Tough Mudder seeks reinvention as teamwork-based obstacle course

Growing up in a small town near Seattle, Nolan Kombol was drawn to the mountains of the Cascade Range, rock climbing and hiking.

It was never a race up a wall or to a summit. For Kombol, it was a challenge, a puzzle, an adventure.

In his mid-20s, by then working in sales for Climbing magazine in New York after earning an undergrad degree in history, Kombol got to know Will Dean, founder of Tough Mudder, and went to see an event live. Those were fledgling days for the obstacle-course company, but it was on its way to becoming the best-known brand in the phenomenon-fad of dirty obstacle races. What impressed Kombol most at the first Tough Mudder he saw was the teamwork and camaraderie. It reminded him of his many climbs and hikes.

Kombol joined the Tough Mudder team and soon took charge of obstacle and course design. He was dubbed the mad scientist by colleagues for devising nasty obstructions such as Arctic Enema, an icy bath, and Electroshock Therapy, a stinging dash through dangling live wires, that made the company's reputation. Tough Mudder – and other similar adventure races – took off.

But after three years of soaring growth, participation rates flatlined in 2014 and again in 2015. The market became crowded with rugged competitors such as Spartan Race and Warrior Dash, and the novelty value waned.

Now, in an effort to attract more customers, Kombol is designing new obstacles that pose the usual sadistic challenges – but with a heavier emphasis on teamwork. The idea is that working with teammates will appeal to more people than challenges that require individual feats of brute strength.

"What I want to do is craft a story," Kombol says by phone from Tough Mudder's Brooklyn headquarters. "If you ran a Tough Mudder in 2012 or 2013, the experience when you run it in 2016 is going to push you in different ways."

The hope is that those differences will restore Tough Mudder to the top of the obstacle-course heap. The worry is that Tough Mudder might become the MySpace of its industry – initially the best known but soon forgotten.

Muddy obstacle races may be modern phenomena, but tests of strength and endurance that demand an array of abilities have been around forever. The ancient Olympics featured the pentathlon, a five-sport event involving running, throwing (discus and javelin), jumping and wrestling.

Aristotle venerated do-it-all athletes, calling them "the most beautiful."

Tough Mudder emerged from the model of Tough Guy, an event in England created in 1987 by a former British soldier.

Dean, while a student at Harvard Business School, did a 2008 study of Tough Guy, and two years later, Tough Mudder was born. Annual participation shot up to 700,000 in 2013 from 20,000 in 2010; it now averages about 500,000 a year.

Dean saw money in mud – and so did others. The industry grew from essentially nothing in 2009 to 3.5 million participants in 2013, according to estimates.

The competitors include Warrior Dash, which has drawn more than two-million participants since its first race in 2009. Warrior Dashes are shorter – about six kilometres, roughly a third the length of a Tough Mudder.

BattleFrog promises obstacles that are "expertly designed by Navy SEALs."

Mud Hero says its events are the "muddiest," and they are followed by "10,000-watt after-parties."

Spartan Race claims it's the biggest and most successful of the bunch. It says its "obstacle racing" is the first with "global rankings."

Tough Mudder, meanwhile, trumpets toughness but maintains a key ethos that it is not a race. There's no timer. Everyone gets a bottle of beer at the finish.

The company has 121 events planned this year, double that of two years ago. The schedule has Canadian stops in Whistler (mid-June), Alberta's Badlands (early August) and north of Toronto (early September).

Bad publicity has hurt Tough Mudder. Bacteria stories pop up often – at one event in 2012, a couple dozen participants suffered an intestinal illness after swallowing mud tainted by the feces of livestock – the course was laid out on a Nevada cattle ranch. That prompted the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention to advise future participants to avoid swallowing water during such events.

There was also a drowning death at a West Virginia event in 2013 that was later detailed at length in Outside Magazine. The magazine also cited data that showed obstacle racing to be safer than other pursuits, such as running marathons, skiing or triathlons.

So Tough Mudder and its mad scientist have their own obstacles to overcome.

To attract new participants, the company has two primary strategies: It is offering shorter courses – Tough Mudder Halfs are new for 2016; and it's upping the focus on team-friendly obstacles.

The Halfs let people get muddy, but less strenuously.

As for the obstacles, Tough Mudder's focus over the past two years has been on reimagining the most successful ones, while creating new ones that reward teamwork.

Kombol and his fellow designers create obstacles that incorporate three themes: strength (obstacles that are difficult); fear (obstacles that look harrowing); and teamwork (obstacles that an individual alone cannot surmount).

Block Ness Monster, for example, is a new teamwork-focused obstacle. It's a large pit of cold water, 1.2-metres deep, and in the middle there's a large rotating block. It takes co-ordination among groups to rotate the block up and around to get over it.

"It creates a really cool social dynamic," Kombol said. "There's a lot of shouting, there's a lot of screaming – in a good way – and a lot of laughing."

Older, popular obstacles now appear in updated 2.0 versions with small tweaks to increase the adrenaline rush. The entire goal is to deliver an escape from the bounds of a work cubicle. It stokes an atavistic instinct, a return to the mud-soaked play of childhood.

The typical participants are in their early 30s, two-thirds men, one-third women. If the continuing changes are successful, Tough Mudder hopes to draw more women. Danger might be the headline, but fun is the point.

"Our event is the illusion of danger," said Barry Shaw, Tough Mudder's director of operations, who previously worked at Goldman Sachs and served in the U.S. Navy.

In June, before the Tough Mudder in the Callaghan Valley, site of the 2010 Winter Olympics nordic events near Whistler, Shaw drove a utility vehicle around the course as the obstacles were being completed. Work to design the 2016 course began a year earlier, adding new challenges to an already popular course, keeping things fresh for returning customers.

Will all that effort help turn things around for Tough Mudder?

"I don't know the answer to that," said Shaw.

At Tough Mudder's headquarters, the forecast for 2016 is to increase the number of annual participants above the half-million mark at which the company has been stuck.

Kombol's bet is the company can achieve its goals with courses that appeal to people's desire to work together. He sees the Tough Mudder experience as the opposite of anonymous morning commutes on the subway. It connects people.

"You don't make eye contact," he said. "But people do want to help each other, whether it's on an obstacle course or elsewhere in their lives. The core appeal is we're not competitive. There's no cash prize. There's no optimal time. It's about teamwork."

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