#32 BADASS MUDGIRL

I have always wanted to run a mud race and months ago, when I found out there was one in Tampa, I put it on my Badass List.

Along the way, to my delight it turned into a work team bonding event! I couldn't have asked for anything better.

My fantastic boss Jill even had t-shirts made for all of us! We were such a kick-ass crew.

None of us had run a mud run before, so nobody really knew what to expect. As we met up before hand, we saw runners who were finishing the race and they looked surprisingly clean. So we reassured each other that it probably was hyped more than it needed to be and we weren't likely to get as muddy as we thought.

Boy, were we wrong!

There were 19 obstacles along the way. Some were "clean" -- going across a slack line, hoisting kettle balls, carrying weights. There were canvas nets to climb over, inflatable "tires" to cross, and vertical ropes to scale.

I am embarrassed to say that one of the "clean" events is the only one I couldn't do! It was a three level giant vertical metal climing apparatus, kiind of like a playground jungle gym on steroids. I got up the thing fine, but when it came to throwing my leg up and over and going down the other side, my body was willing but my brain was not. I absolutely could not for the life of me get myself to do it. I was already slippery by that time and the bars were kind of slippery too, and all I could envision was me slipping off and crashing to the ground. Kind of like when a pengin slides across an iceberg and into the water, but much less gracefully and probably resulting in broken bones, blood, and permanent embarrassment. However, I am still upset with myself I couldn't do it.

Oh well. There's always next year.

But the "muddy" events were the most fun. They start you off easy by having you wade through an ankle-deep pit of muddy water. Ok. You get through that and you are like - "So that was cute. Refreshing. Oh my, my feet got wet." and kind of giggle to yourself with confidence.

The next one came along and you had to crawl on your hands and knees to get under ropes. So on the other side, you emerge with wet arms and lets, and think, "Still not so bad. I see now why people didn't look too muddy at the end".

It was a hot day. The sun was out and there wasn't much shade at the beginning of the course. So Lisa (my Badass MucRun Partner) and I agreed that we were hoping to get more in the water in order to cool off.

The next muddy obstacle was a big old flooded pond, calf deep. The facilitator said, "Cross on over any way you want...run a race, wade, crawl or army crawl. Whatever you want to do". Lisa and I looked at each other. She said, "Army crawl?" I said, "Yup". So we did. It felt absolutely amazing and the giggles started then.

Not too long after that, we came to an obstacle where there were several ladies scrambling over mud mountains. We waited our turn and scoped out our strategy. There was a little bit of water in a ditch in front of the first mountain and it was hard to see it's depth. So I figured the safest thing would be to gently jump in with both feet in order to prevent twisting an ankle if the ground of the ditch was uneven. I anticipated a splash up to my ankles. What I didn't anticipate was that the ditch was hecka deep and I went in up and over my heard. As I came spluttering up, LIsa was laughing so hard that she fell in herself. We both surfaced in tears because we were laughing so hard, and suggenly I heard, "Beeeeethhhhhhh". I looked around and saw two teammates, Eliza and Amy, both doubled over laughing because they saw what happened. The four of us couldn't breathe because we were in hysterics, when Amy decided to step into the ditch and did the exact same thing as we did --over her head and coming up spluttering with mud everywhere. Eliza was laughing so hard she slid in, but managed to do it gracefully, and I think the four of us sat in that water laughing for at least five minutes straight. We finally got it together and climbed up- and down the mud mountains, still managing to lose our balance and fall in occasionally, but always with peals of laughter.

We were still breathless from laughing so hard when we got to the next obstacle. This inflatable was a series of eight enclosed tubes that basically looked like you were going to slip and slide through a wet ziti. We raced each other -- I dove into mine and came to a screaching stop halfway through the tube. I'm wiggling and trying to get through until I came to the end which was a drop into another pool of mud with unknown depth. Nothing to do but go headfirst. You could hear each of my friends hit the water and surface in hysterics.

The rest of the muddy obstancles were so fun -- army crawling with just your nose above water under cargo nets, sliding down mud hills and at the end, taking on a giant inflatable slide with a pool of water at the bottom.

We found out that this is the reason people weren't coming out of the race looking muddy -- the pool at the bottom cleaned off most of the surface mud.

Would I do this again? Oh my head.....YES!!!!! It was so much fun and it felt great when you tackled an obstacle that you didn't think you would be able to do.

And maybe next time, I'll be able to conquer the gigantic monkey bars. I better start training now. Only have 364 more days to go!