Everything is the Worst

Lately I've been telling people that I am as busy as I ever remember being, but I no longer believe that that is strictly true. I think the reason I feel so busy is that nearly every sector of responsibility in my life (academic, professional, social) is almost completely parameter-free in terms of schedule. It's not completely parameter-free, of course, there are deadlines to observe, but between the assignment and completion of any given project, I alone am the arbiter of my commitments. There is no nine-to-five, no daily homework, and perhaps most unfortunately, no compulsion to accomplish anything until I have no choice but to work far into the icy reaches of the night in order to meet the deadline.

All that to say, poor time management is to blame for my lack of (blog) writing as of late. That notwithstanding, I have purposed in my heart to write about my adventure over this past Fall Break (last Saturday) because I want to have a lettered reminder to never have another such adventure again.

I might begin by mentioning that the events of this Saturday past were technically not a surprise; I had known what was in store for the better part of three months. I still somehow managed to give my upcoming adventure very little thought during those three months, so in a sense, it really did sneak up on me. The adventure in question was a Tough Mudder foot race in Maysville, Kentucky. For those of you unfamiliar with the Tough Mudder family of events, it's an 11-12 mile obstacle course that features numerous challenges involving climbing, crawling, and swimming as well as several kilometers worth of boggy muck. Looking back on it all, I'd say that the only way to sensibly prepare for a Tough Mudder is to give it no thought whatsoever.

As luck would have it, October 20 (unlike October 21, 22, 23, etc.) was an overcast and chilly day, with the high just barely cresting 50 degrees at one point. At about 11:20 AM, together with my four teammates, I was crouched in anticipation at the starting line, shivering only slightly from the crisp October breeze. Once the race got underway, the extremities began to warm somewhat and for a brief moment, the Tough Mudder challenge seemed as though it would be on the sunnier side of tolerable.

My optimism quickly evaporated once we got to the first obstacle which was jocularly named "The Arctic Plunge." I mean, what else would you name a 30 ft. dumpster full of ice water? The Plunge wasn't so bad at first; the water, while frigid of course, only came up to my lower sternum and I felt like I was doing fine. Halfway through the dumpster was a wooden plank that divided the entry from the exit and the only way to progress was to duck under the water and swim past the plank. Duh. Goal-oriented fellow that I am, I promptly dove beneath the muddy swell only to find that I instantly forgot which way was up. For whatever reason, I got all panicky and weird and, upon somehow navigating my way out the other end of the dumpster, I fell over and rolled around on the ground for a bit, with a vague conviction that I had just been kicked in the chest.

Once the rest of my group had "successfully" completed the Plunge, we all got back on the hoof and resumed our pointless quest. After running for a little while, I actually felt blood returning to my arms and legs and I felt the seductive tendrils of optimism once again wrapping themselves around me. A few muddy miles and temperature drops later, I was back to my old grumbly self. We had completed a few more obstacles at this point, and I was beginning to feel cold in a very deep way; the kind of coldness that latches onto you and sinks into your very bones. Fortunately for me, the next obstacle promised to provide a bit of warmth on account of there was stuff that was on fire. Contrary to what you might infer from the name "Fire Walk," at no point in the obstacle are you actually walking on fire. Except at one point. Most of the obstacle involves jumping into and climbing out of muddy trenches full of water. The water wasn't very deep; most of the trenches only came up to my hips. Since I was leading the way for my team at this point, they could watch me, see how far into the mud I sank, and gauge their jumps accordingly. The final trench required the participants to actually jump over a small barrier of flame which didn't seem like a big deal to me, so without much trepidation I "set to" and leaped into the muddy water the same as I had done for all the others. Like some kind of cartoon character who steps onto nothingness, I completely disappeared beneath the surface. Turns out the last trench was much deeper than the others. Ha ha, Tough Mudder engineers. Very funny.

