Muddy Buddy

When April first started talking about the Muddy Buddy, a 10K bike/run adventure race, I looked at her like she was crazy. We were only about a month into our training and I felt like I wouldn't be any good at it. But the more we trained, the stronger I felt and we finally made the decision to go for it. I signed us up for the "competitive" female division, not really knowing what I was doing. I figured: why run a race if you're not going to be competitive? right? Well we quickly learned that we were way out of our league. But the good part about starting this heat was that there weren't a lot of people in our group and we went out 3rd.

The race started bright and early at 7:15 AM, which meant that we needed to be there by 6:15 AM and had our alarms going off at 5:15 AM....not my favorite thing to happen on a Saturday morning.

We decided that April was the stronger biker, so she would bike first and I was stuck with running! There were 5 legs of the race. April started first with the rest of the bikers in our group. They gave them a 1:30 lead and then the runners took off. We ran about ~1.5 miles and then we go to the obstacle course. This first obstacle was a 7 foot rock wall. April had already gotten to the wall on the bike, climbed it and she was now running. I climbed the rock wall and then hopped on the bike, which she left for me. I then biked the next ~1.5 miles to the second obstacle-the inflatable wall. It had rope squares to help you climb up. April was already at this obstacle when I got there and she took off on the bike. I started on my second run-another ~1.5 miles. Then we got to the third obstacle-the inflated short wall that we had to jump over without ropes and then crawl through more inflated tubes and out the obstacle. April had already been through and had started on her run. I jumped on the bike and headed toward the fourth obstacle. This leg I finally passed April while she was running (I was supposed to do this on my first bike leg-but I was too slow). I made it to the fourth obstacle-the Marine Assault, where you have to duck down and go through a maze with a rope roof. I finished the obstacle and headed out for my final run. Another 1.5 miles to the finish. I wasn't having my best day and had to walk a lot of this leg. I also developed a stitch in my side, which made me walk more. April then passed me on the bike and waited for me at the finish. When I finally got there, we raced together towards the final two obstacles-the rope wall and the mud pit. We scaled the small wall and then crawled through the pit of mud and finished together as MUDDY BUDDIES!!

Once they post the action shots, I'll add them to this post. For now, all I have is a before and after shot of the two of us!

We finished in 1 hour and 8 minutes. We got 46th place for the competitive women division and beat 30 other teams....not bad!