MudManX

Today I conquered MudManX, a 5 mile mud run with some seriously crazy obstacles! I will be including some photos, but they are stock photos, not from today's event. When I get my photos, I will post them! At the end of this blog, I will post the 2 I got from Rugged Maniac two weeks ago!

I went to this one alone again, but I was lucky enough to meet Katie, a 21 year old college student from Howell, who was also alone. She said she would tag along and I was so glas for the company! She was a totally awesome girl, and I was proud that I could keep up with somone almost 20 years younger than me! Sometimes, she was keeping up with me!
We were part of the 10:30 heat, and it was very hot and muggy when we started off. There were clouds moving in, and we were hoping for some rain! We started off at a jog but ended up walking before long. Some of the obctacles were very easy, there was a lot of logs, some hills, a hay hill with some stanky manure smelling water in between, some watery mud pits.... the first time we got held up was at an ice cave. The floor was all covered in ice blocks and mud, and the 'cave' was black tarps.

There was also a crazy 'house' filled with smoke you had to crawl up 3 levels and then climb down a rope ladder. Crazy with all the smoke! Also difficult was the first of 3 boats we had to climb over. The second two were easier, but that first one kicked my butt!
There were several walls, some palette walls, some rope walls:

There was a rope swing, that was deceptively hard. I ended up landing in the pool, just before the ledge!

They had rings to swing across on, some girls had men with them to sort of carry them across, but I was alone so i ended up falling halfway across! I need to work on my upper body strength!

Somewhere around mile 3, the group ahead of us kicked a hornet's nest and we all got stung! The worst pain ever, to be followed immediately by no less than 20 hurdles to leap over. I kinda scrambled over them, lol, and every one scraped against my sting mark. OUCH!
There was no fire to jump over, which kinda bummed me out, but we did have a run in with electric shocks! First we had to go run through one of those tire setups, we walked through mostly so we wouldn't turn an ankle, and there was a high pressure water sprayer that kept hitting us. After that you dropped to your knees and crawled through the muckiest, thickest mud pit, under some netting.

My friend Katie lost her shoe, but manged to dig it out and get it back on. I never put my feet down all the way so I managed to keep mine. This, of course, was right before the water station, so I was covered in mud when I grapped my cup and gulped it down. Then we ran up to the wall. This was the first of two walls that we never made it over. They were just too high. We had to do 10 push ups if we didn't make it, a small price to pay, and a lot of people were doing push ups, lol.

Right after the wall from hell was the electric shocks. You had to crawl through water, under a platform, and when you came out there was calf deep water and all of these little strands of wire hanging all around. It reminded me of the jelly fish in Finding Nemo. I was fully going to slither through the water, and try to avoid them, but the Army guy started yelling to suck it up and just run. I saw an opening and ran through but still got zapped twice. Katie managed to get through with no zaps!

There was another wall, and some tunnels, barricades, and other stuff to navigate. Less than half a mile to go now, and the thunder had started. We climbed over another net wall, and there it was. The finish! We had to climb over a huge metal shed, which we did with help from some really nice guys. And then there was the ramp. Sounds easy right? The line was huge and people kept sliding back down and having to try three and four times.

It started raining and by the time it was my turn it was pouring. Katie got up with the help of some random guy, so after 2 failed attempts, I asked a random guy for help. Good thing, I barely grabbed the rope when he shoved, giving me the momentum I needed. It was really hard to pull myself up, but everyone was cheering and Katie and the Army guy pulled me up. So great to finally be at the top! We slid down the slide into the pool (should have held my nose, ugh!) We got our pic taken, hopefully it comes out nice!

And then we were done! So great to cross that finish line, pouring rain, thunder, and all! We grabbed our tee and sweatband and headed toward to shuttles.

I am so glad that I tried, and succeeded, at MudManX. It really is an amazing feeling to cross that finish line. As I type, the rope burns on my hands are starting to stiffen, and that sting really...well...stings! I cannot wait for the pics to come out! I do know that it took me 1:50 to finish, although we waited for at least 15-20 minutes total at a few obstacles, so it probably took me about 90 minutes to actually finish. Next year, maybe I can beat that time!

As promised, the pics from Rugged Maniac:

Crawling under the barbed wire

UGH can't get it to flip. That is the finish line, so tired, giving five to some random guy!