This past weekend I ran in the Mud Run with a group of girls. Here we all are, right when we first arrived at the race! We had no idea what we were in for! :) Back: Laura, Laura, Chrissy, Me Front: Vanessa, Janet, Victoria, Tida, and Laura (yes, there are three laura's! They all go by their last names when they're together)
The Mud Run is a 10K race that benefits MS research, and there are about 25 muddy obstacles all throughout the 6.4 miles (or whatever a 10K is, I'm not sure exactly).
The run itself wasn't too bad, mostly because we were able to stop so many times to do obstacles. But at the same time, after you heaved yourself over a wall, or multiple poles, or through muddy water, then we had to get up and run again. So, I'm not sure which would be easier, a straight 10K, or this.
Some of the highlights of the race: we had to swim across a river, twice! A muddy, disgusting, full of animals river. I had no idea we'd have to do anything like this, I thought it would be all obstacles and mud pits that people made specifically for the race. I had no idea we'd have to get down and dirty with creatures. Luckily I never saw any, and nothing was stuck to me when I got home to take a shower (I was VERY worried about leaches or whatever else lives in muddy mucky water!).
Myself and one other girl brought waterproof cameras along the race, so we were able to get a few action shots. Unfortunately it didn't work so well when we were literally up to our neck in muddy water, the camera got covered in mud! Then when you got out of the water, you were also covered head to toe in mud and grossness so there was nothing to clean your camera on. But we were able to get the gist of the race captured!
Here are some of my teammates, this was in the very first obstacle. They made us get in the water and then you just run right back up the bank. I was surprised at how many of the obstacles you had to just sit on your bottom and fall into (mud pits, water holes, etcc..), because they didn't try to make it really easy to do. Then to scramble out of them you had to try to get your footing on a wall of mud. You'd just slide right back down. It was actually really hard!
Swimming in the river for the first time. I was much better with my camera at the beginning, and took way too many pictures at the start of the race. I didn't realize how far a 10K was! I have only ever ran a 5K and so actually after we got out of this river right here, we did a few obstacles and ran what I thought was pretty far, and then we just kept going and going and going! I kept thinking that surely we'd be done soon. So we got done with more and more obstacles and there was a helper at one of them cheering us on and she said "Great job guys, keep going, you're almost.." and I would have sworn she was going to say "you're almost there!" So I was getting so relieved. But then she said "you're almost half-way there! Just run to that bridge and you're half-way!" I was like WHAT?! I thought we were almost done, no way can I keep going! But luckily a few of the obstacles were kind of time consuming so we were able to stand and wait for probably 10-15 minutes at a few.
Here we are after the first river swim, we thought we were gross already. We had no idea...
Right after the river we had to swim in this muddy water stuff. We had to do this multiple times. Since this was the first time we thought it was so gross, but after doing all of the other obstacles this was not that bad!
Oops, didn't turn the picture. We didn't get a whole bunch of the tasks on camera, most of them were so gross and we were filthy so we couldn't begin to take pictures. But this one we got. You had to swing on a rope over to the other side. I actually chickened out on this one and didn't do it. But most of our group did!
Wading through another muddy obstacle. Again, a pretty easy one!
Now this was shortly after the grossest one we had to do. By FAR the grossest. We all agreed if they do this again next year, we'd skip this obstacle. So we swam the river a second time, then we climbed out of it and they immediately had you walk back down to a little canal off the river. It was like a mucky little stream. It smelled like manure and was filled with weeds, sticks, and who knows what else. We were talking afterward and I realized that had I been walking by this little canal with the boys and one of them threw a toy in the water, I would have said goodbye to the toy because there was no way I would have put my hand in the water to get it. But in this race, not only did we put our hands in it, we actually put our entire bodies in it up to our neck and dragged ourselves through it! I seriously can't believe that we did. A whole bunch of people were watching from way up high on the bank (I think they were supposed to help us if we drowned, but they were way too far away to help!) and they yelled to us to watch out for snakes. And they were serious. SO. Gross. We tried walking in it but we sank up to our knees in muck, there was just no way around it. So anyway, we were all traumatized by this ( I still am, can you tell?) but we lived to tell the tale so all is well I guess!
A fun and non-gross obstacle!
This was toward the very end. We had to climb up on top of this platform and jump into the water. It fully submerged you in the muddy water. Up until this point I had avoided getting my face under water (it was covered in mud from splashing so I don't know why I bothered) but here there was no way around it, you took a bath in mud!
Laura and I are in the middle, can you spot us? I'm not sure who else is up there with us.
Our group afterward. This is with a very muddy camera so it's not too clear, but you can kind of tell how muddy we were.
Finally to rinse off. Isn't it funny that they had fireman spraying us off with hoses? I told Cooper about that (he had a soccer game so Ryan didn't bring him to watch us) and he was fascinated by this.
So, the girls are doing it again next year, but I'm still debating on whether I'd do it again... it was a lot of fun though!
Isn't this a funny face?
It is SO hard to wait for the egg hunt to start!
And he's off!!
Score!
Another egg!
Yay! Lots of eggs! Jackson loves eggs and says over and over "eggs, eggs, eggs"
Here's Cooper after the egg hunt. Can you tell by his blue teeth that he's already dug into his candy?
After the egg hunts we played a few games. Jackson was really good at the bean bag toss.
Cooper loved the bowling game.
Then we went right to our next egg hunt. They had a pillowcase race that Cooper thought was so funny.
Then we had the second egg hunt. Cooper was VERY into it.
The next day we went to church and then to Gma and Gpa's house to get their Easter baskets. They wore their Easter outfits because we wanted to get pictures with the cousins in their Easter finery. Here's Jackson!
My two cutie pies!
Here's Cooper!
We made bunny cookies for the day. Cooper had fun decorating them.
The four cousins. Look at Ben and Cooper! Are they a pair or what?!?
Trying to get a good picture of the four of them is so funny.
Jackson wasn't really interested anymore.
So we got a cute picture of the three older kids!
We of course had to get a family photo.
We had a yummy lunch and then it was time to find their Easter baskets!
First Jackson found his basket...
then Cooper found his!
One of their favorite presents are these funny bunny suckers.
Everyone (including the grown ups) got silly string in their baskets. It made for a really fun silly string fight!
My mom got lots of good action shots.
Jackson was not too thrilled about the silly string in his face.
The aftermath.
Isn't she a doll?? I think she was kind of over the hand holding but Jackson kept reaching for her hand.
Very blurry picture but I just had to show Jackson reaching for her hand. I think we have a future girlfriend here!! :) He he he.
