Spectating the Tri-State Tough Mudder

Friday night Chris and I drove down to New Jersey to stay with our friends Jackie & Brian. Jackie was my college roommate, so I was so glad I got to spend some time with her over the weekend!

Brian and Chris decided to sign up for the Tri-State Tough Mudder way back in April. In case you aren’t familiar, the Tough Mudder is a 12-mile obstacle mud run. There were about 20 obstacles, all of which are based on military training exercises and are mentally and physically taxing. This race made the Warrior Dash look like a walk in the park!

I was checking out the Tough Mudder website about a week before the race to see what it was all about and discovered that spectating the race was $20. That to me was outrageous. We had to pay to watch our boyfriends run this race. Anyway, signing up ahead of time it was $20, but on site it was $40. Good thing we checked the website!

We ended up parking at the PNC Center and got shuttled into the Race Track in New Jersey where the race was taking place. It was about a 40 minute bus ride. Once we got there, the boys had to get their race bibs, numbers and get their gear together. Jackie and I were the official photographers and bag carriers for the boys.

Their official start time was 1:30 but since we got there super early they made it into the 11:20AM wave. So glad they were able to get started early. It was going to be a LONG race.

They boys headed to the start which was a few minutes walk–right before the start there was a wall they had to climb. The race hasn’t even started yet!

The first real obstacle was a literal ice bath–they had to jump into these dumpsters full of ice water! Imagine doing that and then having to run 12 miles. Not me.

The course was laid out so that the specators could easily get to the obstacles and watch the runners go through each one. It was a lot of walking and standing but nothing we couldn’t handle! We definitely got our workout in too! Each obstacle had music blaring which was awesome and really pumped up the runners. It was fun watching them! They looked like they were having a great time.

Here are some photos from the spectator’s point of view!

Needless to say, it was MUDDY. Four hours later, we watched the boys do their last obstacle and then cross the finish line! They are officially Tough Mudders!

So proud of you guys! You did great and couldn’t have asked for a better day to run the Tough Mudder.

I just have to say, I was really glad to be warm and dry during the race. 🙂 But who knows, if I didn’t have to run 20 miles the same weekend, I might have signed up for it!

After the guys showered and changed, it was time to board the bus back to the parking lot. I will say this race was organized so well. There was no wait for a bus and everything went very smooth!