These pictures fail to portray the awfulness of miles 5-9 for me. Yeah, out of 11.5 miles, four of them sucked balls for me. So much for my training. I wasn't prepared to run up and down hills for 11.5 miles. Seriously, the whole time was up and down, up and down. I also didn't train with dried clumps of mud in my shoes. That sucked. It felt like you were running on rocks the whole time. I was hoping the obstacles would provide relief from the running. Nope. The obstacles were so short. I shouldn't have done any strength training and just ran a lot more. I never thought about quitting though. Quitting wasn't an option. I knew I would finish even if it took all day. Luckily, it wasn't all day, just four hours.
Even after all that, I would do it again. Now that I know what I'm up against, I want to train harder, run farther, and kick Tough Mudder's ass next year. Who's with me?