Showing posts with label grime and punishment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grime and punishment. Show all posts

Sunday, July 13, 2008

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!