IT’S A MUD MUD MUD MUD WORLD
IT’S JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT ON A SATURDAY IN APRIL, AND HUNDREDS OF MEN AND WOMEN IN WORKOUT GEAR AND RUNNERS’ HEADLAMPS ARE STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF AN OPEN FIELD IN FAIRBURN, GEORGIA, ABOUT 20 MILES SOUTHWEST OF DOWNTOWN ATLANTA. DESPITE THE HOUR, THEY’RE TOTALLY WIRED, SHAKING OUT THEIR LIMBS and bobbing nervously in place. One guy has a pink mohawk. Another looks like an ex-marine. A group of young women in Lycra shorts and tank tops gives off a more corporate vibe. What unites them is a shared desire to complete an eight-hour obstacle race, produced by the Brooklyn-based company Tough Mudder. The Toughest Mudder, as this event is called, kicks off at midnight and involves gleefully sadistic challenges such as the Augustus Gloop (in which competitors have to climb up a plastic shaft as water pours down) and Electroshock Therapy (where participants run through a gauntlet of dangling electric wires). Also, there’s mud. Twenty-five-hundred acres of it.
Sean Corvelle, the night’s spiritual leader and emcee, leads the group in three rounds of “HooRAH!” and then asks everyone to raise their right hand to recite the Tough Mudder pledge, a creed that a number of athletes have tattooed on their bodies: “I understand this is a race. But not
