A Mucky Muck

Oh hey, y'all! Remember me? I used to run a little bit and occasionally blog about it. I've been a wee bit mute lately for reasons too boring to elaborate on, so I'd like to reintroduce myself with a lil' recap of the RunAmuck 5K & obstacle course I recently completed with the rest of Team Shake'n Bake (the team name probably makes a bit more sense if you know that 3 out 4 team members' last name is "Baker").

We arrived at the race an hour or so before our start time, and were all immediately taken aback by the scene. One of the first finishers we spoke with showed us the bloody, muddy mixture gushing down her leg as she warned us of sharp rocks scattered throughout the muck. We were all a bit scatterbrained at the start,  and the more we watched people stumbling across the finish line, the more we all were secretly hoping that someone would say, "Or... maybe we don't really have to do this...?"

We headed to the bar to soothe our nerves with a little Bud heavy (okay, Sus and I actually opted for the Light version, but it sounds more true to our team name to claim that we went for the real stuff). While were were sipping our beers, we noticed that a group was lining up at the starting line - so rather than wait another 30 minutes for our scheduled start time, we chugged down our cold ones and lined up to take off (Note: there was absolutely zero organization to this thing, so we weren't too concerned about messing up the "race structure.") 

About 30 seconds into the race, we began running uphill at what seemed like a 75 degree angle... and clearly I began immediately regretting the beer. The obstacles were pretty mild and absurdly random, and the first mud pit was easy breezy. I fulfilled my duty as back of the pack for Team Shake'n Bake and begged my liver to bear with me for just a bit longer until the race was over. I also managed to lose a shoe - twice - in the muddy mixture and ran portions of the race with my shoe only partially on.

The second mud pit was a bit more challenging, and the only way I managed to get through was by rolling on my belly. We sprinted (Okay, as you'll see in the video below, we didn't actually sprint. But it felt like a sprint to this gal who ran a little faster than she had planned in order to keep up with Team Shake'n Bake) to the final mud pit just in time to see our mascot aka Wilson Bobby aka my nephew having a complete meltdown. Poor little guy didn't know what to think of his parents being so close, yet so far, and completely covered from head to toe in mud...

We tried to show him how much fun we were having in the mud, but I'm not sure we were that convincing. We were pretty darn excited about hitting the showers STAT and getting the heck out that place.

You wouldn't know it, but there are jorts underneath all of that mud (which is not exactly recommended for races, fyi).

Was it fun? Certainly! Do I ever want to do it again? Eh... I think I'm good. It was a fun little Saturday activity, but I think I'll go ahead and check this one off my list.

Muckin' Mondays (sigh).