This weekend, I and 6 other residents ventured to Cleveland, OH to take part in the Ohio/Michigan Tough Mudder.  Never heard of the Tough Mudder?  Check it out at http://www.toughmudder.com/!  Basically, it's a 10-12 mile (I think ours was about 11) military style obstacle course with over 20 obstacles including walls, ice baths, barbed wire, and electric shocks.

We all drove out the night before because, really, who wants to wake up, drive 4 hours, then run 11 miles?  No one, that's who. 

The forecast was overcast, high of 60, and chance of rain.  60 sounds nice, until you are trying to warm up after jumping in a sub-freezing fluorescent colored ice bath.  Then it sounds cold. 

The instructions told us to arrive at the parking lot 2 hours before our scheduled start time.  That sounded a little excessive, but we did it and we glad we did!  The line for the buses to take us to the course was HUGE.  They had school buses in groups of 5 shuttling people the 15 minutes from the parking lot (of a huge factory of some sort) to the course.  There, were proceeded to check in, get marked with our numbers, check in bags, and try to warm up.  Then it was a short climb over the first of many walls to the start line... (yes, you had to climb a wall just to get to the start...)

Then we huddled with about 600 other people in our wave, said the Tough Mudder oath, and were off!  To summarize the next 4 hours, it went a little like this...

Run through mud.
Climb over something.
Run through water.
Jump 25 feet off a platform in to water.
Go through a tube.
Climb over something slippery.
Get electrocuted
Run through mud
Climb over something
Crawl under something.
Run through water.
Climb over walls.
Run through mud.
Get electrocuted.
Finish.

Here's the evidence that there was mud!