Dear Mudder Nation,
We are officially one month away from World’s Toughest Mudder 2017. Which means if you aren’t deep into a regimented training program by now, say goodbye to your mileage goals. No, we’re just kidding. Sort of….
Before we dig into some fun topics, here are the official 2017 World’s Toughest Mudder Rules. All athletes need to make sure they fully read and understand these prior to showing up in the desert on November 11.
As always, this year’s course in Las Vegas promises to bring the pain in the form of brutal amounts of elevation on each lap. Below you can find the elevation profile for this year’s course. Take careful note of the big orange blob right smack in the middle. How fun does that look? Our legs are cramping just looking at it.
We here at TMHQ are in the thick of it planning to make this year’s event better than ever before. From updating some classic Tough Mudder obstacles and finding new World’s Toughest-only challenges, to bringing the first glimpse of some new 2018 obstacles to life for this year’s course, this year is sure to be a more unique and gruelling challenge than ever before. With course construction beginning in one week, we’re ready to get the show on the road.
Due to high levels of interest in the exciting new National Team Relay category and with the desire to constantly evolve and improve the overall event, we’ve removed the prizing money from the regular 2+ team category and shifted prize money to deepen the overall pool for the National Team Relay. With over a dozen teams from countries around the globe already registered into the National Team Relay category, we’re expecting this competition to be a fierce and exciting new addition to this year’s event. The updated prizing for World’s Toughest Mudder 2017 competition is as follows:
|
WTM 2017 Prizing & Awards (USD) |
|||
|
Top Prizing |
Top Male (Individual) |
Top Female (Individual) |
National Team Relay (4+) |
|
1st Place |
$10,000.00 |
$10,000.00 |
$10,000.00 |
|
2nd Place |
$4,000.00 |
$4,000.00 |
$4,000.00 |
|
3rd Place |
$2,000.00 |
$2,000.00 |
$2,000.00 |
|
4th Place |
$1,000.00 |
$1,000.00 |
$1,000 |
|
5th Place |
$500.00 |
$500.00 |
$500.00 |
|
100 Miles (Indiv. Female) |
– |
$50,000 |
– |
|
110 Miles (Indiv. Male) |
$50,000 |
– |
– |
Now, this does not mean the 2+ Team category is going away, and as always we will support and encourage athletes declaring and running as a team. The spirit of this event has always been one of teamwork and shared, brutal suffering, whether running alone or with your drinking buddies. Any athletes currently planning on running as a team who wish to sign up for the National Team Relay category can do so through this link. Be advised – the National Team Relay bibs are now on a first-come, first-served basis, so sign up quick if you’d like to try this new format. Some general information about the competition can be found here.
Other fun things:
Remember that pesky last lap requirement that we put in place last year? Having to finish a final lap after 12 PM on Sunday, which meant that hundreds of you ended up dragging your tired butts around the course one last time before camping out 100 meters from the finish line while waiting for the stroke of noon? Yeah, we remember that too. Though it was glorious and heartwarming to our blackened souls, we’ve relaxed the requirement slightly. To be considered a 24-hour finisher and eligible for top prizing and the coveted 24-Hour Headband, competitors must complete their last lap between 8AM and the official close of the finish line at 1:30PM, Sunday morning.
Like any respectable traffic engineer, our goal is to minimize backups and increase the efficiency of the overall transportation system. We’re widening this window of time to allow all athletes the opportunity to complete their final lap with style and grace, as opposed to huddling in a large group waiting for high noon. 24-Hour Headbands will still only be distributed at 12PM, at which point the Start closes and no new laps may begin.
Finally, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you will have heard rumblings about the possibility of a venue change for next year’s World’s Toughest Mudder. Though we can neither confirm nor deny such rumblings at this time, we will take this opportunity to take a page out of the Amazon headquarters search announcement playbook and tell you what requirements we may be looking for IF these rumblings happened to be true:
-Minimum 500 acres of usable space with varied and unique terrain
-Must be within 60 miles of a major metropolitan center and/or international airport
-Must have 200 acres of terrain with dig capacity containing soil with a minimum of 1.33 grams/cubic centimeter density and 50% pore space
-Water. Lots of water.
-Must encompass terrain which during nighttime hours can be described as “spooky”, “ethereal”, “mystical”, “scary as shit”, or “so dark I can’t see my hands in front of my face”
-Must have minimum (1) natural feature which can be turned into a badass WTM-only obstacle.Currently accepting castles, castles with moats and/or multiple trebuchets, oceanfront piers, glacier-fed lakes, or naturally-occurring hot springs
-Unpredictable weather a plus
-Wild animals on the property are a plus. Double plus if more than one carnivorous nocturnal animal calls it home
That’s all for now, folks. We’ll see you soon. Just need to put together these puzzle pieces….