Tough Mudder

Back in the spring, Nathan and I signed up to do a Tough Mudder race with a bunch of couples in our ward.  It was held near Stuttgart, and on the first weekend that we were back in Germany after having been in the States.  It also happened to fall on my birthday!  It was so much fun.  Not as strenuous as I was expecting, as we had really large group and kinda stuck together through the whole thing.  So even though we covered about 11-12 miles total, it didn't feel like it because there was a lot of stopping and waiting for people to go through obstacles.  I even made it through the electrical  shock obstacles (which I swore I was going to skip!).  But I think I got lucky and didn't get shocked as much as I could have.  The worst was by far the Polar Enema--plunging into gallons of ice water and diving under it to get through to the other side was much more painful than I could have imagined.  My favorite obstacle was the Monkey one.  I was so proud of myself for making it all the way across the monkey bars and poles and not falling in the water!  Overall, it was a really fun team building type experience.  I'm so glad we did it.  And it sure helped me feel young on my 31st birthday!

( I have lots more pictures and videos but they are in another location so I'll come back to put that on later)

Thanks to some awesome friends, we even had birthday cinnamon rolls to celebrate with in the car!

At the end we got to use the communal showers to clean off all the mud before driving home.  We were all a little shocked by the openness of the Europeans there!  In the back of this picture you can see the shower heads out in the open.  Mostly men (and some women) were just standing out there in the buck, showering off!  They had a designated women's shower area that was closed off more for privacy, thank goodness--but within those walls there was no privacy whatsoever!  Ha!  It was a funny experience for all of us.  Not to mention, the water was ICE cold!!!  So at that point you didn't care about anything but 'get this mud off and get me outta this water fast!'