My first mud race was back in ’96 during the first week of college. Little did I know that I would be joining two friends from college in another mud race 16 years later.
My friend Joy invited me to join her team for the Kalamazoo Mud Run. I asked another college friend who lives in the area to join us. I also invited my friend Leisa, who tried mom’s hockey and the polar bear plunge with me. I figured she would be game to try just about anything too.
Joy created skirts for us complete with a tiara and Leisa got us fun socks to wear.
We enjoyed takings lots of pictures before the race as prep for the “before” shots.
We knew it was a good sign when other runners were asking to have their pictures taken with the “4 Dirty Divas” in the parking lot.
We couldn’t resist having fun with it.
We were one of the few teams that went all out with our team costumes.
The team with the towels won my vote for most original but I don’t think their costume held up after 2 rounds on the course.
All of us were a bit nervous about the unknown course ahead but the pre-race stretch did seem more energizing in a tutu.
Oh, the course….. it was muddy and cold from the start followed by a serious trail run thru the woods.
The trail run had MANY hills with 8 obstacles along the way.
Mud pit to start,
stepping on truck tires, going thru a tube,
jumping logs, climbing over a fence, (we almost lost Betsy in the swamp mud when her shoe got stuck), sliding down into a mud pit
followed by several pits to climb up and down with a few stops to sling mud at each other,
and the last mud pit that you had to crawl thru on your belly.
After completing the last obstacle we were told that we would be running the whole course again to make it a complete 5k. Our energies were low after the first lap but we rallied for another round.
Upfront we were in it to complete it…not to win it.
(I began to think Betsy was slightly in it to win it during lap 2 when she got away from us for a bit but we were all together in the end)
This was a fun race and that was our objective. We obviously don’t take ourselves too seriously.
You know it’s a good race when you have dirt in your teeth.
Awesome! Being a bit of a clean freak, I admire you all the more for getting muddy and dirty for a good cause! And I love the costumes!! 🙂
Awesome! Looks like you had tons of fun!
Wanted to tell you what a joy your team was. I’m Scott (I was the DJ,) and Tom (the emcee) and I narrowed the 3 teams we thought had the best ‘costumes.’ My wife was in costume so I had to recuse myself 🙂 You were spot on with your assessment that it was partially because your outfits ‘held up,’ but I can also tell you that it was because the best part of your costume was the smiles on your faces. This event was amazing for all of us that hosted it, but made more incredible by the spirit of joy that people like you brought to it. We cannot thank you enough for that…all the planning in the world cannot create the memories of friendship and lifelong ‘togetherness’ that your pictures show. Thank you for bringing that to our event, it would simply have been random people running in dirt otherwise. Please come say Hi to me at next year’s event, it will be great to see some friendly faces…again!
Thanks so much for your participation. Great blog post, great photos. Thanks for sharing your experience and your help to reach complete our mission to Get Dirty For Clean Water!