Tough Mudder Georgia is going to be an enormous event for Washington and Wilkes County, and even if you don’t want to challenge yourself in the freezing mud, I think it’s something you don’t want to miss.

I had a chance to watch some of the obstacles being built for the big event set for next weekend, February 11-12, just down the road at Aonia Pass Motocross Park, and I think it’s going to be a great spectator event, a chance to watch thousands of people run 11 miles and conquer 25 really evil obstacles.

If you haven’t heard, some 10,000 people are expected to come to Washington-Wilkes to take part in the weekend-long extreme test of strength, stamina, mental grit, and camaraderie. Most will be young men and women wanting to test whether they can hack even a few hours of Special Forces training, and many will be active duty and veteran military members looking for a challenge.

Some will even be old Gulf War veterans like me, which has really got me thinking. I’ve got to cover this year ’ s event for the paper, which will be tough enough, but by next year I may have deluded myself into entering. (Like most men, I tend to ignore the last 20 years and 40 pounds that make that a dumb idea.) The obstacles I saw being built – and others outlined on the Tough Mudder Georgia web site – range from simply really, really hard to downright diabolical, and that’s what makes it so attractive to so many. The third obstacle, Cliff Hanger, will have runners trying to get up a mud-slickened motocross jump that is well-nigh impossible to conquer without teamwork. They’ll also need to cooperate at Everest, a 16-foot curved wall, a quarter pipe, that’s greased so slick they have to form a human chain to reach the top.

Several of the obstacles involve jumping into freezing, ice-filled water and trying to swim to the other side while your head shrinks to the size of a walnut and you get an ice-cream headache in places you just can’t imagine. Shrinkage, shivvvvering, gasping for enough air to cuss with – what’s not to like?

The guys building the obstacles say they dredged old, gray, nasty mud from the bottom of the Aonia Pass pond to spread on some parts of the course, just in case the red Georgia mud isn’t slippery enough.

Wilkes County’s famous timber is well represented with the Log Bog Jog, where runners will jump over or crawl under fallen trees in an icy swamp, and Hold Your Wood, which has runners carrying heavy logs up a muddy slope and back down. There will be a 25-foot high pyramid of hay bales to climb, and Jumpin’ Bale, where runners jump from one round hay bale to the next to cross a field.

And that’s only a few of the 25 obstacles they’ll encounter, not to mention running the 11 miles that connect them.

But spectators don’t have to get muddy or cold to watch, since a majority of the course is within a relatively easy hike. I hope a ton of local folks come out for this event, both to run and to watch. I’ve got to see this myself, and I can’t wait to photograph all those folks having that much fun right here in our little corner of heaven.

Spectator tickets are available online at ToughMudder.com/Georgia, or at the gate, and I wouldn’t miss this for anything.