I’m awake at 7 a.m. on a Saturday, too sore to sleep. This is the result of Tough Mudder, a 12-mile, 28 obstacle course designed by British special forces. Tough Mudder is not a race, but a challenge that demands team work and equal physical and mental skills.

I don’t consider myself an athlete, but I do consider myself more fit than some of the population. I bench press my body weight, squat and dead lift one and half times my body weight and leg press 630 pounds. I can hold a plank for eight minutes.

Since I work out regularly, I was pretty nonchalant about training, but a week before the race I decided to read up on other people's experiences just for fun. After an hour of perusing through blogs, I was in full panic.

I read story after story of horrific experiences from athletes way more prepared than me and my team, Team Saw House. In addition to running and weights targeting specific muscles, they wore their day-of outfit into the pool, took ice baths and ran in freezing wet conditions. There were countless warnings urging inexperienced swimmers to skip the swimming challenges. Bloggers said the water was freezing and that many suffered from hypothermia.

People also warned against falling or running through the electroshock therapy challenge, as you could risk getting wires wrapped around you, but I waved off the 10,000 volts of electricity thinking it can’t possibly be that painful. (I was wrong.)

Team Saw House arrived in Edna, Texas just as the sun was rising. I jumped over the six-foot wall to get to the warm-up area. We stretched and jumped around to Beastie Boys as our team captain shouted “WHOSE HOUSE?!” to which we responded “SAW HOUSE!”

And just like that, we were off. The first three obstacles of high wall climbing and crawling under barbed wire were no problem. It was the fourth obstacle that broke me.

"Walk the Plank" means plunging 15 feet into freezing water. Despite a mild winter, a cold front hit Edna the night before and it was 45 degrees even before factoring in the wind chill. The water felt like ice piercing through every inch of my body. I couldn’t breathe and was holding on to people swimming by, gasping “Help me!”

My teammates shouted for me to hold onto the rope, but I was too panicked to even find the rope. I finally managed to make it to the flotation device about a quarter of the way in. For the worst 20 minutes of my life, I sat on the platform shivering uncontrollably while waiting for one of the lifeguards to bring me to shore.

When I ran around the lake to reach the next course, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The rest of my team had actually waited for me, even though they were also freezing, not to mention I had slowed the whole team down. I told them they should have gone ahead without me, to which they responded “No way! We’re a team, aren’t we?"

Enduring

I kept a constant pace throughout the race even when I was dead tired. I was convinced if I stopped moving, I would topple over in a frozen seizure. I heard my friend Andres’s voice in my head: “When you’re feeling like you can’t do it anymore, just put one foot in front of another. Don’t ever stop!” And that’s exactly what I did.

Just when I thought the worst was over, I encountered the "Arctic Enema," jumping in and out of two dumpsters containing ice cubes and dyed water. Between the dumpsters was a wall you had to dive under to emerge on the other side. Since I was already so cold, the ice wasn't a problem, but it certainly didn’t help with the hypothermia.

After more climbing over and under logs, wall scaling, and wading through mud there was a food station where we were given saltwater and bananas. I was too frozen to chew, so I broke the bananas into pieces and swallowed them whole.

The final obstacle was supposed to have us run through flaming bales of hay, which to my frozen brain sounded like heaven. Instead the obstacle was changed to "Shock on the Rocks." A huge crowd surrounded it, cheering and wincing as they watched participants getting electrocuted while crawling on a bed of ice. I watched paramedics drag a muscular man out of the ice as he lay face down.

Shock on the Rocks was a defining moment for me. I'd had hypothermia for the last three hours, and now I had to press the entire underside of my body against ice to avoid getting shocked. I really did not want to do it, but I did it. Everyone on the team was going to do it and there was no way I was going to let them down. It was painful, too — 10,000 volts hurts more than you can imagine. I was zapped six times and had to keep reminding myself to move my legs so that I could reach the end. The electric tingling in my fingers and toes was actually the first time I'd had any feeling in them in seven hours.

Limping towards the finish, our "Saw House" mantra dropped from enthusiastic yells to a whimper. Near the end someone even answered “My house? I want to go home.” I wondered if I’d ever be warm again.

We walked through the finish line, half of us with swollen ankles, one teammate with his arms around fellow teammates after collapsing from simultaneous cramps in both calves. We were crowned with orange Tough Mudder headbands as volunteers rushed up to wrap us with foil blankets, pressing beers and protein bars into our shaking hands. I looked around at what felt like a post-apocalyptic scene: Sea of foil blankets, people with eyes glazed over, barely stringing words together, looking for the nearest place to peel off our icy second skins.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a huge asshole at the gym, always thinking I can do more than I can handle. Tough Mudder humbled me and gave me new goals to work towards. Would I do this again

Truthfully, no.

I learned what I needed to learn: That in the face of adversity, I am able to overcome unimaginable obstacles. And that sometimes you need your friends to achieve your goals. I’m one of the most jaded people I know, but having someone stay with me in freezing water just because we're on the same team changed me.

Knowing that when I think there's no way I'm going to make it, there will be at least two pairs of hands pulling me up restores my faith in humanity.