Tough Mudder: The Origin of "Probably the Toughest Event on the Planet"

There are people out there who think running marathons is a boring endeavor, Ironman triathlons place too much emphasis on individual achievement and pushing one's body to its physical capacity is a fantastic way to spend an afternoon.

These are the people that love Tough Mudder.

So what the heck is Tough Mudder? Well, for those of you who aren't in the "grueling obstacle course" loop, the Tough Mudder Web site describes the event as follows:

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Each event consists of a 10-12 mile trail run over uneven, hilly and wet ground that includes 20-25 military-style obstacles. Each event is designed to be slightly different and incorporates varying features depending on local terrain.

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The one-day obstacle event, held in various locations around America (and in Canada, the UK, Japan and Australia in 2012) was the idea of Will Dean, who worked in Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office as a counter-terrorism agent before getting his M.B.A. at Harvard. It was at Harvard that he developed a business plan for Tough Mudder for the Harvard Business School's Business Plan Contest.

As Dean told The New York Times in April of 2010 before the first Tough Mudder event at Pennsylvania's Bear Creek Mountain Resort, he was interested in developing a challenging, obstacle-based event that differed from traditional marathons.

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“The thing I really disliked about triathlons and marathons was that the only real arbiter of how well you did was your time,” Dean said. “People ask, ‘What time did you run?’ There really isn’t anything else left to ask. Here, you can ask, ‘What did you think of the burning obstacle?’”

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And so, Tough Mudder doesn't place emphasis on how fast one finishes, but simply that one completes the course. Tough Mudder isn't about competing against others on the course, but rather stresses that participants help one another complete each obstacle.

(For those hell-bent on competing at the event, there is the option to run in the first wave of participants, and the first 100 finishers will have their time officially recorded for the World's Toughest Mudder competition.)

The obstacles can be extremely daunting. One obstacle requires participants to run under a series of live wires, giving the runners an electric shock as they pass through. Each race, participants are expected to swim a short distance in cold water.

Tough Mudder certainly isn't for the faint of heart, and traditionally, about 20 percent of all participants fail to finish the event. In fact, Dean thinks it is quite possible that someone will eventually die at an event, as he told Michael Ozanian, the national editor at Forbes.

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"This is a tough course," Dean said. "People sign a death waiver before they do it. We have a lot of insurers, and when we speak to our insurers we tell them, 'Someone's gonna die sooner or later, it's going to happen.' And they kind of nod their heads, and look a bit relaxed, and say 'We know.' But if it wasn't tough, people wouldn't enjoy it, and that's what it's about here."

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After one year of existence, Tough Mudder continues to grow in popularity, and has already raised over $1 million for the Wounded Warrior Project.