There is something fairly obvious in the photographs of me running Tough Mudders that I haven’t really talked about yet.
The tattoos.
They are difficult to miss. Give me a running vest, several miles of mud, a few obstacles and a photographer and there is a fairly good chance that quite a lot of ink is going to make an appearance.
They came after the weight loss, and they are very much part of the same journey.
They are about change. Healing. Acceptance. Memories. Identity. And, perhaps more than anything, becoming comfortable with the person looking back at me in the mirror.
I still find it surprisingly difficult to explain exactly why I have this need to get tattooed.
I just know that they make me feel good about myself.
And they are deliberately personal. Some have meanings that are immediately obvious. Others have meanings that probably only make sense to me.
That is exactly how I want them.
If you know, you know.
I’m not trying to ram them down anybody’s throat and I certainly don’t expect everyone to like them. Tattoos are incredibly subjective. What one person thinks is incredible artwork, somebody else might look at and wonder why on earth you would do that to yourself.
That’s fine.
They’re not for everyone.
They’re for me.
Tattoos, because adulting requires stickers.
Learning to be comfortable in my own skin
One of the enormous side effects of losing nearly 50% of your body weight is the excess skin that remains afterwards.
Hopefully some of mine will continue to improve with time. There are surgical options for removing it too, but at the moment I don’t particularly want to go down that road.
Because that skin is also part of me.
It is evidence of where I have been.
It is a physical reminder of the body I carried around for decades and of how dramatically my life has changed.
You could call it battle damage.
Not from one dramatic moment, but from years of poor habits, bad decisions and not looking after myself particularly well.
When I look in the mirror, I still see the loose skin.
But increasingly, I see something else as well.
I see the artwork.
I remember the hours spent in the chair. The conversations. The ideas becoming sketches and the sketches gradually becoming part of me. The strange combination of discomfort and enjoyment that comes with a long tattoo session.
And, somehow, I find that calming.
Instead of only seeing what I used to be, I’m increasingly seeing what I have become.
There is probably a lesson in there that goes far beyond tattoos.
You have to learn to be comfortable in your own skin.
I’m getting there.
The tattoos help.
Black Label Tattoos
I was also fortunate enough to find the right tattoo artist.
All of my work is being done by Mesi at Black Label Tattoos, and finding an artist you trust makes a massive difference when you’re talking about putting something permanently onto your body.
I liked the place from the beginning.
The atmosphere is relaxed, the team are brilliant and I feel completely at home as soon as I walk through the door.
Mesi has a wonderfully dry, deadpan manner. He can give the impression of being the miserable bloke quietly getting on with his work in the corner.
My kind of guy.
Then there’s Kim, his wife, who provides considerably more of the bubbly department. She loves tattoos while, by all accounts, being far less enthusiastic about the actual process of having them done. 😂
Between them and the rest of the team, it is a genuinely enjoyable place to spend several hours being repeatedly stabbed with a needle.
The only area requiring urgent improvement is the coffee. I’m not convinced anybody there drinks enough of it because it remains considerably weaker than Tough Smudge specification. Nobody is perfect.
The designs
There is a lot more thought behind the tattoos than simply filling empty bits of skin.
Much of the work across my torso has a Japanese influence, and the symbolism behind that style is important to me.
It started with the samurai on my right pec.
At that point I could probably have stopped.
Obviously I didn’t.
Once the samurai was there, the other side looked empty. So he needed some company.
Then I looked at my arms.
They looked suspiciously untattooed.
Clearly something had to be done about that.
And then there was my back.
That has become one of the pieces that means the most to me. Ironically, it is also the one I can see least easily myself.
There are recurring ideas running through the work: strength, conflict, resilience, protection, place, identity and overcoming things that appear considerably bigger than you are.
Which, when you think about it, isn’t a million miles away from what Tough Smudge has become.
The designs weren’t created as Tough Smudge branding. Most of this started before Tough Smudge existed.
But perhaps that’s why they fit so naturally.
Tough Smudge didn’t invent this part of me.
Tough Smudge grew out of it.
Ink, mud and OCR
I’m certainly not unique in having tattoos within obstacle course racing.
Spend any amount of time around the start line of a Tough Mudder or similar event and you’ll see plenty of ink.
Perhaps there is some natural crossover.
OCR attracts people who enjoy testing themselves, doing things slightly differently, collecting scars, stories and experiences and occasionally asking their bodies to do things that sensible people might decide weren’t entirely necessary.
That sounds reasonably familiar.
But I don’t consider the tattoos part of some deliberate attempt to look like an OCR athlete.
I don’t need to manufacture a Tough Smudge character.
What you see in the photographs is just me.
Usually tired.
Frequently covered in mud.
Occasionally wondering why I thought entering another event was a good idea.
And increasingly tattooed.
Not everybody will like them
I’m perfectly aware that tattoos aren’t to everybody’s taste.
That’s OK.
One of the things I’ve become much more comfortable with during this whole transformation is that you cannot build your life around gaining everybody else’s approval.
That doesn’t mean ignoring other people or deliberately trying to shock them.
It means accepting that we are all different.
I would never think somebody needed tattoos to express themselves, demonstrate toughness or belong within this community.
Equally, I don’t think having them changes my professionalism, values or the way I treat other people.
They are artwork that happens to be carried around on my skin.
Nothing more sinister than that.
And if Tough Smudge develops in the way I hope it will, working with charities, events, sponsors, partners and other organisations along the way, the person they will be working with is the same person you see here.
Tattooed included.
Authenticity matters to me considerably more than trying to create a sanitised version of myself because I think it might appeal to everybody.
More to come?
At the time of writing, yes.
I’ve got another four sessions booked before World’s Toughest Mudder 2027, although whether they all actually happen is another question.
Tattooing isn’t a particularly cheap hobby. Neither, as I’m rapidly discovering, is travelling around the country throwing yourself into muddy fields.
And given the choice between another tattoo session and another endurance event, Tough Smudge increasingly has a fairly obvious priority.
Experiences before possessions. Challenges before decoration.
There will undoubtedly be more ink, but I’m in no rush to cover every remaining square inch.
This has never been about collecting tattoos for the sake of collecting tattoos.
Each piece should mean something.
Each one becomes another little marker somewhere along the journey.
Still a work in progress
The tattoos haven’t magically fixed everything.
Neither has losing the weight.
Neither has Peloton.
Neither has Tough Mudder.
And I’m fairly certain World’s Toughest Mudder won’t suddenly provide all the answers either.
This whole thing remains a work in progress.
Body and mind.
Some of the scars are visible.
Some aren’t.
Some of them now have artwork over the top.
But when I look at myself today, I’m beginning to see somebody very different from the person who started this journey.
Not somebody perfect.
Not somebody finished.
Just somebody who finally decided to start doing something with his life.
To endure a little more.
To overcome a little more.
And, most importantly, to make it count.
The ink is simply another part of that story.
And there is still plenty of blank canvas left.