Tough Smudge
Graphic: Tough Smudge with ChatGPT Introducing Prickle Crew: Because Mud Is Better With Mates 🦔💛
Introducing Prickle Crew! 🦔💛 A new OCR community bringing people together to tackle obstacles, share adventures and get gloriously muddy. Born from my own experience of entering events solo, Prickle Crew is about making sure nobody feels they have to face the start line alone. Every pace welcome, plenty of encouragement, and possibly a few…
Photo:sportograf.com Tough Mudder Manchester 2026
10–11 October 2026 | Cheshire Showground Six runs. Two days. A nominal 60 kilometres. Fourteen Tough Mudder finishes in my first season. And somewhere along the way, a hedgehog got lost looking for somewhere warm to hibernate. Welcome to Tough Mudder Manchester 2026. This was, by far, my most ambitious Tough Mudder weekend to date.…
Photo: sportograf.com Tough Mudder London South
What started as a planned 40km weekend at Tough Mudder London South somehow became 45km of mud, five runs and my fastest 15k to date. More importantly, it became a weekend of learning: smarter obstacle techniques, better pacing, faster recovery and discovering that my body is adapting to repeated distance. With World’s Toughest Mudder getting…
Photo: sportograf.com LESSONS FROM THE MUD #1
One of the things I have learned about obstacle course racing is that the hardest part isn’t always the obstacles. Sometimes, it is the space between them.
Graphic: Tough Smudge with ChatGPT How I Accidentally Booked a Spartan Trifecta for 2027
I only booked Spartan because the races were happening the day after two Tough Mudder weekends I was already attending. Three bookings later, I’ve somehow ended up chasing a Sprint, Super and Beast, and an accidental Spartan Trifecta in 2027.
Photo: sportograf.com The Non-Official Tough Mudder Trifecta Weekend – Take 1
Four Tough Mudder runs, two days and around 40km. London South might not be an official Trifecta, but it matches the minimum distance and gives me the perfect first test of recovery, repeated effort and how far I might eventually manage in eight hours at Infinity.
Graphic: Tough Smudge with ChatGPT Born Survivor Elite Squadron: What Have I Signed Up For?
This weekend I’m taking on Born Survivor Lancashire’s 12 km Elite Squadron: 29 obstacles, around 347 metres of elevation, a 90-minute timing cut-off and no assistance on the obstacles. The real question, though, is whether I’ll have enough left at the finish to turn around and do a second lap.
Graphic: Tough Smudge with ChatGPT Building Upper Body Strength for Tough Mudder | Power Tower Build + Tough Smudge Update
A new Power Tower has joined the Tough Smudge home gym. While unboxing and building it, I talk through the journey so far and why improving upper-body, grip and pulling strength is becoming an important part of my Tough Mudder training.
Photo: Andrew Smith The Ink Beneath the Mud
There is something fairly obvious in the photographs of me running Tough Mudders that I haven’t really talked about yet. The tattoos.
Photo: sportograf.com Start of the Journey
I’ve no doubt this is going to be a wild journey. At the weekend, I think I found a little bit of a calling. My legs were sore. I’d just completed my first-ever 15K run, my first Tough Mudder and my first obstacle course race.