Gladiator Rock n Run - Rose Bowl

Last Saturday was the second of 3 mud runs I’m doing in 4 weeks.  I was back doing the Gladiator Rock n Run, but this time I was doing it in Pasadena in and around the Rose Bowl.

I had a choice, and I did the 10K.  I did this race and this distance two years ago, and I had a blast, so I wanted to do it again.

I wound up doing it by myself, but in some ways that was okay.  No pressure.  No pushing.  I could just go at my own pace.

The down side was I got assigned to the 7:30 wave instead of the 8:30 wave I signed up for.  They didn’t have enough people at 8:30, so they turned that into a 5K wave.  Still, that’s very early.  As in I had to wake up earlier than I do for work.  But I got there and was ready to run before they were ready to let us go, and that’s the important thing.

We started by running down the player’s entrance and into the Rose Bowl itself, where we then did the stairs a number of times.  Then it was out to the street around the Rose Bowl before leaving that and entering the park.  That was the part I remembered the most from two years ago and the part that I enjoyed the most.  And it’s only available on the 10K course.

They moved up the ice bath obstacle to near the beginning.  It wasn’t quite warm enough for that yet, especially at 7:30 in the morning.

But the mud doesn’t come into play until the last mile.  There isn’t much since they have to create dams for it.  But it was still fun, and I got muddier than I was expecting.  There was mud twice, once with barbed wire for us to crawl under and then a tunnel to crawl through and once with ropes and flags.  That second time, the mud was in dumpsters, which I wasn’t expecting and was kind of fun.  A creative way to get us muddy.

My only complaint is how low they put the barbed wire.  It is next to impossible to get down to crawl through the mud without getting scratched.  And the mud was too shallow at times, too.  If it were rope, I wouldn’t mind at all.  But since I got scratched, I wasn’t happy.

The hardest obstacle for me was the cinderblock burpees.  I have got to start exercising my upper body.  That’s all there is to it.  My lower back and calves were killing me for a couple days afterward.

And yet I’ll take the challenge and be back for more.  I’ve only missed one they have put on in Orange County and LA County, and that was the Rose Bowl last year.  It just about killed me.  I will be back.

Oh, the upside of starting early?  The huge group of people in the starting corral waiting to start when I was clean and on my way home.  That felt good.  As did the two hour nap I took that afternoon.