Tough Mudder South West 2018 Race Recap

The Badminton estate, in South Gloucestershire is the home of Tough Mudder South West. Unlike the rest of the 2018 season (so far) this course remains a one lap 10 mile course as per all previous seasons and not 2 loops of 5 miles. This meant the Tough Mudder Half participants had a number of cut short cuts across the course but everyone (as always) finished Pyramid Scheme in the event village.

Tough Mudder South West 2018 Course

• Skidmarked – 8ft. sloped walls, hanging at an angle towards you. 
• Bale Bonds – two large stacks of hay bales, around 10ft high.
• Kiss of Mud – Crawl through the mud, get low as barbed wire spans across the mud.
• Lumberjacked – Sternum checker
• Hero Walls – 10ft high walls .
• Arctic Enema (Full only) – Dunk into a bath of ice.
• Electroshock Therapy (Full only) – 15ft run through 10,000 volts of electricity.
• Boa Constrictor – Pipe crawl down into a pool of water with a second pipe crawl up to the end.
• The BlockNess Monster – Rotating blocks in water – epic team work required to get across the obstacle.

• MudMile – Mounds leading into ditches of muddy water.
• Alpha Test (Full only) – slack line traverse across water. This is a test obstacle (hence the name) and Tough Mudder were getting feedback to see if it will be brought out to the rest of the courses
• Birth Canal (Full only) – crawl underneath a tarp of water crushing you to the floor
• The Liberator (Full only) – scale a wall using pegs (try this without using legs)
• Devils Beard (Full only) – Cargo net crawl
• Kong Infinity / Kong (Full only) – Kong infinity is a hamster wheel transistion to monkey bars 20ft over an air bag – this is a Legionnaire obstacle only. Kong is a swinging ring traverse.
• Funky Monkey 2.0 The Revolution (Full only) – Monkey bars over water transistioning to spinning wheels to the end
• MudMile 2 – looped back to the oringial mud mile, but reverse. The Half participants just reverse straight after the first mud mile.

• Hold your Wood – team carrying a telegraph pole across a course over and through walls. They should have this one at all course, other Hold Your Wood is sometimes just a solo log carry without the walls.
• Hero Carry – piggy back and switch to carry your partner.
• Everest – Quarter pipe with two different heights.

• Pyramid Scheme – Scale a 20ft wall using teamwork!

My Thoughts on Tough Mudder South West 2018

Being a season pass holder and participating in all of the Tough Mudder courses, there unfortunately needs to be one at the bottom of the pack. Tough Mudder South West is the one. 

The course is very flat, over the 10 miles, my watch clocked a total of 150m of elevation. It’s also very open, with very little trail or woodland to make the run interesting. The runs inbetween are very straight, the whole course seemingly and “out and back” feel – It’s actually more of an “L” shape, but you get the idea, whilst there are places in the course, where you can see in the far distance, where the next obstacle is. This also makes the running to obstacle ratio “feel” greater than other Tough Mudder UK courses (in truth its around the same). A lot of the course, being part of the Badminton Estate (Horse cross country trials) is quite churned up and is definitely an ankle turner for those who are not always paying attention.

Of course, all the great obstacles are there – BlockNess, Kong Infinity, Funky monkey and Everest so it’s not as if people are missing out obstacle wise, but the route is much less interesting than the hills of Yorkshire or the speed of London North for example.

I have heard people rave about the course for the exact reasons why I didn’t like it so much, so it really is “horse for courses” (quite literally). If you are more of a runner than an obstacle racer, this course (and London North) is for you. However, if you have the option of going to a different Tough Mudder course, I would urge you to take it

Race Kit:

Saturday – 361 Ortega 2
Sunday – Merrel All-Out Crush 2