Saturday September 26, 2015 I finished an 8km obstacle course. If you haven’t done one of these types of races it is really hard to explain how much fun they are to run.

Marcus, Fredik and I get to the starting area just over two hours before the start of the race. The only place to get food was cash only, so we took a long walk to find an ATM. After we find one, we take out cash and eat a light lunch. With about 30 minutes before start we drop off our bags and start to warm up.  The 8km course was filled with 40 obstacles like I wrote last week.  As the clock count reaches zero we take off.  The first obstacle was a vertical net to climb up and over. Then straight into the first water obstacle. Some of the highlights from the rest of the day. Out of the 11 water obstacles the rope walk over 20m was the hardest. The cargo tie down strap was connected about 24-30 inches before the pier, so to get on it you had to slightly fall forward. There was enough slack in the band, that you were in the water for the middle 6-8m. The key was to be on top of the strap before heading back so that you could get back on the pier.  I was not able to, so I had to drop in the water and take my first penalty. The back crawl under a net with water about 24 inches deep had to have been the easiest, but with 2000 others and most of them not comfortable in the water, there was a long wait until my turn.  The ones I thought I did the best on were the all the hanging events. Especially the long ring swing and rope climb. When I got to the ring swing, I thought of the show Gladiators, and there was a lot of people on the bridge next to the obstacle, so there was some added pressure not to fail.  Luckily for me the rings had a padded grip.  I took my time, but I was the only one during my time on that obstacle to make it the whole way. The rope climb was the other hanging obstacle I did well on.  we had to swim out about 10m to a rope connected to a bridge, climb up 4-5m and ring a bell. The course was great but there were too many times I had to wait in line. I am pretty sure I lost around 10 minutes by just standing around. First was the 20kg bag carry, then the rope wall climb, the rope walk over water, the back crawl in water under a net, the 2x 20 kg farmers carry, and the final three obstacles were also backed up.

Really disappointed that I couldn’t get up the final 5-6m ramp but I had the wrong shoes. I gave it a real good try three times, and each time I was 3-4 inches short of reaching the top, but with the wrong shoes it was just to accept it and take the penalty.  a total of six penalty runs out of 40 was ok for my first attempt.

Just after the finish I run into Fredrik who had been waiting around for me to finish and we take this photo.

A few minutes later Marcus finishes and we take another picture 😉

Not being sure we would get them we asked a spectator to take another just outside the finish area, with the ramp in the background.

So happy for my first Toughest medal. Plan on getting a few more of these!

Some souvenirs from the race, but biceps, and both inner thighs.  All of them have grown since taking the pictures.

A rough design for next years race shirt 😉 If we can get 8-12 others from Växjö to join us I think our team will still out since most of the other runners wore mostly black.