Monday, May 4, 2009

Dirty Race Report

The St Francis Hospital Mud Run was Saturday, and we took off right on time at 3:59 PM. The race was incredibly dirty, there were 34 marine obstacles we had to traverse. The first one was a low crawl under a net through a 2' deep mud pit, about 12' long. So 20 yards from the start you are covered in mud. New friend Jenny ran the race too, and has more details about the obstacles in her race report.


There was a ton of 6' walls to jump over, lots of balance and crawling challenges, even one where you had to crawl on your back over some tree roots. that wasn't exactly comfortable. The toughest I think was the cargo net, a 18' tall rope wall that you had to climb up, go over a beam, then climb back down.


But the fun parts of the race can really be explained in the pictures.

Kelley and I being fierce before the race. We're mentally getting all military. Yea, we're tough.


Michael and I before the race. Tough? more like drunk. I thought we had a before picture of all four of us, but can't find it today. Our friend Deb ran the race with us, and her husband took the pictures where we're all muddy. Deb put on a sheer display of willpower to complete the course. She's the one who talked Kelley into running the marathon, Deb finished Myrtle Beach in 8:09. This was her payback, and we finished as a team in 1:40.


If I never run across (or have to jump over) one of these 6' walls again that's ok. We had to clear the wall, sometimes just by jumping, sometimes by boosting our teamates, sometimes by brute force just throwing people over the wall. There was maybe 5 or 6 of these on the course.


Here's one of the other walls we had to go through, but that's not us in the picture. This wall has a rope and 2x4 footholds. The running parts were all trail running, and you would just go for it until you came across the next obstacle.



Here's the four of us coming into the final couple of obstacles near the finish line.

Here's a 4' deep mud pit, leading to a mud wall we had to get over. After this, we had to get over an 8' wall. Deb didn't make it over the 8' wall, and took a pretty hard fall. I was pretty worried, but she seemed ok.


Kelley and Deb coming out of the mud, onto the hump.


After the 8' wall, 2 people had to piggyback carry the other 2 people across the finish line. Here I'm carrying Michael (did I mention he weighs a good 60 lbs less than me?) and we're happy to be finished. It started raining on us with about 30 minutes left in the race. Didn't get a good finish line pic of Kelley and Deb.

Here's the four dirty happy finishers. That's me, Deb, Kelley and Michael. Total race was 4 miles, took us 1:40 to complete the course. The overall winners only took about 35 minutes, the winners in our division needed about 45 minutes. It was a fun race, and a great way to spend a rainy saturday afternoon.



They advised wearing pants, and Kelley and Deb were smart enough to actually do that. It was quite hot out there, and I didn't want the weight of long pants. But my knees took the brunt of the damage, as you can see. Not exactly sexy and silky smooth anymore. All of that crawling through the mud took its toll. My elbows/forearms are scratched up too, but not that bad.


The garden is coming together nicely. All of the tomatoes are planted (16 plants), and I got 2 cucumber and a watermelon planted as well. The space where you can still see dirt is going to have corn and green beans. I'm going to have the pole beans growing up the fence, and bush beans filling in the space in front of the fence. Last year we got an equal crop from both types of growth, and it worked out really well. I still need to add some more ground vines (cantaloupe, pumpkin, etc.) but we're really close to having everything planted. The non-dark-brown stuff is wheat straw we used as mulch.


And in the ornamental beds my roses have started blooming! They are really pretty this year, and just loaded with blooms. I've only got 3 bushes, and they've got 14 buds/blooms working. very cool!

Hope you all had a great weekend. I've got some catching up to do, and I'm still pretty sore from the mud run. It left me hurting in places I didn't expect. All part of the fun, I guess.

17 comments:

Marcy said...

Duuuuuudddee that looks like a helluva good time! Knee bangers and all :P Dang they need to do something like that around here.

tfh said...

I think I had the opposite reaction of Marcy-- more of the "I'd be crying like a baby by the time I got to the third obstacle" kind of thing. But nice to see all the smiles on your faces-- looks like a great challenge.

Unknown said...

That looks like so much fun. I'm not sure I'd be able to haul myself over the walls though! I need to check and see if they have any races like that down here.

Sun Runner said...

Dude, I think your wife has bigger "guns" than you do. (Nice job Kelley!)

Congrats on the successful mud run; it looked very dirty but fun.

(I still think Dirt Digglers would have been the perfect team name.)

My "word verification" word is "Mortosia," which could be one of my "bad author names" from work.

carrie said...

I can't believe you have roses already!! Mine are just starting to leaf out.

What a fun race...put some neosporin on those knees!

Wes said...

Note to self: Never do one of these races :-) I'll never forget the drill instructors watering down the obstacle course in basic training in 20 degree temperatures. We then marched 13 miles the next day and went through an obstacle course like that about half way through. Gah!!!

Your team looks good! You know how to get the mud on :-)

joyRuN said...

Oooohhh - that looks like FUN!

Congrats to everyone on a great run :)

Missy said...

Looks like a total blast. Bet you're still finding sand, silt, mud in all the cracks and crannies:)

Good times, great pictures.

Calyx Meredith said...

Your shirts are so white to begin with and so brown at the finish! I, myself, would NEVER sign up for an obstacle course race - but so glad y'all had fun!

Jenny said...

your knees look about like mine :)
glad y'all had fun, too!

Glaven Q. Heisenberg said...

Hahahaha! Laffing my @$$ off at IOMissy, even if I'm not sure what she means by a "cranny" - I gues that's the girl-parts.

Nice job, though. Not sure I'd wanna do one of those - I like to keep my crack clean these days.

Congrats to all 4 of you.

And yeah - Sarah (D-MI) is right: Kelley's guns are bigger than yours. That meat-punch she gave you b4 the marathon must've HURT ... unless she held back.

P.O.M. said...

That looks like a blast. I've been wanting to do the mud run here, but chicken out every year.

teacherwoman said...

Looks like sooo much fun! I want to do that sometime!

Amber said...

Omg, I can't believe how muddy you guys are! Looks like so much fun though!

Sarah said...

Oh! My! Gosh!! That mud pit would slay me. I'd drown. Good job!

Sara Cox Landolt said...

Loved your race report & photos! Lots of mud, wow. The mud pit looks fun, did it try to suction off your shoes? I can't imagine losing something within the mud pit. But it'd be the wall I'd freak out about climbing. Well done!

RBR said...

So cool!! Looks like your team had a great time and a great race.