The Worlds Toughest Mudder Experience

Greetings!
   These last couple weeks have certainly been filled with a lot of rest and recovery. I will get it out there and say the number one thing I was not prepared for was post race recovery, it has been a bear!

   Before getting in to the experience more, I would like to thank my husband for his tremendous support. He hauled hundreds of pounds of gear all over and stayed up through the night as a spectator to cheer me on for the 25 hours of competition and then carried me by his side as I gimped around post race. He is now my re-hab trainer!

Many of you have seen the results of second place, but the real win is for Soles4Souls. As a result of this race, I will be donating $1,000 to them. That is 1,000 pairs of shoes! 

While I was traveling to New Jersey a day ahead of my husband to get acclimated, he sent me this sweet picture of our little ones :) 

Below are the maps of the race and the schedule info 

There were 22 obstacles per lap and each lap was 5 miles. Of those obstacles, my least favorite was the electrical shock and my second least favorite was Devil's beard. My favorite obstacle's were mud mile, leap of faith and Everest.

The mud mile warmed me up and early in the race took a great amount of teamwork to get over the large hedges of mud walls and through the pools of muddy water.  Leap of Faith reminded me of one of my first track and field activities I ever did as a child, broad jump. This brought me comfort and I looked forward to this one each lap. It was a 12' leap from a 15' high ledge to land on to a cargo net and then climb the cargo net down another wall. Yes, that was comforting to me :)
 Everest is probably not usually anyone's favorite due to the fact of it's difficulty, but it again required great teamwork and when you are trying to sprint up a 20' steep slippery slope at 3am, you need others and they need you.

The beginning of the race was packed at many of the obstacles, but through the night, you were typically a lone runner. Every now and then you would run across another person at the same point in time and have a few minutes of conversation, but the race really requires the ability to overcome extremely adverse conditions solo. This is a specialty for me! Although I was never truly alone during the race, I prayed at nearly every obstacle for strength and the will to carry on, much of my time was singing song's that reminded me of our children, reciting my favorite scripture or thinking about favorite movies in my head that were fun. I was really anticipating I might pull from the movie Rambo, but ended up thinking about movies like Despicable Me, Monsters Inc, Shrek...etc

Here is the video compilation of the obstacles:

The Strategy:
  The question of "What is your strategy" was thrown at me numerous times pre-race from friends, family, media, during interviews, but overall strategy was simple....Never Give Up.

  I had a few simple mind sets to keep me going and get through the obstacles. Pray. Think about who I was running for, Soles4Souls. Stay fueled and hydrated, even if I didn't feel like eating or drinking and stay out of open water that is nature made. Being in man made water pits/pools is not a big deal and it actually stays pretty warm.Open water was freezing. I fell on one lap in to water on the island hopping and started to get hypothermic, but recognized what was coming and was able to battle through it. It made me realize how important it was to stay out of the lakes..

Strengths:
  The strategy played a big part, but with over 20 years as a highly competitive athlete, I know my body's strength's and weakness's pretty well. My lower body has about triple the strength of my upper body and I counted on it alot to get me through. Since I was a little girl flexibility has been key in excelling in sports and I relied alot on that to get me through and over obstacles.

Nutrition:
  One of my obstacle racing friends helped me a lot with prep before heading to WTM2013, Lindsey Remmers MS, RD, CSSD, LMNT, CLT showed me how to re-fuel properly before and after workouts while training for the race and then her best piece of advice for during the race: EAT!  She noted at that point, your body is just burning calories and will start feeding off of your muscles unless you stay fueled, so eating between every lap was important to me. I drank lots of water, Gatorade recovery mix, chocolate milk (although I would not recommend chocolate milk, put my stomach in knots) and ate primarily peanut butter and jelly sandwich's. I used some artificial energy fueling, but my body started to reject it and I had to go back to regular food's of substance.

 Injury List:
   As you can imagine, 76 miles and 330 obstacles will take it out of you, so how did my body fare?
-Lost left pinky toenail
-Strained left achilles
-Sprained right ankle
-Strained IT bands in both legs
-Right toe still numb from constantly rubbing on my big toe and it deadened the tissue
-Right calf strain
-Right hip flexor strain
-Bruised legs, back and arms


One week post race, a bursa sack in my knee burst and has set me back a bit more, but my training regardless is picking up again.

Gear/Training:
  So how did I train to get ready for the WTM2013? I ran whenever I could, wherever I could, for as long as possible. I tried out 6 different wet suits before finding the one that was right for me and spent over 100 hours researching and purchasing the right gear. my shoes were the very last purchase and I ended up running in Salomon speed cross 3 and that was the absolute best purchase next to my 3m dawn patrol wetsuit by RipCurl . I ended up with 5m gloves after realizing the 3M were not warm enough and a wind/rain coat. The race marked the first time in my life I wore a swim cap and I am extremely happy I did, it kept my head warm and dirt, etc out of my ears.

Thanks for reading about the WTM 2013 Journey and for all of the support and well wishes. On to 2014, my race schedule will be released soon!!

Remember, take a chance, dream a dream and go for it!

Warm Regards,
  Maggi Thorne
Your Mrs. Great Plains International 2014