My dad and I were training for the 21K for the past 3 months.
Unfortunately, entries sold out before we could register.
If you registered but can no longer participate, or know of any legitimate way to get an entry, please DM me. **Happy to pay reasonable costs.** 🙏

Please **DM** if you can help!

Arrived at 7:30am for a 9am wave. 3 hour line.

Didn’t get through the front gates till 10:30am and couldn’t start until 11.

No finisher beer— 30 min line for a single tent to get a can of Mikes Hard, lol nope.

Had to wait in a 20min line to cross the finish line.

Never brand this as Chicago ever again. Spring Grove is 1.5 hours away.

Absolute sham scam of a race, can’t believe thousands of people paid $100-200 for this shitshow.

The people and community were really nice though, and my team did have a good time, but we all agreed on never doing this again in “Chicago”

TM needs to fire whoever was in charge of logistics because he/she/they just cost the company a boatload in future sales and reputation.

1. Anyone doing the CR Spartan in October?

   1. For anyone who has participated in this particular race in the past, what was your experience like? Any tips or insights?

Hmm, where do I start lol. While I personally had a positive overall experience, I will admit that I understand the frustrations from some of the people who participated. The organization of this run was terrible. Waited in line for 4 hours and the water stations were lackluster at best and a few obstacles were different than on the course map. While I choose to not let this once experience put me off of doing another tough mudder, I can respect the fact this has put others off from the event and, I believe the blame is on whoever dropped the ball on the event yesterday

SPRING GROVE, IL 2026

-location and days were changed with no communication

-waited in line 4 hours; felt obligated to stay and wait since there are no refunds; I started to get loopy after hour 3 and started yelling out of pure insanity

-pretty sure they gave participants lake water for a refreshment during the race (water was yellow and gritty textured, and stationed right next to the lake)

-friend sprained ankle in an obstacle course, others had to search and run for a medic/staff member who could help

-medic tent poorly wrapped her ankle

-drove my injured friend to the Rinsing station and let her struggle and limp in the mud and water, just left her there

-they let her rinse AFTER they wrapped her ankle, so of course everything fell apart

-medic tent refused to transport her at least to the exit when she could barely walk (apparently it's "policy"); also they had ZERO wheelchairs and everyone was just sitting in the medical tent doing nothing

-ambassador told us "thats too bad" when we told him about the medical tent

-porta potties were filled to the brim

The only saving graces were our wonderful fellow participants and friends who still managed to make it fun. I hope Tough Mudder improves. Until then, we will not be coming back.

The last tough mudder event I did was in California and it was great, perfectly organized, and all around an amazing experience. Because I live in Wisconsin I decided to get a group of buddies and do the tough mudder Chicago event and it was horrible. Everything was squeezed into 1 day and ended up waiting 4 hours before getting into the event and getting to do the course. Our 11am start time ended up being a 3pm start time. There were piles of people’s shoes and clothes that they didn’t want to take with them after the event so it was a giant mess in the evening. Regardless, we got it done but not the best experience.

I can't believe how far TM has fallen. Their on-site chat doesn't respond (waited three hours, 12pm-3pm Thursday), and I never would have gotten start time if I hadn't emailed them. I ran my race and the start time still says pending on my account. They cancelled my original run site and then grouped Sunday and Saturday together. My start time was 10am. Show up to the site at 8am. Porto potties have no toilet paper, and we reached the registration desk at 11am after waiting in line for three hours. Bag drop is a joke, you get a ticket but nobody is checking anyone going in or coming out. Now to the race, multiple advertised obstacles are missing, and three obstacles are knee deep pools, that's it, that's what they count towards their obstacles. Don't worry though, the water on some obstacles literally just smells like sewage. Photographers just standing around not taking photos and just chatting, but they are using facial recognition so I'm doubtful most people that paid for the photography package will get photos.

I've ran plenty of TM races, but this is my last.

I ran the Tough Mudder again today. Somehow, it was even worse than last year.

