The Dirty Dash

This summer, some friends & I decided to run a Dirty Dash.  Hey, there was a Groupon ... it was cheap ... we had a free weekend ... OK, there really isn't a rational reason to do one of these things.  But runners aren't always the most rational people out there.

Before the race - clean, optimistic, naive.

Tough guys.  This is our "Don't mess with us" look.  Grrrr...
(Sadly, Jared had majorly sprained his ankle the day before, so he didn't actually get to run the race. But he still came out to cheer us on.)

The beginning of the race was pretty boring.  We were thinking, "Hey, where's the mud?!?"

This was our first real MUD obstacle.  But it was more watery than muddy.  And it smelled like cow poop.

Still, I was feelin' pretty boss for charging through that mucky pond.

Then the real obstacles started showing up.
Crawling through tunnels . . .

Sliding down muddy hills . . .

Climbing over or under poles . . .

Trudging up a steep hill . . .

The slide came a little over halfway through the race.

Mid-race muddiness.  It got much worse . . .

This was the toughest obstacle.  These poles were high, slippery, and just inches above THICK mud.  You either flung yourself over them, or dove under them.

 

Nathan met us near the end of the course.  He didn't want me anywhere near his clean, white shirt.  Too bad!

These last two obstacles were SO hard because they were steep and so slippery with mud!

While we waited for our turn to climb the last wall, Julia & Kylie decided to take one last roll down the muddy slope.  If you click on the picture, you'll see the big rock that Kylie (right) is about to roll over.  She had a nasty bruise from that!

Adana & Emma joined me for the final mud pit.

Our muddy, victorious crew!

Here are a couple shots of the course.  This is the finish line.

This is the beginning.  Most of the race happened back in amongst those trees.

Feelin' good!
(Photo-bombed by a creepy mustache man.)

Kylie won the award for the muddiest of the group.
(Photo-bombed by Erin.)

Kylie decided that Jared needed to feel the Mud Love.  :)

Our shoes were pretty thrashed.  There was a mountain of discarded shoes that, apparently, some charity takes to clean up & donate.  I tossed mine in there.

Cleaning up after was vaguely reminiscent of a concentration camp.   Given my abhorrence of crowds, there was no way I was going to enter that mess.

Luckily, I found a "private" hose behind the bathrooms.
Pro:  since we weren't sharing the water with all the masses, we had strong water pressure.
Con:  it was freezing!  

It's so much easier to clean someone who is young enough to not be embarrassed by being naked.  (Those underpants used to be white.  They went straight in the trash.)

The official photo of our team.
We pretty much rock!  :)