After Toughest Chicago in 2024, I was looking forward to racing Infinity last year. Then I lost two guides to broken feet race week and couldn’t find even a second guide. While I had a tremendous amount of fun volunteering and listening to Clinton’s EST banter for hours, I missed being out there last year. So I was looking forward to racing this year.
After Shane and Mike joined the guide team, logistics were finalized and we all met up at the new venue. After making it on course, we were met with a lot of “crawling” obstacles at the start, including barbed wire, electrical, and gas. It also included some very deep mud mile pits and a confining tipping point (I was told it wasn’t being tipped enough at first). Later on we had walls and water obstacles (including a very deep “creek crossing”).
As I was leaving for the race, I had felt a minor pain in my left knee. I think somewhere between the extra stretches to get out of the deep pits and over the inverted wall, I tweaked it. By about mile 5, I was limping a little and it just got worse. The last 3 – 4K was a real struggle. Even with all that, I still had the temporary thought of going out for a 5K loop to get the 3rd hex. But after coming to the more reasonable decision (for both short-term and long-term safety), I tapped out after the 15K loop. I really wish my knee hadn’t been an issue. We were doing a decent pace even with having to walk a lot (either because of lighting for safety or limping), and could have gotten at least 10K more in.
Even though I could only get in a single loop, it was still a lot of fun to be back out in the mud again. I am grateful to Scott, Shane, and Mike for all of their help, guiding, and keeping me safe. And I’m grateful to those who helped on the course, especially at the walls. Glad to see SundayFunday will be back for Chicago 2027. 🙂 Here’s to hoping that re-addition for 2027 is a good step towards US Toughests returning in the near future! <3 <3
