Sallie Benson and Glenn Brooks kiss during a Worlds Toughest Mudder event. (Contributed photo)
Storybook romances?
Who needs them.
For Sallie Benson and Glenn Brooks, love has been less like a fairy tale and more like a monster truck rally.
She was a U.S. Marine who liked to run obstacle courses in the mud. He was a CrossFit trainer just trying to keep himself in shape.
When Benson and Brooks got together for the first time, things got down and dirty pretty fast.
This romance began in 2015 when Benson, originally from Ohio, moved to Maine more or less on a whim.
“I had just gotten out of the Marine Corps,” she said. “I didn’t really know anyone in town. I figured I’d join a gym as a way to stay in shape and get to know people.”
When Benson talks about staying in shape, she is not like any average Joe or Jane who just spends an hour on the treadmill a couple times a week. She had signed up for an event called The World’s Toughest Mudder, a lap-based course with underwater tunnels, trenches, wall climbs, cave crawls and mud. So much mud.
The course is 24-hours long and the aim is to see who can complete the most laps within that period.
“World’s Toughest Mudder is the most extreme, insane, imposing, pulse-pounding, heart-stopping 24-hour obstacle course challenge on the planet!” raves the description on the Tough Mudder website.
It is hardcore and Benson clearly needed someone to help her train.
Enter Glenn Brooks, and when love bloomed between the pair, it happened to the sound of squishing mud instead of violins. First, he trained her and then he started running in the mud events, too.
“We ran his first one together and he was immediately hooked,” Benson said. “We found something that we both loved to do. Tough Mudder allows us to have friends all over the world. We travel all over the country all year long.”
The couple eventually started dating, but we are not talking about dinners and movies, for the most part. Since 2016, Benson, 29, and Brooks, 34, have competed together in 41 muddy events in a variety of places.
One Tough Mudder event they will always remember came in 2017 in the town of Loudon, New Hampshire. A lot of their friends were there for that one. Brooks’ mother was along for the trip.
Benson and Brooks were at the starting line, music cranking around them and everyone getting pumped for the long race, when someone stepped up and handed Brooks a microphone.
“Even at that point, I had no idea what was going on,” Benson said. “He looked at me, got down on one knee and everyone started going nuts. It was pretty awesome. Then we ran the Tough Mudder together — that was our first thing as an engaged couple.”
Brooks said it was a little daunting to pop the big question in front of hundreds of screaming spectators already out of their minds with adrenaline, but really – where else was he going to ask Benson for her hand in marriage.
“Yeah, I was nervous,” he said. “You could hear it in my voice a little bit. I already knew what her answer was, though. I got a little confidence from that.”
The couple, living in Auburn with their three dogs and three cats, has not yet set a date. They’ll cross that mud hole when they come to it.
They also didn’t have any big plans for Valentine’s Day – what would they possibly do to celebrate the day? There’s no mud in Maine right now.
In the meantime, the pair plans to just keep competing in as many Tough Mudder events as possible. Why switch up a formula that has worked so well?
“It’s been a blast,” Benson said.
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