Push, pull, lift, carry, climb and crawl.
It’s all part of the Zulu Challenge, a five-kilometre obstacle course, coming to Prince George for the first time on Saturday, April 26 at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park.
Tosh Mugambi came up with the plan in 2014 after doing a Tough Mudder competition in 2012 and he’s never looked back.
“Right now we are the longest running obstacle course event in the country and it started in Grand Prairie,” Mugambi said.
“Every time I went to one of these events I felt such a strong sense of community and I just loved it. So I thought we could start our own and start small. Since then we’ve been building and it’s like an experiment so at first we started with kids only and then we added the adults and then the K9 category for dogs and their owners, and that’s probably the only event of its kind. Usually, it’s you dragging your dog around or your dog dragging you around so why not do something together? It's a fantastic bonding experience and the tethering is very unique to the experience – whether it’s couples, friends or teams – it’s incredible what happens.”
The idea of tethering came after the social distancing mandate that took place during the pandemic, he explained.
“Remember when everyone had to stay away from each other?” Mugambi asked.
“Well, during that time people were so scared of each other and so I thought I would think of a word that would bring people back together so I thought we would tether people together and it adds to the challenge because if someone gets tired, now you’re all going to have to carry them. It kinda brings back the turning-to-each-other thing and the bonding is incredible. We even had people show up by themselves and we would tether them with somebody else who also came alone and some of the best friendships have been created from it. It’s crazy! We just heard from a couple who got engaged and they wanted to share their story because that’s how they met! So fantastic! Tethering got some momentum a few years back and it’s been our thing ever since.”
Adult pairs and teams will be tethered while children in the kids’ categories are doing the course individually.
“And because I am all about the experiments we are putting parents with their kids to tackle the obstacles together,” Mugambi said. “And we’re doing it in Prince George for the first time and we’ll see how that goes.”
Mugambi said this is the only obstacle challenge like it in Canada that visits smaller communities so people don’t have to travel to bigger centres to experience this unique adventure.
“I have a strong fitness background, I grew up in sports — I was a boxer,” Mugambi said. “I am Kenyan so people always think I run and I don’t but once I did the Tough Mudder in 2012 I knew I wanted to build a community around fitness — that was everything I always wanted to do and I just fell in love with it and I’ve been doing that ever since.”
The Zulu Challenge obstacle course will be done in a loop in and around Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park, won’t cross any roads and for the adults it will be a couple of loops, with as many as 30 obstacles to tackle, Mugambi added.
“The obstacles are nothing extravagant, they are based on the kind of movements we do everyday,” Mugambi explained. “There’s pulling, there’s pushing, there’s climbing, there’s scaling, there’s flipping tires, there’s carrying a sandbag or a log, and we’ll look at the water levels and if it’s ok we’ll get them into the water and there’s going to be mud — they’re going to get messy.”
And because it’s always about safety first, people can always go around any obstacle, he added.
“This isn’t a race, it’s a challenge,” Mugambi said.
“It’s not about who comes first or who comes last, so bring the people you care about, come and share this experience together — it’s just about having fun. We hope people show up for this — we want the whole city to show up for it. It’s very spectator friendly so people can come and watch and cheer people on because Lord knows some of the participants could use some encouragement. So if you’re not in it, come and cheer for those who are.”
For more details, to volunteer or ask questions visit www.facebook.com/zuluchallenge and to register visit www.eventbrite.ca/e/zulu-challenge-prince-george-2025-adultskidsk9-tickets.
