Muddy Buddy

My muddy buddy Holly and I completed this event today in Richmond, Virginia and had TONS of fun! Really recommended for a very fun change of pace! Many fun costumes on hand plus children's event made it festive. We dressed up as the "Mud Kittens" with custom-designed shirts (courtesy of Holly) and cat-ears on our helmets.

Over ~6 miles of trails, with 2 runner/riders and one mountain bike (people leapfrogging and alternating on bike or running) we traversed:

4 obstacles:
Climbing wall
Balance beam
Ranger wall (climb over/under)
Cargo net climb/ vertical slide

Plus river crossing (~knee high water which poor Holly had to carry the bike over) and crawl-through mud pit

Trail running/biking was extraordinarily fun - I'm already thinking about buying a mountain bike for next year's event, naturally!

We finished near the back of our competition group (don't know exactly where yet - grouped on the basis of the sum of the participant ages) but the bike had a flat and Holly had to run the bike in for the last leg - but I'm pretty sure not many people had more fun than us!

Yeah, yeah, we'll have some muddy photos for you soon. Right now I'm doing laundry!

Update: Here is the climbing wall - the first and (for me) most daunting obstacle since it was about 8 feet high, up the climbing wall on the right and down the rope ladder - and I have little upper body strength and a lousy strength/weight ratio! It's also fairly difficult to get a good purchase on the wall with standard running shoes. Fortunately we checked it out the day before and got our bodies over it a couple of times for practice and to gain confidence. Holly has a great photo essay on her site so I'll direct you there for more muddy fun!

We were 20th out of 24 teams in our division:
http://www.muddybuddy.com/pdf/richmond/results.pdf
1747 Toby, Nancy Mud-Kittens 51 F 1:17:47.8 20
1747 Gannoe, Holly Mud-Kittens 37 F 1:17:47.8 20

I think without the flat tire in the last leg of the race we would have moved up only one place, maybe. 18th place was more than 5 minutes ahead of us.

I wish I could have worn my Garmin to generate a map (and distances) of the course! But I wasn't going to take it through that mud pit!