He's one Tough Mudder

When Renale Rim­bert agreed to join a group of his friends and par­tic­i­pate in the Tough Mud­der com­pe­ti­tion he had a lit­tle added incen­tive to fin­ish the course from his wife, Jennifer.

Renale Rim­bert, an Ober­lin res­i­dent, helps out with the bingo at St. Joseph School in Amherst every Sat­ur­day evening at 6 p.m. When Jen­nifer Rim­bert heard her hus­band was sched­uled to begin Tough Mud­der at 1:40 p.m. on Sat­ur­day, she didn’t exactly have faith he could do both.

“She told me there was no way I could do both in the same day. It was moti­va­tion to prove her wrong,” Renale Rim­bert said.

Renale Rim­bert agreed to run the course when asked by some friends. The team of 14 was made up of peo­ple from around the area who decided to call them­selves “Dan­ger, Dan­ger: High Voltage!”

“Just to be clear, I had noth­ing to do with pick­ing the name,” he said with a laugh.

Over the past three months, Renale Rim­bert trained for the Tough Mud­der. As a per­son who is in the gym nearly every­day, he said he was look­ing for a way to change up his work­out, and prepar­ing for the obsta­cle course gave him that chance.

This was also the first time he’d entered such a com­pe­ti­tion. While he’d played sports in high school, Renale Rim­bert said he never was one who enjoyed run­ning just to run, which is why Tough Mud­der inter­ested him.

“I like that there are all the obsta­cles. I don’t think it’ll be so bad run­ning in between them,” he said.

Of course, that was before he’d actu­ally run the course. After­ward, he changed his tune just a little.

“The run­ning was through a more wooded area than I’d expected,” he said. “I think that’s the part that sur­prised me the most about the course.”

As a hus­band and father who works full-time, find­ing the time to train was also a chal­lenge at times for Renale Rim­bert. He is for­tu­nate to work half a mile from a gym which allows him to get his work­out in dur­ing the day.

“I also coach my son’s base­ball team, and run­ning around with them is a pretty good work­out, as well,” he said.

Renale Rim­bert said his chil­dren — Julius, Layla, Gabriella, Aubrey, and Keaton —- were prob­a­bly more excited about his run­ning in the event than he was.

Though he was prob­a­bly the most ath­letic mem­ber of his team, Renale Rim­bert pledged he would start the course as a team and fin­ish the course as a team. In the end, they did just that, as Dan­ger, Dan­ger: High Volt­age! fin­ished the course in four hours.

“We were a lit­tle sore, but we fin­ished the whole course. We started as a team, and we fin­ished as a team, which is what we set out to do,” he said.

Oh, and the team fin­ished in time for Renale Rim­bert to make it to bingo by 6 p.m.

Posted by Scott Mahoney on Apr 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.