It had been a long day ….

Team Ludus had run through fire,  crawled through tunnels,  carried logs, jumped over logs and shimmied underneath logs, we had climbed ropes, swam across rivers and of course as the name of the event suggests we had navigated our way through our fair share of mud.

We had successfully  traversed 19 kilometres and had left no one behind,  we had supported each other, lifted each other, caught each other and at times even carried each other and now we had less than 500 metres to go before we would be awarded our orange headbands and be anointed “Tough Mudders”

BUT between us and that “badge of honor” lay probably the two hardest obstacles on the course. One (Everest) would be physically and technically challenging the other one (Electroshock Therapy) was pretty straight forward but the one that had everyone on Team Ludus worried.

Just before Everest was a river swim and the first people out of the water were James and Jared. As you can see that is not my James, he was at the back of the pack with me like any good husband would be. 😉

James saw that the team ahead of us was just about to leave so he sprinted up Everest and they caught him (Tough Mudder pledge in effect) and then one by one the team took on the pipe and showed the world

“This is how we Ludus”

You pretty much had to sprint from the start chute which was about 25 metres from the start of the half pipe

and you had to keep running full throttle then leap upwards towards the outstretched arms waiting at the top.

It was then it was up to the guys on Team Ludus to catch and haul you up and over

a task they made look easier than I bet it actually was. Especially given the fact that those same guys lifted us all over the walls too – their arms must have been ready to explode!

Team Ludus knocked Everest out of the park! … One down, one to go “the big one” The Electroshock!

We regrouped about five meters away from the Electroshock obstacle and Joe gave us a pep talk it went something along the lines of “we started this together, we finish together, huddle in people and lets do this thing”

I slipped into the second row, I had Leon in front of me and James behind and I was hoping like f**k that the cables would miss me completely because I was much shorter than those two. *wishful thinking*

We ran .. we screamed .. we fell .. we crawled …

We emerged VICTORIOUS!

And that my friends is the story of a group of kiwis showing the world how to “Train Hard – Have Fun – Belong”

Till next time