There’s no questioning Mudders’ toughness

It’s Saturday morning at the end of Lake Las Vegas Parkway where the pavement stops, where everything green turns to brown and the terrain becomes uneven. Streams of people, many dressed as superheroes or Star Wars characters, are walking toward the same place. Some are stretching hamstrings.

I’m talking to a guy named Nolan Kombol, whose job is to dream up obstacles for this thing they call Tough Mudder. It’s sort of like a long footrace, or one of those horse races in England where the horses jump over shrubs. Only nobody cares who wins.

Before long, I will be among the only ones not wallowing in mire. But that’s only because it hasn’t yet started to rain.

The last obstacle of 20 on the 10.1-mile course is a mud bog with hissing live wires called Electroshock Therapy. Think of it as Kansas after a heavy thunderstorm that topples utility poles.

A sign says it is OK to walk around the live wires to the finish line, where they give you a headband and a free beer and a cold shower.

Nobody walks around the live wires.

I found this somewhat shocking, but not nearly as much as those who felt live wires come into contact with wet skin.

“The 10,000 volts aren’t what gets you,” Tough Mudder chief sadist/course designer Nolan Kombol said with a smile that was one part evil, two parts perverse. “It’s the amps and the ohms.”

Welcome to Tough Mudder.

I’m told it was former British Special Forces dudes in Pennsylvania who came up with the idea.

Tough Mudder is supposed to challenge one’s physical and mental capabilities, and to help one conquer fears related to fire, water, electricity, height and legions of guys dressed as Captain America.

Usually any water one encounters on a Tough Mudder course is cold. The water at the obstacle known as Arctic Enema — appropriate name, that — was chilled to 34 degrees.

“If you get out, it gets warmer,” shouted a volunteer who kept dumping 40-pound bags of ice cubes into water about four feet deep.

Some of the Tough Mudders nodded. Others simply threw this guy the finger.

Having now witnessed Tough Mudder, this is how I would describe it: American Gladiators meets ABC’s “Wipeout” meets nine weeks of Army basic combat training.

Ben Johnson, one of the Tough Mudder PR guys, calls it Ironman meets Burning Man. I told Johnson I liked his description better than mine, but that was after he had flagged down an ATV so we could ride the course instead of walk it and sprain an ankle.

So this is what the Sea of Tranquility must look like, one thinks upon stumbling onto the course and surrounding moonscape.

The forlornness of the land, and its solitude, makes the uneven terrain at the end of Lake Las Vegas Parkway an ideal course for Tough Mudder, or for an excursion in a lunar module, as I am sure Buzz Aldrin would concur.

It’s the obstacles that make a Tough Mudder gobs more interesting than a marathon, I’m told, because in a marathon it’s possible for one to get his head together after six miles or so, and then what do you do for the next 20.2 miles?

A Tough Mudder has obstacles to break up the tedium of running long distances, with names that conjure thrill rides or injuries that could be painful: Cliffhanger, Balls to the Wall, Killa Gorilla, Fire in Your Hole, Walk the Plank, Dong Dangler, Funky Monkey.

I came upon a guy walking on crutches with his ankle and toe wrapped in gauze. Keeghan Gormley, who teaches reading at R.O. Gibson Middle School, said he slipped approaching the obstacle known as Soggy Bottom.

He was making his way to the finish line with a dry bottom, albeit very slowly.

There is no clock in Tough Mudder, so there are no winners or losers. A huge portion of the entry fee money — more than $6.5 million so far — goes to the Wounded Warrior Project.

People do it mostly for the fun of it, or for the perversity of it, or as the brochure says, to test themselves. I saw a lot of Tough Mudders who deserved A’s, though I’d probably give Keeghan Gormley a C-minus.

Those who get up early to be first off the line usually finish in around 2½ hours. Most of these people are built like Marines. Those softer in the middle who run with a team of friends and co-workers may take twice as long. They often stop and walk when they get mud in their eye.

Everybody gets complimentary Electroshock Therapy at the end.

Most people try to stay low and wallow in the mire. One guy tried to dodge the live wires as if they were raindrops. That didn’t work.

Another tried to become first to sprint through upright. That almost worked. But toward the end he face-planted and conked his head on an earthen embankment.

When he got up, this Tough Mudder was bleeding from a wound in the middle of his forehead.

I don’t think it was the 10,000 volts that got him, though. It was probably the amps and the ohms.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter:@ronkantowski