A Little Mud Won't Hurt You. Acworth native Erica Hulette and Ohio native Jared Mehnert had to scrape off the mud after finishing the 15-K OCR World Championship Course. But nothing could wipe the smiles off their faces.

Not Your Childhood Jungle Gym.  One of the obstacles in the course put Jared Mehnert's upper body strength to the test.

Fourth-year aerospace engineering students Erica Hulette and Jared Mehnert naturally gravitate toward challenges. They actually seem to get itchy if a task seems too do-able. Their coursework at Tech has tested their limits more than a few times, but it's never wiped the smiles off their faces. If anything, it seems to have whet their appetite for something just a little more difficult.

On October 20, they got that. And then some.

Hulette and Mehnert joined more than 2,400 athletes from 60 countries in the Obstacle Course Race World Championship in Keveldon Hatch, England. As the name implies, the 15-kilometer foot race tasks participants with overcoming numerous physical (and mental) challenges, all while maintaining a competitive speed. Hurdles, fences, walls, and ditches are designed to ratchet up the frustration quotient, the exhaustion, and the determination of the runners.  No weekend athletes need apply.

(And if you are at the end of the pack, muscles alone won't save you. You are bound to roll, slide, and fall into the mud, dirt, and mystery slime that your fellow racers tracked onto the equipment. There are no words to describe that part.)

"It's not all about strength," says Mehnert, an Ohio native who ran his first OCR on the morning of his high school graduation, four years ago. "You have to have good hand-eye coordination. You have to watch your momentum so your body is going where you need it to go."

With each obstacle, participants in the World Championship OCR faced the possibility of immediate expulsion. If they failed to surmount even one obstacle successfully, they had to relinquish the chartreuse wristband that identified them as a competitor.

At times, Mehnert and Hulette handled that pressure by breaking down the engineering behind the hurdles.

"Oh yeah. One of them was all physics. It had a wheel that was attached to a rotating arm, and you had to climb over it," said Hulette, who qualified for the OCR Championship by running "Bone Frog", a race sponsored by the Navy Seals.

Heavy Course Load. Sort of. One of the obstacles in the World Championship OCR required Erica Hulette had to drag a 50-pound sack.

"So, really, you are counteracting your momentum. You have to apply the right torque at the right locations to get over."

Sometimes, understanding the physics of the problem didn't help one bit. It was either determination or defeat.

"Two hours into the race, I had to use some pulleys to hoist a 100-pound weight," Hulette recalled.

"Now for the men, who are taller, they could brace their leg against a wall. If I could have done that, it would have been fine. But I'm too short. My leg didn't reach. So I had no choice. I poured everything I had into that one because I didn't want to give up my wristband. I had worked too hard to get there. It took me awhile, and I can't say I know how I did it, but I did it."

Alas, only one wristband made the trip back to Atlanta, however.

Mehnert, a veteran of multiple OCR challenges, finished the race, more or less intact. Hulette was felled by an obstacle called The Stairway to Heaven - a triangular-shaped ladder that competitors have to climb using only their arms (no legs) to loop their way up one side and down the other.

"I didn't see one woman get it," said the former soccer player and onetime cross-country racer. "I had no upper body so it really took me."

But it didn't stop her. Hulette says she will run at least nine OCR's by year's end. Mehnert will be with her - training at the gym during the week, and doing long runs on the weekend. And, while both Hulette and Mehnert have accepted full-time job offers at Skunkworks after they graduate in May, they both plan to make another run at the OCR World Championships next year.

"The thing about OCR is, it puts everything in perspective," says Mehnert.  "In school or on the job, you are working hard on homework or to solve some problem, and you lose sight of what's going on. It's good to get out there and push yourself to your limits because it makes you realize that you are capable of more than you thought. And, really, it makes you realize that that test  wasn't as hard as you thought."

However, a shower does feel good. Erica Hulette and Jared Mehnert back at Georgia Tech after their whirlwind weekend trip to England where they participated in the World Championship Obstacle Course Race.