Iconic Fitness at Tough Mudder

There can be no growth without leaving your comfort zone, they say, well Saturday 15 June 2019 saw 20 of Iconic’s members leave their comfort zones and venture south to Drumlanrig Castle to take part in the Tough Mudder event.

“Tough Mudder is and endurance event series in which participants attempt an 8 to 10-mile long obstacle course tattiest mental and physical strength. It was co-founded by Will Dean, a former British counter-terrorism officer and Guy Livingstone, a former corporate lawyer. the obstacles play on common human fears, such as fire, water, electricity and heights. The Tough Mudder organisation values camaraderie throughout the course, designing obstacles that encourage group participation.” Wikipedia

A combination of a cross country run, with extra mud, an assault course with electric fences, and mud, climbing ropes, with mud, cargo nets over mud, monkey bars, with mud, freezing cold water, with mud and mud, with extra mud thrown in.

Iconic PT James Miller had prepared the team well training way in advance, James is no stranger to Tough Mudder having completed the course last year along with other Iconic members Angela Little, Mia Mortimer andMartin Millar (who used a trip to Uganda to build a school as an excuse to avoid this years event), under James excellent tutelage they were ready to take on any obstacle, no matter how high, how wet, how muddy, how physically and mentally challenging, so forewarned if not forearmed  we set off from Lawn St, in an excellent luxury coach organised by the excellent luxury John Rae, a two hour journey to the dark heart of Dumfriesshire.

Bit drizzly on arrival we bundled together and got through the registration process, got our team start time of one o’clock and made last minute preparations for the race, wrote letters to loved ones, completed the wills forms that the chaplains passed out, sorry no, that was D-day, we were just running up a hill in the mud.

I’ll get the obstacles out of order but from the start they were a stretch, a rope climb, a ducking under three huge pipes, hurdling over straw bales, and then it got worse! Swinging from ropes, electric shocks, having to be carried for 50 Metres (thanks Mia), you get the idea, it was muddy and wet and cold, weather was nice though I got a lovely beetroot coupon as you can see below, thanks also to our support team Craig, Fiona and Katie who popped up occasionally with cider and chocolate.

Twenty of us started, aged between 16 and 56, and I’m happy to say 20 of us finished after an afternoon of laughter, terror, pain, cooperation that I’ve never seen before, both from team members and from complete strangers, when faced with a 15 foot high barrier to have 2 Edinburgh Bikers say “stand on me” was the one way any of us were getting over!

Money raised for charity at time of writing stands at an amazing £5000, achieved the unacheivable, had one of the most insane days of my life and enjoyed every minute of it.

Would I do it again?

Aye, right, it’s called a comfort zone for a reason!!!