How hard is tough mudder

[iamverytired]

If it goes ahead, I'm doing tough mudder in May. I haven't started exercising since my baby was born 3 months ago and I'm a bit limited as to what I can do as I am still waiting a physio appointment for pelvic floor issues/slight bladder prolapse/leakage. Therefore I can't go running or lift weights until I've been seen in Feb and even that appointment might not go ahead at the minute due to covid. My issues aren't major so I'm happy that I will be able to do tough mudder in that respect as a one off (or I don't care as I just want to go do something fun), but don't want to harm my recovery by exercising too soon. I just know my fitness is going to be shocking. Am I really going to struggle if I haven't done any exercise other than walking? We are doing the full course not the short one 😬. I've not been to the gym in nearly a year now.

Yes it's incredibly hard. When I did it I had trained to run around 5 miles but no more as I was too lazy. It's also a lot of upper body strength required. I didn't find the running too hard as it's maybe a mile max between each obstacle but the body strength needed to get over a lot of them was tough. I only completed maybe 50% of the obstacles. Sorry to be negative!

Apologies for being blunt but your pelvic floor will not thank you doing the tough mudder
speak to the physio next month but I feel they will say running is at least initially not in your best interests.

I did it a few years ago and thought it was massively overhyped on the 'toughness'

Basically you can circumnavigate any of the obstacles you don't fancy and it it just a bit of a muddy run all in all

Maybe they've made it 'tougher'. This was 2013

Not tough at all and more of a teambuilding thing/fun day out rather than actual exercise.
IME most people seem to jog slowly between the obstacles and then walk round any they're not happy about doing. People also pull each other over and help each other through. And it's only 10 miles, so with 25 obstacles you're barely running half a mile between each.

Just take it steady and have fun OP; you'll be fine! And you certainly won't be the most unfit there.
If you were suggesting doing a 10 mile muddy fell run I'd be more concerned, but Tough Mudder has turned into more of a mass participation "event" (which is fine, no judgement here!) rather than a genuine physical challenge.

Mixed opinions then! I figured I could take it easy, I guess people who take on the challenge and run all the way and are determined to do all the obstacles would be more knackered by the end of it!

When I did it, it was incredibly muddy and you really couldn’t run between obstacles as you were knee deep in mud (it was August!) I’m a long distance runner so wasn’t concerned about the distance (I also did the full) but the obstacles were HARD. There were some I just couldn’t do, and some I had to have a lot of help with because I have rubbish upper body strength and am short so my reach wasn’t enough! I’ve done a lot of other obstacle races and TM was by far the hardest I’ve done. I was completely battered by the end, physically and mentally. I still have flashbacks to the ice water plunge! Never again.

Oh yes, I’d forgotten about the ice water plunge. That was pretty gross, but very Wim Hof

I was fairly fit before pregnancy and I think I have/had pretty good upper body strength (used to be able to do pressups/a couple of pull-ups/weights) and I'm only half a stone off my pre baby weight which should be gone by then, so I'm sort of hoping my body returns to a reasonable state quite quickly. I can certainly do some upper body workouts and hopefully more depending on what the physio says. I'll have a couple of months to work on it at least. Saying this it'll probably end up cancelled. Can't see everyone sharing obstacles being acceptable even in May.

I was battered and bruised afterwards but it was more fun than hard. If you don't like plunging into water (I don't) then about a third of the obstacles are a bit hellish but if you really don't want to do them you don't have to.

I'm absolutely not a runner so jogged/walked between most obstacles. There isn't too much distance between them as PP have said. Try not to stay too still between them though as I was starting to seize up a bit towards the end if I didn't move enough.

You'll be fine as a few said overhyped .You can jog, walk run between obstacles so plenty of chance to recover .
Some of the obstacles are difficult like 8ft walls to scale and climb over but the brilliant thing about theses events is that everyone helps everyone no one is left to struggle.