As Tough Mudder draws closer, many past participants are reminiscing about their time spent mucking around in the mud.
Local Brad Lacher, who is the son of Linda and Tony Lacher, participated in the 2014 Tough Mudder in Drumheller.
Lacher decided to do the run in the mud in a group for his sister’s wedding party.
“I don’t know why my sister picked Tough Mudder. It was its first year in Drumheller, and my wife and brother really wanted to do it. We are from here and they thought it was a good idea. So we did it as a wedding party, with 6 in total,” explains Lacher.
Lacher is now a police officer in Edmonton. He made the trip down to Drumheller again for the event. The group did a slight amount of training.
“We did some running but that was it. I am in okay shape from work so I didn’t do much. I didn’t run any half marathons for it or anything. We were more set on completing it rather than time limits.”
In Lacher’s opinion, the race is better with a group of people.
“There is a lot of teamwork. We ended up helping guys that were doing the challenge by themselves. There are some obstacles where you can’t do it by yourself. Even when you come up to an obstacle, people are already there and willing to help you out. Some participants stay and wait to help people. The more people, the better. It is more fun. You can do it individually because people will help you but it is more fun in a group.”
The biggest part of Tough Mudder is the obstacles. The race would not be the same without them.
“The half pipe obstacle was one of the most challenging ones. The most shocking one was the arctic enema one. You have to jump into a pool of ice water. I had been in cold water before but it was such a shock to just jump into it,” says Lacher.
Among the many great qualities of Drumheller, the landscape, played a huge part of Tough Mudder.
“There are the hoodoos, the bentonite and the hills. The hills themselves are an obstacle. The hills aren’t that steep but they kept hosing it down and the bentonite turned right into dinosaur snot. You couldn’t even get up the hill. You were slipping down the whole thing. BC is scenic and all, but Drumheller is as unique as it is scenic and when you are running it, there is no other terrain like that in Alberta,” says Lacher.
When inSide Drumheller asked Lacher if there was one thing that stuck out in his mind the most about participating in Tough Mudder, he simply responded with, “the snacks along the way were pretty great.”