Two somewhat similar obstacles that yielded different results and therefore affected my ego differently: Hang Tough and Funky Monkey. The first obstacle was Hang Tough, a series of gymnastic rings that hung over a forty-foot expanse of (cold) water. I saw a some folks try to tackle Hang Tough by hanging onto the rings in the conventional fashion (i.e. with their hands) but the rings were so wet and muddy that very few of them succeeded that way. Another method that looked to be a little more popular was the arm-through-the-ring-up-to-the-elbow method. The problem a lot of competitors were seeing with this model was that they would either get stuck between two rings and lack the momentum to swing to the next, or their arm would give out and they'd plummet to the water below. When my turn came, I still wasn't sure what method I would attempt until I found that I was tall enough to slide my entire arm through the ring and still had the wingspan and momentum necessary to slide my other arm entirely through the next ring. As it turned out, Hang Tough was a piece of cake. Funky Monkey, though thematically similar, would prove to be another story.

As its name implies, Funky Monkey involves traversing an expanse of monkey bars. These particular monkey bars go up and down for about fifty feet over (you guessed it) a cold pool of muddy water. Even cold and wet and shivering as I was, I was still riding high from the success of the previous obstacle and I felt as though this one would be no trick at all. After the gentleman in front of me got about five rungs in and looked to be making good pace, I jumped right in after him. The bars themselves were wet and slippery, but at that point I still felt no cause for alarm. I had not yet reached the apex of the Funky Monkey when the gentleman in front of me did something odd. He stopped. I realize now that his flailing about was some kind of misguided attempt to keep going forward now that his forearms were shot, but all he did was cause me to hang motionless from my rung for about ten seconds. Once he succumbed to the inevitable and plunged into the murky water below, I felt as though I had some serious time to make up; my forearms were burning and I wasn't even half done yet. I crested the final rise in the obstacle and figured I had about twenty rungs to go, all downhill. For a brief moment, I felt a twinge of confidence pass through me; perhaps I could make it after all! It seemed as though the rungs grew farther and farther apart as I progressed, and their girth became greater and greater. I was exactly four rungs away from success when I came to the grim realization, "If I let go of this bar with one hand to reach out and grab the next, I'll fall." As if in deterministic response to this hopeless conundrum, both of my hands involuntarily sprung open at the same time and I fell into the frosty slush below. Demoralization complete.

Though my demoralization may have been complete, the course was unfortunately not. To make matters a little more trying, one in our group had incurred a knee injury that precluded us running at a very handy pace. While this was a relief in the cardiovascular sense, it meant that we would not be able to avail ourselves of the body heat that gets generated when you run. In other words, we were shuffling along the trail all wet, muddy, and deeply chilled. Gentleman that I am, I offered to carry my teammate for a while when her pain became such that she could hardly walk. To be frank though, it was less my sense of chivalry that inspired the offer and more that I wanted to wear her like a human windbreaker on account of I was absolutely --------- freezing.

Before too much longer we we passed a sign that said "MILE 11" and we all rejoiced; just a bit further and we'd be free of all this nonsense. It adds a little resonance to the story to note that by this point we had just undergone a water-type obstacle and were relatively clean. Well, not "clean" per se, but not caked with mud. In any event, we rounded the final bend and saw that there was one obstacle between us and the finish line: Electroshock Therapy. Imagine a grape arbor with live wires danging down from the awning and that brings you reasonably close to picturing Electroshock Therapy. It's worth mentioning, I suppose, that there was another electricity-related obstacle earlier in the race and to be frank, I didn't find the shocks to be all that painful. It actually just felt like flexing a muscle really hard for about a second. Anyway, the reason I bring that up is because I was expecting absolutely no trouble from this final obstacle, especially since I saw a whole mess of other competitors manage to prance their way through with just a little wincing. Well, contrary to what you may have heard, Ryan Wolfgang is no prancer. Except on the holidays sometimes. I squared up to the challenge and charged on through! Well, not "through" exactly; I don't know how it happened but somehow I got shocked in such a way that my whole body seized up and I fell face first into a mud puddle. Remember, everybody else is fairly clean at this point. Me? I fell face first into a mud puddle. After you cross the finish line, you're handed a bunch of "free" stuff: a t-shirt, Clif bar, banana, and headband. Well, the headband wasn't handed to me so much as it was shoved over my eyes by somebody. Since my hands were super muddy at the time, I didn't want to touch it myself; that would just make things worse. It made much more sense to me to stumble around for about five minute with a bright orange headband over my eyes.

We stopped at Buffalo Wild Wings on the way home. Yay!

-Ryan Wolfgang