Rich on Running: Lynn Woods veteran Pak wins repeat Tough Mudder honor

Those of us who’ve run the Lynn Woods summer cross country races can attest to their difficulty. Yet at least we don’t have to run with electric wires dangling over our heads.Lynn Woods veteran Junyong Pak of Beverly has done just that, for a separate event: the Tough Mudder competition. Last month, Pak, 34, won national champion honors for the second straight year at a 24-hour obstacle course in Englishtown, NJ from Nov. 17-18.This wasn’t a race, but rather a competition in laps. Whoever could complete the most laps after 24 hours was the winner, Pak said.”I was trying to time it so that I finished right after (24 hours),” said Pak, who finished nine laps. “For me, it was 25, 25 and a half hours. My only goal, really, was to win.”One lap lasted “a shade under 10″ miles,” Pak said.Competitors faced numerous obstacles. They crawled through mud under barbed wire, scaled sets of walls, climbed up and down vaulted monkey bars, and crossed a series of Olympic rings across a waterbed.Pak said the “Electric Eel” obstacle is “probably my least favorite.”It’s a backyard hockey rink filled with water and hanging low over the top is a grid of electrically-charged wires,” he said. “They’re not always on. They’re pulsing every 2-3 seconds. You make contact in the water, they discharge 10,000 volts of electricity. It hurts really, really bad.”He added, “I got hit by that so many times full-force, I dread getting (it). You black out for a split-second. It’s like hitting your funny bone really, really hard through your whole body.”There were also the basic challenges of completing laps in the darkness, taking in food and liquids, and staying awake through 24 hours.Organizers mandated that competitors wear headlamps from dusk till dawn, and provided aid stations every two miles.However, Pak said, “on the fifth lap, I lost (my headlamp) in one of the water obstacles and did the last eight miles in the dark.”As for staying awake?”I’ve done a couple of these obstacles,” Pak said, “ultra endurance events. I feel confident I can stay up 24 hours, no problem.”This past summer he ran an adventure race in which he went 59 hours without sleep.”It gives you confidence to know (that),” he said. “Twenty-five, 24 hours was a walk in the park.”Last year, Pak did several runs in the Woods ? namely, Lynn Woods. He won the Tour de Lynn Woods and finished second in two other races.”They’re free, and you get a great crowd,” Pak said. “They’re about as good as you can get, even (for) a paid race with prizes. People do show up. The courses are always different and challenging. They’re a stepping-stone for training in obstacle races.”As for the terrain, he said, “It’s pretty much exactly that (as the championship course). Rolling hills, single-track trails, difficult terrain, a lot of scrambling. It’s a great run to get a good training session in.”Pak received a $15,000 prize for his Tough Mudder title. He qualified for the championships by placing in the top five percent of all Tough Mudder competitors this year. He participated in two previous events, one in Vermont and the other on the same course in New Jersey that he ran last month.The championship course left its imprint.”You can’t commit to get away from 90 miles of running with obstacles without injury,” he said. “It’s way too strenuous. This one, I had real bad tendonitis behind one knee. Just maybe three days ago, I started running on it again. My first easy run.”The challenges will continue. Pak is preparing for Fuego y Agua (Fire and Water) on Feb. 16, a 70-km jungle obstacle race on a Nicaraguan island. He also recently co-founded EPIC (Evolutionary Performance Inspired Competition), a company with the goal of making obstacle racing a professional sport.Rich Tenorio can be reached at [email protected].