Race Recap: Tough Mudder Whistler 2018

Tough Mudder Whistler holds a place in my heart when it comes to OCR since it was my first one four years ago. The drive up from Seattle is always full of amazing views you get to take in along the way. The venue itself is still the same, and it never disappoints. The festival area is nice and big with good food and some cool activities to do. One highlight in the festival area a hatchet throwing cage. I mean what’s not cool about throwing hatchets?

The Race

I was running this one solo which is always fun since you get to meet new people and run with different groups throughout the race. The people that you run with can often make or break an event for you and the Canadians didn’t let me down. The first half of the run was more of the “lite” obstacles like Berlin Walls, Quagmire, Bushwacked, Hero Carry, and Lumberjacked. Getting into the second half we had Mud Mile 2.0 and Blockness Monsters back to back which was nice to rinse off the extra 10 pounds of mud that usually sticks to you after Mud Mile. Next up was Boa Constrictor and Kiss Of Mud then roughly 400 meters after Kiss Of Mud there was a water tank to rinse off our hands off which was a nice touch since Just The Tip was up next. With only 3 miles left to go I knew we were coming up on some of the big name obstacles for TM.  Everest, Kong and Cliff Hanger were all pretty close together. If you know TM you know Cliff Hanger is usually just a steep uphill climb, but if you go to Whistler it’s the hill that the Olympic ski jump is built on and it is a soul crusher! Just when I thought I was at the top, I spotted the net for Devil’s Beard at the last 30 feet of the hill.  Devil’s Beard is usually just one of those “easy” obstacles, but being on that steep incline made it so much harder. Going into the last mile we had Funky Monkey 1.0, Cage Crawl, Electroshock Therapy, and Happy Ending. I was a little disappointed that it was just the original version of Funky Monkey. Since my first TM they have updated that obstacle twice but they only brought the old version this time around? I also had a few issues with Electroshock Therapy.

Electroshock Therapy Changes

The first thing I noticed was that there was no water in the bottom (which helps with the difficulty and the shocks are a little harder.) These shocks were extremely weak feeling more like a light smack on the arm. For the four years I’ve been running Tough Mudders, Electroshock Therapy has been the final obstacle with Clinton entertaining everyone with his humorous commentary and encouragement as runners make their way through the tough obstacle. Seeing that Clinton wasn’t there and that it was no longer the final obstacle was extremely disappointing.

In my opinion, there is no other obstacle that belongs at the finish of TM, and that is where Clinton belongs as well. Electroshock Therapy used to be a place to hang out and watch while you were enjoying the cold beer at the end and there is hardly a crowd there anymore. I came up to Happy Ending, which is Pyramid Scheme with a slide on the back side and Clinton was there doing his thing, but you could tell he wasn’t that into it. I can only imagine how tough it is to make jokes about people as it’s a pretty anticlimactic obstacle. The only good thing about having Happy Ending at the end was landing in a pool of water which made it, so I didn’t need to visit the rinse station much. 

Overall

To rate this run with five being the best, I’d say it was only just a 3. The venue and the people were awesome, but that was overshadowed by the fact that the changes that Tough Mudder has made took away from the experience. Some of the obstacles also seemed to be watered down compared to what they used to be and moving Clinton and Electroshock Therapy was a huge letdown. 

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