Forget the touchy feeley corporate events to build team spirit and bond with your co-workers. Today's corporate warriors go to Tough Mudders:
Alina Dizik of The Wall Street Journal (really) has the inside scoop: Link"Half the challenge was not freezing to death," says the 27-year-old Mr. Komaiko, one of thousands of stoic people for whom your average marathon or triathlon isn't quite enough. [...]
Unlike marathons and triathlons run on roads and trails, obstacle races cover far shorter distances but ask participants to do far crazier things. Participants on a 10-to-12 mile Tough Mudder course wade through waist-deep mud, crawl under barbed wire, submerge themselves in ice water and jump through fire. At the "electroshock therapy" obstacle, they pass through a dangling curtain of electrical wires, some carrying "10,000 volts of electric shock," the company says. (The current, measured in amps, is low. It "feels like a major rubber band," a spokesman says.) Spartan Race's three-to-eight mile courses have featured abandoned mine tunnels, and a barrier of costumed "gladiators" just before the finish line.
The events and their aura of all-out toughness hold special appeal to people in competitive fields like financial services and sales. "You get to take a picture covered in mud with your T-shirt and you look like you've gone through the war," says Jim Thornton, president-elect of the National Athletic Trainers' Association. Bragging rights about signing the so-called death waiver are half the fun.