Tough Mudder - Toughest Chicago 2021

 Race: Toughest Chicago 2021

Date: 8.14.21-8.15.21

Time: 11 Lap - 55 miles - 11:23:26

Place: 4th overall - 1st in AG 

Pre-Race Conditions:

Ugh. Forgot to write this last night. So quick prerace write up coming. 

It’s going to be hot and wet. We went to do an early check in this morning and ran a couple miles of the course to get our shake out run in. It’s going to be farm roads and a nice river crossing twice. It’s flat. In 4 miles we only hit 23’ of gain. That’s going to make it fast. I’m feeling good. I think. 

Slightly burnt out from what feels like a nonstop 2 months. From Tennessee to Colorado, a wedding and Ode. It’s been busy. My running has been great. Strength has been lacking due to time. My feeling is most of this is going to have to be done with my legs. I get through this and get a bit of a break to start building for WTM. 

My dad is driving us right now. We are about 5 minutes away from the site. I’m sharing a tent with Eddie and Brooks. Beth, my dad and Brooks girlfriend are crewing. Having Beth crew is a huge weight off my mind. She took care of me at ode and I can’t think of anyone better to get me through 12 hours of this. 

I’m hoping to do well. I don’t know what the competition is going to be like. My plan is to go grind out my own race and see how it goes. That’s about all I can do besides have as much fun as I can. Can’t wait to see everyone and see how it goes 

Race Recap:

Let’s start at the beginning. We got to the event about 10am to pick up our bibs early and skip some of the headache later on. We were told we couldn’t pick them up for an hour so we hung around the festival and Eddie and I decided to do our run. We came up with about a 2.5 mile route running the course backwards from the finish and doing a cut at the river to make it back to the start. After taking a misguided turn (classic vs 5k turn) we hit mile 3 on our watches and found out we were 2 miles from the start. After some creative exploring we made it back after about 4 miles. We chatted with Sean for a minute and wandered back to find my dad and go get our bibs.Then we left the site and ate some Panera for lunch at the hotel. Just enough time for a quick nap, last minute prep and we were out the door by 3:30. 

We got to the event and got a good close parking spot. Eddie beat us there and saved some pit spots so we just had to haul our gear over and set up. One big trip and a second for the last few things was all it took. I’m getting this race pit gear down to an art. 

Even though we had 4 hours before the race it seems like it flew by getting setup. making all my prerace calls and saying hi to everyone I haven’t seen in over a year. I had a little bit of a nervous stomach going into this a little untrained for the first long OCR in 18 months. A little after 7 I put on my headphones to listen to my prerace meditation. First time I’ve ever done that in a porta potty. Might be a new thing going forward. I stopped by my tent quickly to drop off my last few things and do my last bit of prep before heading to the start line. It wasn’t long before they were pushing us all forward. I moved my way up close to the start line to get out fast at the start. I was up there with Akash, Jake, Evan and saw Trevor Cichosz there. Kyle got up and did the prerace briefing. Some of the penalties sounded brutal. 30 push presses for failing funkey monkey. Or at Gauntlet you had to pick 3 cards that could be squats, push ups, high knees up to 50 reps. That just made me more nervous about my lack of grip strength. 

The horn sounded at 8 and off we went. The first mile was a flat run. I was 20 runners back from the lead talking with Hannah and David at a comfortable pace. David peeled off for a bathroom stop and I kept moving to the river. I got there and chatted with Evan a bit about that current and how much fun it was going to be as the night went on. I got to about mile 3 slowly picking up the pace and then got hit by a big side stitch. It made me put the brakes real fast and walk. Akash caught up and checked on me. I got back to a jog and held a decent pace the rest of the sprint lap. I joked about it being a long night if I was having these kind of issues already. 

This setup had a weird pit setup. You had to double back and could only get in and out one way. It was going to be a huge time suck to go to the tent. My plan was after lap 1 shoot a gel and drink some water and head out for lap 2. After lap 2 I was just grabbing my loaded vest and continuing on to lap 3. Beth and my dad did great meeting me after every lap with both what I wanted and needed. I couldn’t have done so well without them being there and letting me focus on running. 

Out on lap 2, right before mile 1 was the barbed wire crawl. Just before that was a bank of porta potties. 90 seconds in there and my stomach was feeling a lot better. A GasX after lap 3 or 4 righted me and I didn’t worry about it again. The timing in this race was different from previous. Normally the first hour is the sprint lap with no obstacles. This race obstacles started opening 30 minutes in. You were guaranteed to hit obstacles your second lap. 

I knew my obstacle strength was lacking going into this race. Can you tell I was worried about it. My plan was to grind hard for the first few hours at an unsustainable pace and then slow it down once all the obstacles were open. I had some key places to be trying to avoid some possible penalties and slowdowns. I think the only one that I hit was getting by Funky Monkey 10 minutes before it opened. All the rest just lined up so I had to do them. I think the top places were all close enough that we all had to do them. Someone may have been thinking about that when they made the schedule. Well done TMHQ. 

After 11:30pm all the obstacles were open and the fun began. I kept running expecting my body to slow me down but I was able to keep a decent pace. I made it through funky monkey twice and on my 2nd time had to deal with 2 clueless runners. One had fallen and lost his headlamp in the water and was searching for it right below me. Then his buddy was waiting for him at the end of my lane. I had to have been hanging there saying some choice words to both guys for about 20 seconds. They didn’t get the idea that if I fell or finished the obstacle we were going to get hurt. Finally they moved and said something to me as I ran off. The volunteer commented on them later saying what they did was stupid and even said I handled it quite well. 

