tough mudder 2011!!

i married one "tough mudder", for sure.  i mean, come on...look at that facial hair.  it now cannot be denied.  and those aviator glasses?  are you still trying to deny it?  i didn't think so.

stephen participated in the tough mudder up at snow valley, near big bear lake on saturday with friends, tyler and cory siebert.  nina found it online and thought immediately of stephen.  it's no wonder considering his teenage backround and considering he's still crazy.  so he, tyler and cory signed up and started training about six months ago.

the tough mudder is a ten-mile run, up and down an 8,000 feet elevation change throughout the course.  there are 24 obstacles throughout the course, most of which are pretty crazy!  i only got to see about three of the obstacles due to my ever-growing belly.  i contracted just walking up to the start of the race, so i figured i shouldn't hike up through the mountain.  good idea self, good idea.

my favorite obstacle to watch (by far) was the electro-shock wires (below).  this is pre-anyone-ready-to-run-through-them.  it is also the last obstacle of the race....just fifty feet yonder from this one is the finish line.

there are some wires that will shock you up to 10,000 volts.  while nina and i watched this part, we kept thinking people were tripping at the end of it and falling flat on their faces.  no.  no, no, no.  we were wrong.  those people were being shocked so violently that it knocked them to the ground.  yes.  it was insane.  it was at this point that i decided i had no desire to do the tough mudder with stephen next year.  

after doing a flip into the gauntlet (obstacle 3), stephen and the guys climbed up into these black ice pools of death, as i call them.  the have to swim down under into the water under a wooden middle section and then climb out.  see all the ice those volunteers are dumping in?  yeah.  that water was arctic cold!

 

some of the most fabulous race costumes were at the tough mudder.  i enjoyed the sexy chorizos costume, luchador style.  

walking up to the start of the race.

this was obstacle number 2, the boa constrictor.  these tube tunnels are seriously small.   i hated crawling through tunnels like these in the mud run because they cut up your knees really bad, but these tunnels were way smaller and more constricted...ha!  the line (in the picture above) is for those waiting to go through it. 

i even pretended to go through it, belly and all!  haha....riiiight.  see how muddy i am?  uh huh.

the boys just leaving the boa constrictor, getting ready for the "kiss of mud".

more to come...