Ben Greenfield's World's Toughest Mudder Race Report (And Big News For 2016)

Ben Greenfield (0:01)

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield here. And I did not just, as my voice may imply, come down with a bout of pneumonia or bronchitis, get hit by a bus or run over by a train. I actually just did the world's toughest mutter, which is 24 hours of a five-mile obstacle course consisting of everything from heavy carries to rope climbs to an ungodly amount of dips into cold water for swims and leaps over giant chasms on ropes. Everything that could possibly be thrown at one during 24 hours was thrown at my body during those 24 hours. So I will admit that I am a bit sore, but I wanted to give you a little bit of a taste of how this went and how it all worked out for me. In case you ever want to go out and do some epic endurance feed, hopefully you'll come away with a few takeaways from this event. Now you should know that over at youtube.com/bengreenfieldfitness, that's youtube.com/bengreenfieldfitness, I did release a World's Toughest Mudder packing video. And if you go there and do a search for toughest mudder, you'll see everything from the gear to the nutrition to the clothing to the footwear to pretty much everything that I used for this particular event, should you ever go slightly insane and decide that you too want to compete in a masochistic feat of endurance. Anyways, back to the race. So the race started with five miles of one loop of the World's Toughest Mudder course without any obstacles.

I felt great during those five miles. I got geared up in my shorts and my t-shirt, ran like the wind, and made it through that first loop feeling quite great. I had my wife, my Sherpa, waiting there for me right in the pitting area, which is the area where folks are able to hand you nutrition or where you can go into your tent and change clothes, freshen up your feet, drink copious amounts of caffeine, whatever you would like. Anyways, I had my wife standing there ready to hand me a hydration pack, a waist belt called a fuel belt crush. That is simply a waist belt that carries a water bottle and a few other crucial pieces of gear. Now, my plan was to simply wear this water bottle gear during the entire race. And what was in that particular pack, and I had two of them, one that my wife would be able to work on filling while I was on the course, and one that I would be, of course, wearing with me. And what was in that pack was 10 Nature Aminos, amino acid capsules, one bar, and I used the Oat Megabar from Onnit, and then one water bottle full of a mix of chia seeds and coconut aminos and beet powder and a bunch of other goodies. I used something called the Natty Stack from Natural Force Endurance. So my wife handed me that after I completed that first loop, and off I went on to the second loop. Now, the second loop, you simply do as much of that as you can until the hour is up. So if the race starts at 2 p.m., at 3 p.m., the obstacle is officially open. So ideally, my plan was to get through another half loop or so of that five-mile course before I had to start tackling obstacles, put as much time into that course as possible without having the obstacles, which obviously slow one down considerably.

So that was about how I did it, about mile seven, seven and a half or so. I heard the big air horn go off, and the obstacles began. Now, the very first obstacle that I tackled lost my water bottle full of fuel and realized that I would need to have an alternate plan of attack because I realized that water bottles were not going to stay in a fuel pack very well when rolling around in the mud and sliding down plastic tunnels, etc. And so once I made it through that first obstacle about, I believe, around 21 minutes or so, ahead of my anticipated time, I told my wife that I would simply be drinking the water bottles right there in the pitting area as I came through and then going out in the course still with that waist belt attached but with just my amino acids and my bar on me. So that was my fueling plan. And for the most part, most of the race, I really stuck to that fueling plan. The only time I strayed from it was I had one carrot on the end of the stick was a Snickers bar. I had a couple of Snickers bars during the race, one around midnight, another one around 10 a.m. or so. And I also had a few handfuls of salted palm oil infused plantain chips that I picked up at Sprouts Market. And those were great for a little crunch, a little bit of added salt, a little bit of oil, a little bit of that junk food effect without being too nasty for the body. So that was what I really relied upon for fuel most of the race. Didn't really get too bored with flavor fatigue or anything like that. Just kind of charged on through.