What made me think I could do this, you ask? Peer pressure, my friends. Good, old-fashioned, peer pressure. Let me explain. My friends are nuts. No seriously, certifiable. Several of them have run this thing 4 or 5 times and have the tattoos to prove it. As you know given the title of this blog, I was Formerly Fat. Not a little heavy. Not pleasantly plump. Severely overweight. So I was never really eligible to even attempt something this monumental, in fact, I was never even asked. I'm sure it was my friends being sensitive to the fact that I could never, ever have participated in a challenge like this 100 pounds ago. Never. I had a tough time NOW.
So fast forward almost two and a half years - I was asked and somehow they convinced me. They said, "If you can do Triathlons, you can SO do a Mudder." I wasn't convinced. But I did see it to be great motivation for me to continue my training. An end goal, if you will. Therefore, I continued to train for my Tri's (my last one of the season was mid-Sept) which gave me one more month to push my training to the limits to prepare for this "race". I quoted race because it is not a race, not at all. In fact, you have to take an oath to not even consider it a race, but more of a challenge - to challenge yourself, to challenge your teammates, and to work together to get everyone to cross the finish line. It was for that reason that I signed up. I wanted to be apart of the camaraderie and force myself out of my comfort zone, and that I did.
Four o'clock wake up. Out the door by five. To Jen and Brian's by six. To get to the parking station by 7:30. To get to the event by 8:30. Start time 9:00. Ugh. And then we were going to have to run/climb/crawl/carry/dig for 5 hours after that!? Oh god. Well, needless to say, our mighty team of 5 (Me and Jen, the only kick ass girls on the team!, Brian, Pat and Ted) totally lived up to the challenge. Seriously, I did 20 of the 22 obstacles. I overcame some serious fears. I was stronger than I ever thought I could be. I ran a good majority of the 12.5 mile course. I was tired. I was cramping. I was hungry. I was physically fatigued. But I kept going. I rolled my left ankle. I strained my hip flexor, dislocated my right shoulder, and wore my toes down to bloody stumps, but I did not stop. I did not give up. I kept fighting until I crossed that God-forsaken finish line, and I can, without a doubt in my mind, say that I have never been more proud of myself in my life.
I feel like this weight loss journey has been like a road through hell and back. I fear, literally, to the point of anxiety sometimes, creeping back up to my original weight, redeveloping those old habits. I'm terrified. But it is moments like this that make me realize that I AM NOT the same woman that I was back then. I am stronger. I am more proud. I feel like I have something to lose and something worth fighting for. I never felt like that before now.
I will also admit, pretty confidently, that that was the first AND LAST Tough Mudder that I'll ever do. .... Maybe I should watch what I say, I've heard you should never say never.
*Note: Most of the images in this video montage are mine, but the ones that aren't belong to the Tough Mudder organization. I'm not certain how liability whatnot works for copyright material, but I just wanted to give credit where credit is due!
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