Horrible experience. The only reason I ran Tough Mudder a second time is because I emailed the company after last year’s Chicago event to explain how disappointed I was with the experience. They actually acknowledged that they fell short and escalated my complaint to their team.

After today, I genuinely don’t understand how things got worse.

This year’s event was in Spring Grove, Chicago area, not Rockford. There was apparently so much confusion about the location that several people line initially thought about going to Rockford. I also heard multiple other participants say they had the same confusion and went to Rockford in this morning and ultimately ended up driving to Spring Grove. That alone tells you something about the organization.

But the biggest issue was the lines.

I have never experienced anything like this at a race. We spent approximately 3 and a half hours at the venue for a race that took about 40 minutes to complete (skipped obstacles because I wanted to leave). We even received a text message saying they were "running behind." That might be the biggest understatement I've ever seen.

The lines were absolutely massive, and there seemed to be very little urgency or organization in moving people through them. They had roughly 9–10 people taking tickets/scanning QR codes, yet the process was still painfully slow.

And here's what I don't understand: Why are we scanning a QR code for a 5K at the venue in the first place?

Why couldn't the waiver be completed online beforehand? Why couldn't the registration/qr verification be handled before arriving? This isn't entering a military base. It's a 5K mud race. Send the wristbands to our address.

If you have thousands of people arriving at once, you should be doing everything possible to minimize the amount of time they spend standing in lines. Instead, Tough Mudder seemed to have designed the process around making everyone stand in line for hours.

And this year, the event was only held on Saturday instead of Saturday and Sunday. If you're going to consolidate everyone into one day, you would think the event would be prepared for the increased number of participants. Instead, it felt like they took a massive crowd and funneled everyone through a system that couldn't handle it.

What's especially frustrating is that the ticket prices are outrageous for what you're actually getting. The majority of the staff appear to be volunteers, yet participants are paying premium prices.

And this goes back to my experience last year.

Last year, I paid around $180 and found the actual race incredibly underwhelming. There were maybe 10 obstacles, some of which were essentially natural obstacles rather than constructed challenges. The course looked nothing like the obstacles Tm was showcasing in its promotional material on instagram and facebook. The marketing made the event look like a massive obstacle course, while the actual course we received was extremely basic.

I complained about that last year, and TM actually admitted that they had fallen short at the chicago event.

So I gave them another chance.

I regret it.

At this point, it feels like TM has prioritized promotion and selling tickets over actually delivering a quality event. The money doesn't seem to be going toward the course, obstacles, staffing, or efficient event management. It feels like they're spending money convincing people to come rather than making sure the people who already paid have a good experience.

And that's what makes the whole thing feel like such a money grab.

You have expensive registration, administrative fees, parking fees, and other charges, and then you're expected to spend half the day standing in lines for an untimed race that takes 40 minutes.

I honestly believe everyone who experienced the excessive delays today deserves at least a partial refund. Three and a half hours at the venue for a 40 minute race is completely unreasonable.

At this point, I have absolutely no interest in running TM again.

Honestly, I think the best thing participants can do is stop giving them our money until they demonstrate that they can actually run an event properly. If enough people stopped buying tickets, maybe they'd finally have a reason to change.

To me, this is starting to feel like the fire festival of mud races, great marketing, huge promises, and a very different reality once you've already paid.

I'm going to email them again and see what they say. If their response is another free race code, I'll just post it here because I don't want to use it.

I'm not looking for a free future race. I want the company to acknowledge that making people stand in line for 3 and half hours for an untimed 5K is unacceptable.

TLDR: Tough mudder in Chicago sucked.

Good luck and godspeed.

Edit: Main line seems to be at least a half mile long now. This is catastrophic.

Edit 2: Course and village are really nice due to the lack of people inside... so sorry to those still in line 😞

Have a code for a race, however I'm hesitant to book stateside since every time I open this page Toughmudder check in sounds like a nightmare. Any recommendations for next year would be greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance.

This will be my first tough mudder tomorrow, anything I should be expecting?

