Last Saturday I participated in one of the toughest things I ever did in my life. A mud run. This one in particular, The Uffda Mud Run, was put on by local extreme endurance racing group, ENDracing, the same folks who put on the Winter Ultramarathon earlier this year that mother nature made me back out of. If you have never heard of these, they have been gaining popularity over the last few years with two of the more mainstream national mud runs put on by Tough Mudder and Warrior Dash. They usually are a 5 to 10k race with a couple dozen obstacles mixed in throughout, most of which guaranteeing you become a muddy mess by the end of the race.
I ran this race with my friend Sean. He ran the 10k on the 4th of July with me and I told him I would run a race with him in return, and why he decided to pick a mud run was beyond me and at first I was not even going to do it as I thought I would be nowhere fit enough to endure it. As time passed however and I found out this was essentially a recreational race for the sake of survival instead of competition and I decided I would give it my best shot, and if any of the 23 obstacles the race director kept daunting on the event Facebook page were too tough for me, I would do my best at them and move on to the next one.
I did my best to step up my training for this as I heard some of the early obstacles revealed involved a few wall climbs. I have never got back in the habit of doing pull ups/sit ups/push ups, so for the past month I started doing sets of reps of all three of those a few times a week. Additionally, three of the obstacles involved crossing the Red River, and I cannot even remember the last time I went swimming for it must have been around a decade, so I went out and got a couple of practice swims in over the last couple of weeks.
So the big race day finally happened last Saturday, and I met up with Sean near the starting line and our wave took off at 11am. A lot of the early obstacles were relatively straightforward. A few were mazes consisting of tires, logs, boulders and netting to navigate through. Of course there were a few early mud pits too. They definitely stepped up in difficulty as we moved on though; or as the race director stated, "I like to eat my peas first before we get to the steak."
The set of three walls to climb were a decent hurdle for me. I got over the 4' wall no problem, but for the 6' and 8' wall Sean and I gave each other a boost over. The latter mud pits got increasingly more difficult to traverse through, and were deep enough so it was troublesome to walk through so my only option was to doggie paddle my way through them to get the heck out of there. And this is speculation on my part, but I am pretty sure whoever made a few of the latter mud pits had some fun because they reeked like someone dumped tons of cow pies in them.
I only failed two obstacles. One was called something along the lines of "Fjording the Rough" and it featured the deepest and thickest mud of the whole course. It was about three feet deep, and I took about three or four steps in and found it nearly impossible to move and saw the other runners barely moving at all in front of me. I had a good feeling if I kept on trucking I would definitely lose a shoe and/or get stuck. Even the race director said afterwards he did not anticipate this obstacle to be so dastardly. So after my initial few steps, I turned around and made haste to the rest of the track. The other obstacle I failed started off with a trivia question. I got the question wrong and got an orange token. I then had to go into a 3' tank of ice water and find a corresponding orange colored golf ball. Since I got a trivia question wrong, only 25% of the golf balls at the bottom of the mud colored ice water tank were orange. You can see where this is going. I dove five times and each time came out with a blue ball, and each time shivering more and more of my own balls off. One of the volunteers must have took pity on me and threw me an orange ball, but I was so beyond cold at this point I bobbled it and lost it in the tank. I took that as my cue to get out before I get hypothermia though after about five minutes in the tank at this point. I had no idea the race photographers that were hired were taking my photo at this point, and they got a great shot of me as you can obviously see here.
The three river crossings went pretty well for the most part. The first one went through without a hitch as we pulled ourselves across the river via a rope above us tied to the river banks. The second was a bit of a challenge as four of us all had one arm clung to a inner tube, while we all tried to synchronize our swim with our remaining hand. This proved to be quite a challenge. Thank goodness there was barely a current to the river that day, it was actually cool and calm that morning, nearly perfect weather for the day. Eventually we made it across.
The final crossing, and the final obstacle was crossing the Red River itself. This was the obstacle I kept telling myself I had to beat in the weeks leading up in the race. You had the option of using a lifejacket or taking a ferry across the river, but I was set on swimming across on my own. I am no Michael Phelps by any means, and I was glad on my two practice swims I did I discovered I can at least still somewhat competently swim and felt confident enough in my abilities to do the swim without a life jacket. Of course they had to pick the widest part of the river along the track to swim across. I have no idea what the official measurement was, but I would approximate it to be around 1/6 of a mile. I dove in off a dock constructed just for the race and went in guns blazing. I American Crawled my way across and went in with a mindset thinking of the handful of people I legitimately hated throughout my life and that I am going finish this in spite of them. That got me going pretty good, and the last quarter of the swim I started to finally lose steam and for the last quarter of the river I started to worry as I dragged into a slow doggie paddle for the remainder of the swim, but eventually I made it across. It felt quite powerful emerging from the river. I have no idea how to properly put it into context, but it felt very uplifting and like I was getting past a whole new hurdle in life I have been wanting to overcome for quite sometime now. In other words, it felt great.
A short little climb up a riverbank, and a little sprint to the finish line marked an official finish/survival of the Uffda Mud Run. I received a spiffy looking keychain bottle opener at the finish line and quickly made haste to a water hose set up nearby so Sean and I could spray ourselves down. My shoes were totally trashed at this point and instead of hosing them off I tossed them into a growing pile of other disposed shoes. I was a little sore for the next couple of days, and I got a few expected little cuts and bruises all over me. This run definitely kicked my ass, but it was worth it and I am glad I finished. I can say without a doubt I would not do this race on my own, but if I found another couple of friends to do it with me I would for sure. It was invaluable to have a friend with me here so we could help each other out by assisting with boosts, cheering each other on to keep our spirits up and just flat out enduring the event with each other until the very end.
Latest Race Log
5K
UND Autism 5k - 4/20/13 - 26:22 - 23rd out of 74
Uffda Mud Run - 9/7/13 - ??:?? - Finished
10k
Hillsboro Run - 6/13/13 - 50:17 - 23rd out of 55
Dewey Memorial - 6/1/13 - 50:21 - 15th out of 56
Firecracker - 7/4/13 - 53:13 - 42nd out of 92
Frozen Feat - 2/16/13 - 53:57 - 50th out of 108
Half Marathon
Fargo - 5/18/13 - 2:02:48 - 2062nd out of 5526
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