Run for it

BUSINESS PLAN: The professors at Harvard Business School weren’t sure what to think about student Will Dean’s idea. Dean, 29, who comes from Britain, was a finalist in the university’s 2009 Business Plan Contest. His idea? Attracting 500 people to run an 11-kilometre race that involved mud and obstacles such as burning bales of hay.

“That was a big discussion,” former Harvard marketing professor David Godes told The New York Times. “What was the target for this? Who’s going to do it?”

As it turns out, 4,500 people took part in the first Tough Mudder race on 2 May in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Three more races are planned for 2010 and 12 for 2011. Participants do not receive prize money, just the satisfaction of completing the course.

David Godes"What was the target for this? Who's going to do it?" 

“The thing I really disliked about triathlons and marathons was that the only real arbiter of how well you did was your time,” Dean explains. “People ask, ‘What time did you run?’ There really isn’t anything else left to ask. Here, you can ask, ‘What did you think of the burning obstacle?’”

Tough Mudder, which is based in New York, got its start in February 2010 with advertising worth about $8,000 on Facebook. It now has over 13,000 fans on the social networking site. The company employs six people and has two interns. Dean, a former diplomat with the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, teamed up with longtime friend Guy Livingstone to launch the business. “We knew each other when our voices broke,” he says. Livingstone, 29, a former corporate lawyer, is now Tough Mudder’s chief operating officer.

Neither man was prepared for the rapid success of the business, which targeted extreme athletes and young professionals as well as police, military officers and firefighters. Individuals pay about $120 in entry fees per race. “We do have to occasionally stop and pinch ourselves,” Livingstone says. “It’s been such a whirlwind the last three or four months.”