Tough Mudder New England 2012 #1

All smiles in Vermont.

One year after the first Tough Mudder New England, I was back Mount Snow, Vermont, for  the latest event. The slightly sadistic course designers over at Tough Mudder know how to get the best out of an array of ski slopes. Difficult course.

On Saturday I was pulling double duty – covering the event as a whole, as usual, and also following and photographing “Team Frado” – a team of around 20 reality TV stars running the course for charity. Mostly people from Biggest Loser, Big Brother, some others. The only person I’d heard of (but wouldn’t have recognized) was Richard Hatch, winner of the first season of Survivor. Unfortunately I can’t show those pictures now, but hopefully they’ll end up somewhere and I’ll link to it.

As I was photographing the 8:00AM start wave (the first of the day), I saw a familiar face in the front.

It was Junyong Pak, the winner of the first-ever World’s Toughest Mudder competition in late last year. Pak beat out around 1,000 other racers by completing 7 laps of a Tough Mudder course over a 24-hour period in New Jersey. In December.

Later on I heard over the walkie that Pak was leading the heat, and eventually that he was the top finisher, completing the course in just under 2 hours. About an hour later I was photographing the 11AM start wave. Normally I’m deep into the course by this time, but the reality people were starting at this hour. A familiar face caught my eye again.

Yep, there was Pak, one hour after finishing a grueling Tough Mudder in record time, about to run it again, wearing a wig, a dress, and his World’s Toughest Mudder bib. Don’t know he did his second time around, but I did see him lose his wig to the Arctic Enema obstacle (dumpster-full-of-ice).

I was pretty happy to “catch” Pak, so I couldn’t resist doing this time-stamped diptych when I was culling for the Facebook gallery:

Without further ado, here are a few more highlights from the weekend.

Saturday was Cinco de Mayo, a fact that I remembered about 2 hours into the day. During those 2 hours, I kept thinking, “why are New Englanders so obsessed with sombreros”?
Those climbs were brutal. I’ve found it’s kind of difficult to capture apparent steepness on camera. I will keep trying.I liked this part of the course. I don’t think it was even officially an obstacle, but this steep, slippery descent through rocky woods was very treacherous.I think this man was 50 years old.Another proposal!From the Facebook photos, it came out that these 4 ladies are the man’s daughters.