Mudsuckers

I have been dreading this day.

 

It feels like forever ago when the conversations about the Rugged Maniac started.

It sounded like a good idea at the time and considering it was Spring, there was plenty of time to prepare.

 

Was plenty of time to prepare.  Did I? 

Of course not.

 

Our team name was the Mudsuckers. 

Lori Schiller, Lori Johnson (Lori S's friend), Molly Spiess, me and Loriann Lane.

 

 

8:45 am:  Time to make our way to the starting line.

Much to our surprise we came across a red wall....you must climb the wall to get to the starting line.  Guess it was fitting considering this was going to be our challenge for the next few hours.

 

9:00 am the race starts

We started with running up a hill.

Yup- UP a hill.

I guess it should have occured to us when we signed up for a race at Wild Mountain Ski Place.

The first hill KILLED ME.

When you get to the top of that hill we had to climb a wall, then roll over a big pipe, the run up and down sand hills.  When we were done with that we went another hill.

About 0.5 miles into this 3 mile jaunt I realized that I probably should have eaten a better breakfast- I was already starting to feel sick and the handful of red grapes I had had wasn't cutting it.

For the next 3 miles we would go up and down hills while running walking from obstacle to obstacle getting very, very dirty.

 

Obstacles included (but not limited to): wall climbing, wall walking (climbing up slanted walls using a rope to pull yourself up), walking across tires while pushing other tires out of the way, crawling through mud- under barbed wire, climbing through a tube and landing in a puddle of mud then crawling up a tube out of the mud puddle (another UP), more walls to climb, more mud puddles to crawl through and mud hills to climb.  Near the end we slide down a huge slide that landed into a mud puddle (more like mud pool), jumped over fire, climbed more walls, and crossed a cargo net.

 

 

Amazingly, I finished.

2 miles in I wasn't convinced I could.  My heart was racing and I could not stomach the idea of walking another hill. 

Our offical time was around 1 hour and 28 minutes- not bad for not feeling well and walking the whole time.

Lori, Lori, and Molly went ahead of us and they finished in 1 hour and 17 minutes.

 

 

It turned out to be a beautiful day!

 

10:45 am today:  "I will NEVER feel the need to do that ever again."

12:00 pm today:  "The only way I would ever do that again is if I could be promised that there aren't hills like that."

 

I guess it's sort of like childbirth- all too fast you forget about how painful it was and only remember the good that comes from it.