Last month, Lea Pilgrim lead a team of fellow ToughMudders around a 12-mile course, with a mock artillery gun, to raise awareness of the Aaron Lewis Foundation.
The ALF would like to thank Lea and everyone else involved in this incredible challenge, for their support and commitment in helping raise awareness of the Foundation – especially with such demanding and unique challenges as this!
A gallery of the event can be found here.
Here’s his account of the event:
The weekend of October the 25th-26th saw the final event of the UK ToughMudder 2014 season.
For those of you that are not familiar with ToughMudder, it is an endurance event series in which participants attempt 10-12 mile-long (16-19 km) military-style obstacle courses. Designed and created by British Special Forces to test mental as well as physical strength, obstacles often play on common human fears, such as fire, water, electricity and heights.
Over this particular weekend we had an epic challenge ahead.
I called on all my fellow mudders, that until 4 months ago I had never met, to join me in an idea that was thrown around and finalised by Patric Redding and Simon Jones.
The idea was to pull a mock artillery gun around the course on Sunday 26th, to mark the end of the season. The artillery gun fits into the Aaron Lewis Foundation well, as Aaron was in the 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery.
Barry was building the gun, and kept it close to his chest and wouldn’t let us see it until completion, which was nail biting, as through phone conversations with him, I was imagining a full size 21 pounder that was going to make this challenge tougher than it already was.
Well, the day came, myself and all my new ToughMudder friends gathered, tired and sore from the previous days 24 miles on the same course. The call came from Barry & Helen that they were here, with the Gun. A few of us went up to the car park to collect it, hooked it up to an ATV and rolled into basecamp where the team pulled it the rest of the way.
Barry had done a remarkable job, it was full size, but saved weight in places, it even came apart into several pieces so we could take it through, over and under the obstacles.
After a quick run over the gun, attached pulling straps and made sure everyone had their T-Shirt on, we were off to the warm up area. I remember the guy on the mic announcing us and the crowd parting as we made our way up to the front, the look of disbelief on people’s faces was great and I heard a few say “are they really going to take that round?”, “yeah, of course we are” – like it was no big deal!
From the warm up area we moved onto the start line, where a massive motivational speech was given by Gil. Now, a lot of us had done quite a few events and heard Gils speeches, but he upped his game and gave the Aaron Lewis Foundation so much hype, that everyone was pumped up and ready to take on the muddy, hilly, 12 mile course ahead.
The countdown started from 10, and on 6 a thunder flash was lit and put in the gun – as it went off, we started on our way, and soon enough were at our first hill. It was a series of short, sharp hills in which the team grabbed a hold of the gun, and ran up these hills cheered on by the crowds we were holding up. Once on the flat the team picked up a good pace and started to work out how best to control it.
We were soon at our first obstacle – “Glory Blades”: 7-8 ft walls that are slanted towards you. As we were not permitted to take the gun over the obstacles, we pulled it to one side and we all went over the walls, then gathered it up again and off to the next obstacle.
This was how it worked for the next 8 miles: reach the obstacle, climb, crawl, jump, or swim through it, regroup and off to the next one. There were regular changes in the pulling team and loads of encouragement from everyone along the way.
We then hit mile 8-9 and “Moto Mayhem”. This was a killer series of steep hills on a motocross course that winded its way up to the highest point on the course. I was not looking forward to this as it really took it out of me the day before. This was my lowest point of the weekend, the previous days runs were now really taking their toll on me. I tried to stay with the gun, but the team on it for this part were immense, gritted their teeth and powered through it. I was so grateful they were there for this.
At the top of the hill was “Hero Walls”, where we all regrouped and carried onto a few more obstacles – team work was more important than ever now, not only to pull the gun, but to get everyone over the obstacles. This was displayed at “pyramid Scheme” As the names suggests, it’s all about forming a human pyramid and lifting your team mates or anyone else there at the time up and over.
Once off this and through a cold water crawl, our spirits were lifting as we now began the descent around the bowl towards the finish line. We came down the final hill into “Everest”. This is one of the defining obstacles on the course, a massive quarter pipe that by now is wet and muddy – this is not one to do alone. You have to run at it this obstacle as hard as possible, keep your head up and grab the top rail, where you will be grabbed and manhandled over the top by your fellow mudders. Then you turn around and help the next team mate up. We stayed up there for a while helping everyone up and over, whether in our team or not.
We then gathered together for the final few smaller obstacles before the finish.
Between us and the finish line were 2 obstacles, one fun, the other not so much. The fun one was a huge water slide which throws you off and through a wall of fire – everyone loves this, as it’s like a reward for getting this far. We pulled the gun to one side as normal and all ran round to the ladders to start the climb like little kids, excited to be on this obstacle, and have fire for the first time this year.
Then, the not so fun one – “Electroshock Therapy”: a 10-15m mud run over hay bales whilst being electrocuted by cattle fence wires hanging down.
We decided we were going through with the gun, so off we went. The gun got stuck on the hay bales, we had to lift it up and over, people fell, smoke grenades went off, but when we got it through, it was a really good feeling to be at the end and to be the first team ever to do something like this, to mark the finish we set another thunder flash off.
The team hung around the finish to get a great photo, everyone was hugging and high-fiving in recognition of what we had just achieved.
This was to be the last UK ToughMudder event of the year, and what a final 12 miles is was. Everyone had such a laugh and fully supported the Aaron Lewis Foundation.
This year I have made some good friends that will remain friends for a long time, I’ve listened and shared stories along the way – everyone is doing ToughMudder for different reasons, whether personal or not, but we all came together for a cause that many knew very little about. To help raise awareness of the the Foundation, and spread the good work they do, I personally thank each and every one of you.
Lea Pilgrim