On May 13, 10 local men will be heading to the Poconos to participate in the Tough Mudder competition. The Tough Mudder competition is a hardcore 10-12 mile obstacle courses designed by British Special Forces to test your all around strength, stamina, mental grit and camaraderie. With the most innovative courses, half a million inspiring participants, and more than $2 million dollars raised for the Wounded Warrior Project, Tough Mudder is the premier adventure challenge series in the world, according to the Tough Mudder website.
The 10 local men participating in Tough Mudder are Jim Abrino, Matt Bash, Eric Cummings, Todd Irwin, Mike Love, Jesse Mullins, Brian O’Korn, Brandon Ruiz, Steve Serena and Rob Swales. This group of ten local men range from economic developers, to nurses, to pastors to attorneys, to financial and real estate advisors, said Eric Cummings, team leader.
“I actually heard of this event last summer,” Cummings said. Cummings was told about it by a dear friend of his, Sean McDonald. Sean was local and Cummings had known him since kindergarten.
“He approached me about it and encouraged me to put a team together,” Cummings said. “His enthusiasm was intoxicating and despite my initial reluctance, I found myself researching the event. Sean however, will not be physically participating with us. Sean, while he was encouraging me to put a team together, was enduring a battle that he had fought for years with leukemia. Sean inspired me to put this together.”
His love, his faith and his drive is what I truly believe brings us all together and it will continue to do so for many years to come, Cummings said. Sean passed away early this year from health complications. To show our love, my mudder team has designed an incredible shirt that we will all be wearing for the event. The shirt will have Sean’s heavily quoted bible verse “God Is Love” on it, with a large picture of him on his back (which his fiancé picked out for us). On the front of the shirt will we have a giant Spartan helmet, which once you get close, you can see that it is actually made up of very small pictures of Sean, Cummings said.
The Tough Mudder’s team name is Praetorian Legio, Cumming said. We are a group of the most dedicated men I know and the name fits us well.
The team does make the effort to train Saturday mornings as a group. We typically run long distances together, which gives us an opportunity to get to know each other more. It’s a great bonding experience, Cummings said.
We have all trained so differently for this,” Cummings said. Some of us were in shape prior to training and some have gotten into shape since we signed up. Some power lift, some do long distance running, some are doing Cross Fit and some are doing Insanity and Insanity Asylum, and some doing a combination of all of the above.
“Our expectation is teamwork,” Cummings said. “Our expectation is to work together to finish a task in front of us that we have to take one step at a time, together. It’s a great metaphor for life and how I believe we are called to live each day. We all have struggles and we all have hard times in life. Those times are actually training us for the next thing that will come, that again, will be difficult. It’s much easier to get through these times when we have the support of others around us that we trust and love,” Cummings said.
It is an extension of that belief which will come together on May 13, where ten men, who have completely different lives, will join together to accomplish one task together, all in the memory of a dear friend who lived his life the same way each day, Cummings said.