I got my polyester apparel and undergarments, I wear glasses but will probably not use them for the course, and have tried my best to prep for this over the last 4 months..

I plan on getting there 1 hour earlier than my wave time.

If anything is missed please let me know.

Anyone looking to sign up for the tough mudder this year? Chicago, Toronto, Colorado, and Nashville are left. I have a free race code I won't be able to use and don't want it to go to waste.

ETA - claimed!

I invited my friend to my by team link and he ended up buying a ticket for a Texas mudder and not Chicago which were running tomorrow.

A chat bot months ago told him that they could transfer him to Chicago and our wave time but never sent over a way to complete the transfer on his account.

Then he took a trip to Italy and forgot to check back on things until today. What’re the odds we show up on race day and they’ll transfer his ticket despite the wave time being sold out.

Hey guys,

I’m doing the 15K and just realized there are only 4 water stations on the map. I’ve done 10k Spartans before without a water bottle but there are usually more than 4 stations on that 10k.
Does anyone wear hydration vests? I feel like 4 stations might be hard to tough out, but does a vest become too much of a nuisance with the obstacles and mud?

Can I get a free entry into an event in exchange for proofreading your event programs? Many of these copy-paste errors make the event details even more confusing. This is embarrassing.

Does anyone know where I can find the course map the Chicago tough mudder?

i have very recently just started back at the gym, we’re focusing on training for doing a hyrox next year but my partner really wants to do a tough mudder and there’s some nearby in october. he’s physically fit because of his job. i on the other hand run 1km in 7mins and feel like im dying and have very little upper body strength. how realistic that is actually be able to train to complete one by october?

This year I found it a bit easier. Probably due to being 20kg less than last year.

I was in the 7:45 wave but it got delayed to near 8:30 due to course not quite ready yet.

Entry was a bit slow but hey its not like later in the day with the massive queues..

Overall it seemed pretty quiet which i was okay with but there was still a lot of team work tool. I was able to redo obstacles whilst being filmed (eg pullups on funky monkey)

The mud crawl was much easier due to being on a flat surface and the headroom was like double the height.. plus I was glad we didnt have the huge filler fields to go through and the course was a bit different.

Mud mile had a huge metal spike poking out of one of the mounds, however that happened!

Sister also pointed out someone she believed was KSI who passed us in the shop- we didnt chase him and ask but his name matches on the tshirt with the names on it.

Seemed like a couple more drink stops and photographers on the course this year so I'm keen to see how they ended up, the grenade bars were nice.

Fingers crossed it doesn't cheapen out even more next year as I do like the intense obstacles but not when its stuff like scaffolding poles or a log, it certainly seemed quieter in the earlier wave.

Map is finally out for South West and brilliantly it includes Mudderhorn and Blockness, two non-Spartan obstacles that typically don't appear at the split weekends.

No Everest sadly but a decent looking course.

The event is tomorrow and I've not had any email about route, any information pack, nothing...

Considering they spam me all year about signing up for other events it seems pretty poor and just makes them look like money grabbers.

Have I missed something?

hi we have a wave time starting at 12, I’ve been hearing it gets really busy so just wondering what people would suggest as a reasonable time for aim to arrive for so we can be ready on time?

Just wondering what the logistics are of showering at TM events? Are there private spaces to shower/change or is it communal? I'm doing the UK South West event this weekend and just planning what to pack etc.

I have 2 tickets for 15k Manchester 10th October

I unfortunately cant do this date and I'm planning to do midlands next year instead

I can see i can transfer my ticket to someone else for 20 pounds a ticket,

Is there somewhere i can offer this to someone? Just for the 40 pound cost of the transfer?

Seems like a waste to just leave them hanging there if someone who wants to go can get 2 tickets for 40 quid instead of the 100+ pounds they'd cost?

A week out from the Badminton Gloucestershire event and I've not seen the course map yet, has it been sent out and I just missed it? It doesn't change anything, but it would be fun to share with the team. Hopefully the heatwave doesn't roll into the weekend!