Gettin' Dirty

This weekend was the inaugural running of the MS Mud Run in Winter Park CO.  It is a 10K fun run with obstacles and mud and great music and bbq and beer, but more importantly it is a fund raiser for MS.  First and foremost, I want to thank everyone who donated to me for this.  I believe I was #8 as far as the amount of money raised with a little over $1200, and the team of guys I did the run with also were the 8th highest team total for money raised.  (The wife of one of my teammates also ran with another team who were the 7th highest fundraisers).  So thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone for their help!

The whole time I was doing this race, I kept thinking I need to remember what is happening so I can write about it.  And when I finished, I thought back and realized I have absolutely no clue what I did with any kind of organized memory.  The description that follows is a dump of what I DO remember, but in no particular order.  Fasten your seatbelts....

We were team "Dragon Ass".  Dave was our captain...he and his wife TC have been good friends of ours from the college days.  Tom was the other member of our team of three.  He is a friend of Dave and TC's that I had never met before, which was my loss, because he is an extremely cool guy.  His wife also ran with TC's team (Team Phat Ass).  Yes, ass was prevalent at this race.

I understood there to be between 400 and 700 competitors.  My team was in the non-competitive group, but there were also teams in a competitive group with stricter rules about completing all the obstacles and getting an official time.  When the race starts, the first thing we do is run down a long hill from the Mary Jane base towards the Winter Park base.  No obstacles here, just a nice easy jog to get into it.  It was at least a half mile to the bottom, at which point we turned around, climbed over the first obstacle (which I think were just a couple of logs), and then headed back up the first of what was going to be a LOT of elevation changes.  We were not given a map of the course before the race....it was all supposed to be a surprise, but rumor at the starting line was that this was the hardest Mud Run course they've ever created.  Needless to say, any thoughts of running the whole thing disappeared quickly (thankfully) just after the turn to run up the first big hill.  I found a map of the course after the race online....check it out, it is crazy:

Winter Park Mud Run 2011 Race Course

From this point on, it is all a blur.  I remember having to run up the mountain a bit.  Thankfully there weren't any obstacles on the climbing portions.  Shortly after the first climb, we came to the first obstacle that I thought would give me some trouble when I read about it.  We had to climb through a drainage culvert that was at least 100 feet long and crossed underground between two of the ski runs.  As I am a bit claustrophobic, this was going to freak me out, but I tried to stay right behind Dave, who alerted me to what was ahead, and I managed to get through it.  One section of the culvert, about half way through, had been crushed somewhat, so we were kind of scaling on the side of it to get around that point.  TC mentioned that this was the first time that being a geologist (and realizing that a landslide had caused this crease) was really a bad thing for her mental state.

More climbing, some descending, more climbing.  We went over more log piles, under some ropes in the mud, over a cargo net.  Another obstacle that I was not looking forward to was a wall made of 2x4s spaced maybe 3 feet apart, and maybe 15 feet tall.  As much as I love to be on mountains and love airplanes, being that far up a wobbly wall of wood was also not one of my favorite things.  Dave and Tom hopped over the thing like it didn't even exist, but it took me a bit longer to make it over.  But again, I did it without passing out or breaking any limbs.  Now that I think about it, I probably should have just side kicked one of the boards and walked through it.  THAT would have been more my style.  Here are a couple more shots of the cargo net (yep, that's me way behind Dave and Tom), and a shot from higher up the mountain.

The last mile or so of the course is where the real mud and fun came.  There was a pit of mud that we had to jump in and then climb out the side.  This was where my boots filled with water and rocks.  Running on waterlogged boots and socks was funky but not bad, but running on the rocks under my feet was not fun.  I considered stopping, but figured they would fill again soon anyway, and maybe we were almost done (we weren't).  We followed a little creek, which at one point had mud that came up to my hips (I kid you not).  It was like quicksand at one point and very hard to move through.  There was one section with four logs, that we had to climb over, then go under, and they were right on the surface of the creek, so there was no choice but to go underwater to get under them.  And finally there were a couple of much shorter pipes to climb through (a piece of cake compared to the culvert).   These are some pics of TC's team going through some of those muddy obstacles towards the home stretch:

The last obstacle before the short jog downhill to the finish was just a big pit of mud that you jump in and climb out of:

After this, you ran down a hill, past the cheering crowd and the DJ playing some great tunes (our team finished up to some Vanilla Ice and Jump Around...totally pumped us up for the final push).  We finished, and got a picture with one of our designated cheerleaders.

There are a few things that are going through my head now that I'm finished with the race.  One thing the organizer said at the starting line was that we would not know what the course held, much like someone with MS does not know from day to day what their life is going to bring.  He also said that just as we are on the starting line looking forward with uncertainty, afterwards we will look back and say "I knew I could do it".  And he was right.  I don't have MS and will never know first hand what that feels like, but I had some of my own demons to conquer on this run.  First, a 10K is not a short distance, but I was able to complete it even with its insane elevation changes.  I'm also very claustrophobic in pipes, yet I went through a 100 foot long culvert, much of it in the dark.  I overcame a fear of heights to climb over a wobbly wall of 2x4's.  And I tend to be a neat freak, almost to the point of obsessive compulsiveness.  If anything on earth is farther from "neat" than this jaunt through the swamp, I don't know what it would be. 

But most of all, this was just fun.  The atmosphere was great.  Kathy and the kids were the loudest cheerleaders in the crowd.  Dave and TC are two of the most fun people I know to be around, and they introduced me to their friends and family who were also just amazing people.  Our final time was about 2hrs 11mins, not bad at all considering how much of it was a slow, uphill hike.  I was a worthless slug the rest of the day and some of the next day, but I'll recover from that quickly enough.  My first mud run was a huge success, and I'm looking forward to doing it again next year.  Thanks again to everyone for their support and well wishes!