Extremely disappointing experience — poorly organized and not what we expected from Tough Mudder.
We have done Tough Mudder before, including two events in 2018, and those experiences were great. This Chicago event was completely different and, honestly, was the worst organized event we have ever attended.
The biggest issue started before we even arrived. We originally purchased tickets for the Sunday event in Rockford. Tough Mudder later moved the race to Saturday at Richardson Adventure Farm. We never received the notification about the date/location change. We only discovered the change five days before the race by finding it ourselves online.
That forced us to completely rearrange our weekend. We had to pay $500 to arrange coverage at the fire department, $150 to change our hotel reservation, and $280 to change our flight, totaling $930 in additional expenses just to make the new Saturday date work.
And unfortunately, the event itself was just as disappointing.
We waited approximately two hours in a line that was roughly a mile long just to get into the event. After that, it took us another 2.5 hours to complete the 15K. Waiting two hours just to get into a race we had already paid for is unacceptable.
Once we finally reached the entrance, we were told our spectators had to go stand in a completely separate line at Mudder Services to get their spectator tickets. There was no clear signage or communication telling us this beforehand.
My wife is pregnant, which made the lack of organization even more frustrating. When our spectators asked where they were supposed to go, they were essentially told to walk along the same trail as the runners and “watch out” for them. There was no reasonable spectator route to get ahead and actually watch the race. We even asked about a golf cart for my pregnant wife and were told there was no shuttle service, despite seeing golf carts driving around the event throughout the day.
The course itself also didn’t match what was advertised. Some advertised obstacles weren’t there at all, including the Arctic Enema. The “pepper spray” obstacle was essentially peppermint/essential oil and was nowhere near what you would expect from something advertised as pepper spray.
Hydration was another major disappointment. The water provided along the course was murky/yellow tinted and looked so unappealing that I chose not to drink it, meaning I had to push through the entire 15K without properly hydrating.
Staffing also appeared extremely inadequate. Volunteers were minimal and, at some obstacles, appeared distracted on their phones. We personally watched someone struggling under an obstacle while the worker responsible for that area was approximately 15 feet away and distracted by their phone. There appeared to be only one person monitoring an obstacle with huge numbers of participants going through at once.
We also paid extra for spectator passes, only to watch people walk through an apparently unmonitored entrance without them.
What makes this especially frustrating is that Tough Mudder used to be much better than this. Our 2018 experiences were organized, had reasonable entry procedures, hydration/snack stations, adequate staffing, and generally felt like a professionally run event.
This event felt like the complete opposite.
We understand that Tough Mudder is supposed to be difficult, muddy, uncomfortable, and challenging. That’s why we signed up. The problem wasn’t the difficulty of the course — it was the lack of organization, communication, staffing, hydration, and execution.
We still completed the race and had fun with each other, but that was because we made the best of a bad situation, not because the event was well run.
For the amount of money Tough Mudder charges, the level of organization and execution at this event was simply not acceptable.
