It's been two days, and I can still catch a whiff of stinkiness when my hair moves. Two days, four hair washings, and the yes, there it is... a gentle reminder of the absolute greatness that I experienced while participating in Saturday's Big Nasty mud run.
The course was a little over four miles long and challenged us with about twenty different obstacles interspersed with sloppy trails, knee deep sippy holes and general swampy goodness.
My team, appropriately named 'Slippery When Wet' (courtesy of the hottie neighbor) consisted of Kristine, her hubby Teddy, her coworker Nick and of course, yours truly.
Don't we look so squeaky clean and full of optimism? I'd been chomping at the bit to do this for so long that I barely slept the night before... I was ready for some mud action!
We piled out of the minivan (sexy) about thirty minutes before our 8:50am start, taped our shoes so they wouldn't get sucked off by the muck, and headed over to watch the earlier waves of runners conquer the 'Peanut Butter Pit.' I've gotta tell you, it's SO surreal to see folks plunging, diving, and belly flopping into a three foot deep mud pit and knowing that you're about to have to do the same thing REAL soon. We cheered, laughed and contemplated our own mortality until they called for our group. We did some last minute stretching, found a nice safe spot near the back of the pack and took off like... like... like... lambs to the slaughter, as they shouted 'GO!'
I vaguely remember climbing up a hill, then down a hill and then all of a sudden I was slobbering through a pit of orangy brown goo. It was GLORIOUS!! Teddy and Nick 'alligator crawled' through it, I'm not sure how Kristine did it, but I pretty much just floundered, staggered and fell to my knees in the freezing cold ooze... laughing my ass off the entire time.
I found my way to the side, was pulled to my feet by Teddy (I think) and headed in the direction of the other runners. My feet, globbed with mud, felt like they were concrete blocks, and I was pretty sure there was a grain of sandy mud in my butt crack. Oh good, only four miles to go.
I have no idea of the order of the obstacles after that, but I know we climbed a really high dirt hill and Kristine kept yelling, "Land on your heels!" or something like that. There was a beautiful blue lake that had rafts that we had to climb over, it was one of my favorite obstacles because it washed the speck of ass chafing sand out of my crack, and Kristine went face first off the raft and came up looking like a drowned kitten, at which time I laughed my ass off again.
Then there were some logs in a mud pit that we had to go OVER AND UNDER... there was a sign telling us to go OVER AND UNDER and there was a person (female I think) that kept yelling repeatedly OVER AND UNDER. So imagine my surprise when I got to the end and looked back at Kristine only to see her going UNDER every log! Her face, including blingy sunglasses and her hair were covered in black mud. And when she would rise up between the logs to take a breath, I could see that there were globs of muck running down into her teeth. Oh thank you God... this was worth the entry fee... Have I mentioned that I laughed my ass off?
Somewhere along the way Nick started calling her Mud Run Barbie, and well come on, we all know it's the perfect moniker for my extra girly-fied bff. And although I don't have any good pics from her mid-race, I have this little beauty for you...
After Kristine regained her eyesight (the mud got in her contacts... NOT cool) we headed through the woods for a mile or so, we were tromping right along through the swamps and the muck fields and we conquered some smallish walls that we had to climb over and crawl under and then all of a sudden Teddy, who'd run up ahead said something like, "Oh crap." We rounded the corner and found ourselves faced with a 15-20 high wall. Now I've gotta tell you something... I'm a bit of a monkey. Yes it's true. I LOVE to climb, and I'm pretty good at it, but I do NOT like heights and/or climbing DOWN... especially when the wall is already covered with mud from previous climbers and my hands and shoes are slick with goop. However, I made that wall my bitch... no worries here...
(That's me right after I got across the top of the wall and was starting down... thanks for the stellar photography Nick!)
After the wall there were some tires, easy peasy, some big sewer pipes to crawl through that were hard on my boney knees, a few more sippy holes and a really cold knee deep water hazard through which we had to Army crawl (I did more of a 'kick worm' technique, but it worked so whatever.)
I had to pee for the last two miles, but I never could make myself just open up and wee wee when I was in the water... performance anxiety I guess.
Slowly but surely, we made our way through the miles, laughing and playing and praying that Kristine's cramping feet wouldn't stop working. We carried tires as we ran through a section of the course, we fought our way through the goopiest, nastiest, stinkiest 100 yards of pitch black, tar thick muck and found ourselves doing some sort of reverse rapelling up a wall. If not for our menfolk, Kristine and I would have never have gotten up that wall so quickly... who knew there was a technique to scrambling up a mudslickened wall of plywood? Excellent!
We made our way through the final mud pit, and crossed the finish line laughing and holding hands. It was the perfect ending to a perfect race. And sure, it took us twice as long as the winning team (1:30) to finish, but it was SO much fun that I was wishing that we'd had more time to play.
I've already posted the pics on Facebook, but I'm gonna throw them on here for posterity...
