Tough Viking

Tough Viking is the leading, largest and most brutal Obstacle Race in Scandinavia and Russia. The obstacles are massive and consists of fire, water, electricity, deep mud, monkey bars and barbed wire set out along a challenging route. The obstacles are designed together with the Swedish elite maritime special forces unit Kustjägarna.

We participated in the Tough Viking competition in the much easier "spectator" class. We actually went to cheer on the Embassy team and enjoy the nice summer weather for possibly the last weekend. None of these pictures are of the Embassy team since this is a publicly visible blog so they're just random tough vikings.

The entire course was 15 KM with 30 obstacles. We stayed on the left side of the map and watched some of the more interesting obstacles. If anyone wanted to watch all of this then they probably should have joined as an actual competitor. It was spread over a huge area even with some of the winding back and forth so it would have been difficult to see everything.

The race started next to where it ended. These American football players from a local team are about to run out to become the first obstacle called Pain. The competitors had to run through them while getting hit and sometimes tackled. We didn't go over the hill to see this one as we hurried to Fire to watch our friends.

The first obstacle we watched was Fire and the jumping over hay bales which were, you guessed it, on fire. There was a person standing by with a hose just in case but we didn't see anyone need it. It was a windy day so it was hard for people to see sometimes which added some difficulty.

The course meandered around to some other obstacles before coming back to Ice but this was the next really cool obstacle we watched. (pun intended) They had to dive under the water to get under the wall. They kept adding ice to keep it nice and cold. I'm not sure I'd dip my toe in let alone duck underwater to get to the other side. I'd rather jump through fire twice but fortunately spectator doesn't involve any of that. All I had to deal with was a bit of a sunburn. :-)

 

adding ice

The next big obstacle we watched was the ramp. There was a short rope at the top you could grab on and most people did that but some people leaped up, grabbed the side, and pulled themselves up. I would have walked around it. It wasn't too far to just walk past the thing so I didn't see the point of going over it. The more I watched this thing the more I enjoyed my spectator status.

Here's some random pictures around the course.

Just when they think they've arrived at the final obstacle at the end, they divert them to the water to dive under a canoe and get on a boat with various obstacles including a slide and a swim back to shore.

The final obstacle at the finish line was electricity and water. Falling down and crawling under the wires just made it worse because it took longer to get past the dangling wires.

even the big guys can fall when they get shocked

the hose guys seemed like they enjoyed their job