Saturday was my first mud run of 2012. I did it with my friend Josh and his younger brother Caleb. It was my Christmas and Caleb's birthday present. And we had a blast.
I finally made it back to Irvine Lake. This was the site of my first mud run almost two years ago. I'd wanted to go back last year, but the dates were always days I couldn't make it.
This is a 3.9 mile course. While it's on the edge of a lake, you don't actually get in the lake. It has one of the largest count of mud pits, although most of them you run through. And I was glad for that by the end.
The weather was cold with a slight breeze blowing. It was okay when we were running, but the standing still part really hurt us. And showering off afterward was very cold. I'm over doing these in the cold. My next one (end of April) had better be warm.
We started off, and it wasn't long before they put is in our first mud pit. So our shoes were wet the entire way through. Most of the obstacles were fairly shallow pits or the 3 foot high walls.
However, they had a couple of great ones. First up, they had a slide. Now I've done a slip and slide kind of thing before, but that's not what this was. It was a tube like a waterslide. They only had two of them, so the line was very long. We're guessing we waited 45 minutes at least to do it. But it was worth it. At the bottom was a pool of muddy water deep enough that you didn't hit bottom, although you could stand. It was also cold, and we'd cooled down while waiting. Still, it was worth it.
The second obstacles was a mud swamp. In the past, I've said this mud run has some watery mud. That wasn't the case in this part. Apparently, they had been watering this for a couple of weeks, and it paid off. You sunk in up past your ankle with no hesitation. The further into it you got, the more you sunk. Eventually, it was mid thigh. No, I'm not joking. And the mud would made a suction, so you had a hard time getting each foot out. Eventually, everyone resorted to crawling (which got you good a muddy). I wound up rolling at one point to get to the edge so I could run and catch up.
Yes, it was fun, but it was also a bit on the long side. They didn't need to make it that long.
And yes, I lost a shoe on this part. Fortunately, I was able to dig it out (with Caleb's help), but I didn't put it back on until the end of the mud swamp.
If the weather had been 10-15 degrees warmer, it would have been perfect. Even as cold as it was, we still had a blast.
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