...
if you get a chance to pet a Koala, you're taking a picture.

Greetings from Brisbane. As one of my last tasks in Australia, I wanted to put up a post about my "Down Under Mudder." Two laps at the Sunshine Coast Tough Mudder are in the books, and I must say, it was glorious and ludicrous at the same time.  I went out with the 8:00 wave, and finished the first lap in just under 2 hours.  I wasn't able to get into the 10:00 am start wave and had to wait to go out with the 10:15 group.  If everything had broken my way, I might have been able to get back around for the 12:15 (and final) start time, but it very quickly became apparent that wasn't in the cards.

Obviously, the course was much more crowded during the second lap, but the biggest impediment was the weather.  For one day, and one day only, the Sunshine Coast was grossly misnamed.  It rained steadily throughout the day, and what would have been a pretty standard course under better conditions because an 18 kilometer-long mud pit.

 I took video, but the sound quality is pretty bad because I didn't want to take my camera out of its waterproof casing.  For the vast majority of the time (I would say maybe 95% of the time) we were running in ankle-deep mud.  It was like running through wet cement the entire time.  Slippery mud, hidden holes, lots of folks, and steady rain made it pretty difficult to make good time on the second lap. 

Having said all that, I must say, I enjoyed most everything about it.  Yes, the weather was crappy, and, yes, I would have liked to have done the elusive Triple, but those things pale in comparison to the joy of sloshing around in the muddiest Mudder I've ever done.  I only had to fly halfway around the world to do it, but there's something about having to run through a lake right before Everest or climb up and over muddy mounds of dirt in Camel Humps to make a 42-year old dude feel like a 16-year old kid again.  I'd do it again in a heartbeat. 

Now, on to Wintergreen next weekend.  

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Upside-Down Mudder

I'm in Australia for some work, and was able to arrange my schedule so that I'll be able to run the Sunshine Coast TM event this coming weekend.  It should be a blast, although I'm not quite sure how many people to expect.  There seem to be a whole bunch of folks who did it last year, but I have yet to talk with anyone who is doing it this year (although, I will say that I overheard a girl on the train talking about preparing for it, so there's always that).  The earliest start time is 8:00, unless you want to pay extra for the exclusive opportunity to run starting at dawn, and the last wave leaves at 12:15.  That doesn't seem like too many starting waves, but I have been told that this is the largest TM in the world, so perhaps I'm reading too much into it.

I have an "official" start time, but my goal is to go out with the first way at 8, do a second lap and then see if I'm back in time to do a third lap with the final starting wave at 12:15.  It will definitely be tight, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to do it.  Much will depend on the course, and having to essentially run 2 2-hour laps back to back might be too much to accomplish.  Either way, I'll get a second lap in, which will give me my 18th and 19th orange headbands, which I will politely ask them to put on upside down since I'm running "Down Under".  A third lap would give me my 20th headband, which I might just wear home on the plane on Monday if I get it.

According to the course map, I'll have a couple new obstacles that we haven't encountered on a regular Tough Mudder course before.  I'll have Sewage Outlet (I'm not sure what to expect from this in reality), Leap of Faith (which is different from the WTM Leap of Faith - thankfully), and Fire in Your Hole (which should be a blast, but doesn't even have a page of its own on the TM website yet).  I'll also have another shot at Hanging Tough, which - hopefully - won't include a rope midway across like it did on the Legionnaire Loop in Virginia.

I'll give an update once I'm done - but either way, whether I get to do three or have to "settle" for two laps - it should be a lot easier to do Everest upside down - after all, isn't it just a slide then?  Or, maybe I'm misunderstanding how gravity works on the bottom of the planet. 

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