The first-ever Tough Mudder obstacle course to take place in Maine will bring 13,000 people to Westbrook this weekend for two days of competition.

Think back-to-back Beach-to-Beacon runs, with booby traps, barbed wire and lots of mud. At least 10,000 athletes are expected to take on the course.

The Westbrook event, dubbed “The Great Northeast,” is expected to infuse $5 million into the local economy and significantly slow traffic along Cumberland Street, where the terrain on the back nine at Sunset Ridge Golf Links has been molded into mud pits and mountains of dirt.

The 11-mile course is meant to test physical and mental strength with 20 obstacles, including mud-greased monkey bars, a slide through fire and a commando-style mud crawl beneath barbed wire.

Tough Mudder, founded in 2010, will host more than 60 events in seven countries this year. Conceived by a Harvard Business School student, its business model was a trendsetter in the recent growth of for-profit races, fun runs and other sporting events.

Participants – a third of them from Maine and the rest from 36 other states and four countries – paid from $69 to $185, depending on when they signed up, to take on the course either Saturday or Sunday. Those looking to enter at the last minute will have to shell out $220. Spectators also have to register and pay $20 online or $40 at the site. Spectators and participants must park either at Idexx Laboratories in Westbrook or the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, at an additional cost of $10 to $15, and take shuttle buses to the competition.

The course isn’t meant to be a race among participants, most of whom are part of teams responsible for making sure every member finishes. The event is not timed.

At stake, aside from pride, is an orange headband and a cold beer for teams if every member completes the course.

For the Maloney Mudders, that means 62 people – most of whom have never met – helping one another over walls and through a field of dangling live wires that can deliver nasty shocks.

The team was started in honor of former Greenland, New Hampshire, Police Chief Michael Maloney, who was killed in 2012 as police exchanged gunfire with a man while trying to execute a search warrant on his home.

“It kind of took on a life of its own,” Jessica Maloney, the late chief’s sister-in-law, said about how the team grew over time.

The members, who live as far away as Miami and Canada, are getting together for the first time Friday in Portsmouth, then traveling in a caravan to Westbrook on Saturday morning.

“Everyone knows somebody, but no one knows everybody,” said Tim Maloney, the chief’s brother.

So far, team members have collected $5,000 in pledges for the Chief Michael Maloney Memorial Fund.

That’s barely enough to keep Tim Maloney from regretting his commitment to take on the fear-inspiring course – and he graduated from a military college. “I wake up in cold sweats and horror,” said Maloney, who’s worried his early morning runs and push-up sets haven’t prepared him for what’s to come.

On the other hand, for some people involved with Maine’s first Tough Mudder, it’s been all gain and no pain.

Les Wilson and Sons, the Westbrook contractor hired to transform the course, was one of the first local businesses to benefit from the event – and it will continue to afterward, when it dismantles the course. President Chris Wilson said his company has already gotten more than 80 hours of work from the job.

“We had our own Tough Mudder trying to move everything around in the rain,” he said.

Bill Baker, the assistant city administrator for business and community relations, said he proposed the Westbrook golf course for the event and knows that the more smoothly it runs, the more likely it is to return.

“That’s absolutely my hope,” he said.