Down and Dirty Mud Run

Some accused us of being crazy (cough, Dad, cough) for voluntarily running and crawling through mud pits. And yes, maybe it is a little crazy. But really, so much fun! It isn't very often in our adult lives that we just let loose and jump in mud puddles, go into lakes fully clothed, etc.

The 5K Mud Run was sponsored by Merrell and held at Folsom Lake, just outside of Sacramento. The location was perfect! It's gorgeous, especially early in the morning.

How early? We had to get up at 5:45 am and let's just say that was not the highlight of the day. We were TIRED! And thankfully they had heaters out because it was also cold (at least we were still clean).

We finally hit the trail after waiting what felt like forever. It was a much harder course than Matt and I anticipated. Perhaps if we trained it wouldn't have been as bad. But the hills were just killer. One in particular had just about everyone walking (except Matt!).

The obstacles were the big unknown factor and fortunately they weren't too hard. There were six in total. I had visions of a big wall to climb, that I just couldn't get over so Matt had to shove me over. That didn't happen, but there was one obstacle that I kind of wish he could have hoisted me up a little! There were three subsequent wooden bars you had to jump up to and pull yourself over. They were no big deal for Matt with his 6'1" stature but with my 5'3" stature, it was significantly more difficult.

So after running maybe 2 miles we had our first small mud pit to cross through. Then ran roughly 3/4 mile more and we came to the biggest surprise of an obstacle. Walking through the lake! We had to walk around the perimeter of the swimming area. It was slow moving for sure, with the water getting to about my chest at it's deepest point. Then we ran another 200 yards with our shoes slooshing to a soapy incline obstacle.

Then came the fun part! The big mud pit! We crawled and crawled and made it through to cross the finish line. No records were broke, with a slow time of 45 minutes. The fastest time was 26 minutes I think so even those speedy runners were slowed down with the obstacles and lake detour!

I am glad we did it. It's a fun thing to do at least once in your life.

Probably not something you want to do on a regular basis considering we both threw out our shoes and I had to wash our clothes 4 times before the mud came out and my white sports bra will forever be a shade of light brown.

These are our shoes after washing off, I should have captured them beforehand!