Ruth Walker: ‘It sounds like a laugh. In the way having your toenails pulled out is a laugh’

TO BE filed under the ‘it seemed a good idea at the time’ section of the Walker memoirs – alongside that vile pixie crop I sported on holiday in Tunisia in 1986, which I thought made me look like Madonna in the Papa Don't Preach video but, as photographic evidence now proves, turned me into a less attractive version of my twin brother – is this: Tough Mudder.

For the record, I’m neither tough, nor do I like mud. Yet I seem to have found myself signed up for an event that requires both. I blame Oldest Dearest Friend, who reckoned it sounded like a laugh. In the kind of way that having all your toenails pulled out one by one is a laugh. Or undergoing some kind of sick, electric shock therapy. Or – oh, I don’t know – running half-naked through a field of nettles, leaping into ice-cold lakes, crawling through underground mud tunnels and then warming up with a sprint through burning tyres. Hilarious.

Tough Mudder delivers all those joys (OK, not the toenails one) and more in what is billed as “probably the toughest event on the planet”. It’s Iron Man meets Burning Man, with a healthy dose of sadism thrown in for good measure (think you’re a hot shot on the monkey bars? Try doing it when random sections have had a thorough greasing down with a catering pack of Utterly Butterly). It’s a 12-mile assault course devised by the British Special Forces. And it’s coming to Scotland for the first time this summer. Only hard-core nutcases need apply.

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Marathons are boring, goes the theory. Runners take themselves too seriously. Mudders do not. This is about camaraderie. Pushing yourself to physical and mental limits. Shaving your head (there’s an award for best mullet); getting a commemorative tattoo (free on a first-come-first-served basis); dressing up (prizes given for worst costume, least clothing and person most likely to have been in the Village People). It’s about a massive after-party. Oh, and it’s also about mud.

Obviously, a certain level of fitness is required for such a challenge. Entrants should be exercising regularly – between three and six times a week, they reckon. Fifteen to 25 push-ups should be a push-over. Six pull-ups? Piece of cake. It goes without saying, then, that there has been little let-up in my training. There has been no sitting with my feet up sipping gin, muscular specimen of male hotness massaging Deep Heat into my calves and congratulating me on completing a half-marathon. Chance would be a fine thing.

So I scheduled a 12-mile run for the weekend. Simples. Eight miles in, I ran into a head-wind along Cramond foreshore. It knocked me sideways. Then backwards. Then sideways again. I slowed to a brisk walk, planning to pick up the pace again once I reached a more sheltered spot. Except I never did. I trudged home, cold, defeated, broken. Not tough at all.

ODF checked the Tough Mudder website the other day. For the first time. “OMG,” she said. This was a text, you understand. She doesn’t speak like that in real life. “What have we done?” Exactly. n

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