I did fail gauntlet on my second or third time through. The rings were super wet and I slipped on the third one. Luckily I only had the penalty of 5 push-ups, 30 high knees and 10 squats. Not too bad of a burner. I headed out and did complete Funky that lap with the wet bars. I had a thought that I had gorilla gloves and figured I’d give them a try. As I finished that lap I called out to my dad to grab the gloves from pit and meet me at the finish. I still had Mudderhorn and EST to complete. The timing worked perfect that I didn’t even have to wait. Got to gauntlet the next lap and no issues (besides I may need a better fit) and then got funky monkey for my third time for a clean lap. Next lap I headed out and ended up falling on the second ring on funky monkey. My plan was to always start bypassing that once I failed. Luckily, the penalty was only 30 push presses with a sandbag. The sandbags were pretty beat up and light by the time I got there. I’m going to suggest they use Spartan Rams or wreck bags for the future. 

I completed Rope A Dope every time without incident. This has to be one of my favorite obstacles that I never have a problem with. 

The grind continued through the night. I kept going back and forth with Trevor chatting a bit.  Most of my time was alone so I was taking any opportunity I had to chat with people as I went by. I don’t think I can remember ever getting passed. If I did it was by someone using a bypass band. I finally saw Brooks on my lap 10 as he was finishing the penalty at Rope A Dope. We ran for a couple minutes together before I pulled away. Then he bypassed Gauntlet and I risked a penalty to keep the band for my last lap. I slowly completed it and then caught back up to him. I remember saying that I thought it was supposed to warm up when the sun came up. He asked how he got ahead of me. I moved through the rest of the course to see Cali and Eddie at Everest. They were finishing up their last lap. Said hi and then moved on. That was the first time I had seen them all night. We aren’t allowed to start a lap after 7am. I finished my 10th lap about 6:15, met Beth to swap out my bottle and crossed the start line at 6:20 along Jeff from Strong as Oaks and his teammate. I did the math that all we needed was 20 minute miles. Easy. I also had 4 bypass bands that had no worth after that lap. Might as well use them all. I crossed mile 2 at about 26 minutes and figured I now only needed 30 minute miles. Bypassed Gauntlet and Funky Monkey. Why risk that penalty. Kept going and crossed mile 4 at 7:09AM. 51 minutes left for the last mile that had the river crossing, trench warfare, Everest, Mudderhorn and EST. I knew I was bypassing Mudderhorn but kept debating Everest and EST. In the end I did Everest. I can’t say enough how much the Everest Angels help us every event. At 165lbs they pulled me up there effortlessly lap after lap. I saved that last band for EST to avoid finishing muddy and nasty. 

My least favorite part of the course was the half mile run from the crawl to the river. The barbed wire crawl was in nasty thick mud. We came out like the creature from the black lagoon and had that run. Ugh. Every time until the river where we would get clean again 

Overall the course was amazing and exactly what I thought it would be. I came out with a podium on my mind and put down my best effort for a 4th place… again. At some point I’ll crack that top 3. Evan Preparis posted that only 6 people had ever gotten 60 miles. 3 of them were at this race to show how tough the field was. 

I guess that heads up penny I found on my run Friday was good luck. I just needed another one 

The Bad:

Not much went wrong this race and that’s due to a lot of prep and experience. A couple things that I could improve on is my gear choice. I wore my ¾ tights like I did at Killington. Those got packed with mud behind the knees and tore me up. Next time full length for sure. 

Grip strength is something to work on. I had a plan by never had time to actually start the workout. Those start next week. The plan I have should help me build and peak just in time for WTM. 

The minor issue of my stomach did slow me down a bit but the experience to know how to deal with it and not let it get to me didn’t hurt my race. 

The Good:

My legs did a lot of that race. My running hasn’t been better and I can’t wait to see how well I do in a few months. 

The best thing again was my crew. Beth and my dad knocked it out of the park for me and I couldn’t be happier with how well they took care of me all night. It was super helpful to never have to go to the tent. They met me after every lap with what I wanted and needed. 

Moral of the Story:

Even with the self doubt, the insane nonstop  2 months and lack of strength training I’m calling this one a huge success. No injuries besides being a bit beat up from running for 11.5 hours. Possibly a good looking scar from the raw spot on my side. Now’s the time to get focused and start working towards WTM. 

Best Moment:

Finishing 4th is about as good as it could get. I had a good pace all night and found that I can keep that pace pretty comfortably. It gives me good hope I’ll be able to keep it up at WTM. This was a good training run to try out some new things and a giant confidence booster. I wish I had more but through the night it was pretty lonely out there and it just became a lot of time in my head. 

Worst Moment:

The lows during the night. The penalty briefing at the start rattled me and seeing Trevor there got in my head. I knew a top spot was going to be hard. With that hard penalty at gauntlet I was really focused on my lack of strength training. I had some low moments and thought about calling it off but kept grinding and it worked for me in the end. 

Funniest Moment:

Every funny moment this race happened at mud mile. The volunteer had a never ending pile of jokes that just keep getting better and better as the night went on. It may have been that we were getting more sleep deprived and slap happy. I’d like to think it was the jokes. 

Map:

Results: 

Gear:

Altra Superior 4

Blue compression socks

2XU ¾ length compression pants

Swim cap

Gorilla gloves

Black Diamond storm headlamp

Trail toes

Gurney goo 

Salomon Adv Skin 5 vest

Nutrition:

Tailwind

FitAid

Body Armor

Bai cherry

untapped Vermont maple syrup 

Apple sauce packs 

Mashed potatoes 

Salt stick

Stalk stick caffeine 

Kion EAAs