When Degree Men offered to send my fellow editor, Gary Dudak (above left) and I to Lake Tahoe to be a part of their DO:MORE Corps team and take on Tough Mudder, we immediately said yes. And then we had some time to realize that we might be in over our heads. I work out regularly, but I’ve never done anything as extreme as an 11-mile course with insane obstacles. And Gary … well, I’m pretty sure he’s only walked 11 miles in the past year alone. Total.
Nevertheless, we made a pact to get through it and from that moment on it was nothing but a serious commitment towards mastering the Mudder. (Not really.)
On the airplane, it started to become obvious that the pact wouldn’t last very long:
After Gary’s initial slip-up, we again came to an agreement at the airport to avoid the seduction of Reno and to stay focused. As you’ve learned already, we’re hardly men of our word:
Once we made it to the hotel, we took a little trip down the way to preview the course we were about to take on the following day. Gary made sure to make note of important locations:
And then it was time to compete. Rather than bore you with a bunch of photos of us bragging about how well we did, we’ve decided to shake things up a bit. I’m going to post three pictures of Gary and caption them and he’ll go ahead and do the same for me. This way you can be sure there will be no sugercoating.
Max: “Here is Gary after one of the very first obstacles. As you can see, he resembles a frail old woman and requires my assistance to pull him out of this ankle deep water.”
Max: “Here we are doing pull-ups about halfway through the course. Or I guess I should say, here I am doing some pull-ups. Looks like someone forgot to tell Gary that you’re supposed to lift your feet off the ground.”
