After 3.2 miles of fantastic muddy fun last September [1], Jordan and I knew we wanted more. So in December when I finally removed the last bit of mud from around my nails, we signed up for the 5.5- mile June Dirty Dash. We trained about four months for the race (last year we trained three weeks). And this time we coordinated outfits courtesy of D.I. (see below).[2] The Dirty Dash was held at Soldier Hollow, again, but they did have a few new obstacles like monkey bars, an artificial waterfall, A-frame walls with knotted ropes, cargo net walls, and wooden arches. Matt and Lilli came along to watch and to cheer us on.
Here are some shots of the Olympic venue at Soldier Hollow, where the race was held. That small blue strip in the left photo is a long slip-'n'-slide that we all had to come down. The yellow arch in the right photo was the starting line.
Here we are before the race.
As I mentioned before, this year Jordan and I put a little more effort into coordinating outfits. For a little extra flair, Jordan wore a hat that featured an elephant head, and I converted an Easter basket that looked like a duck into a hat of my own. On the bottom of the basket (which became the top of my hat), I wrote 'Duck of Doom' in reference to the game Munchkin. Wearing this made it a lot easier for Matt to spot me and also made me more recognizable to the other runners.
Poised and waiting for the countdown.
And we're off! If you watch to the end of the video you'll see that someone even raced with their dog.
A lot of the obstacles were either inaccessible for Matt or were too far away for him and Lilli to get to them as fast as Jordan and I did. So these videos are only a few of the highlights, but several things like culverts or a cargo net aren't shown. Here he tried to take a video of us as we reached the first set of mud pits. We're so far away that you can't really make us out at all. But I decided to include this video because you hear a Western Meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta) sing a few times.
These hay bales were on a downhill slope, so they were a little treacherous. Matt says that he saw more than one person come down on the other side a little too hard and hurt themselves. You can see one such victim sitting by the bottom of the hay bales with one of her friends, waiting for an EMT to arrive.
For this obstacle we had to get down and crawl in the mud. Matt says that before we got there they had randomly placed mud spurts going off and that they let kids in the crowd push the buttons to make them spurt. But when we got there there was just a guy standing there spraying people with a hose. Crawling in the mud is pretty hard on the knees, so we got up as soon as we were past the guy.
Finally! We made it! It took us about 2 hours to finish this year, partly due to the long lines we waited in to get through some of the obstacles.
Here are our 'after' poses. In the last photo we're pretending to be the animals from our hats (in case you couldn't tell).
Even Lilli got to play in the mud! It wasn't all fun and games for her, though. She managed to lose her hat and one of her shoes while Matt was pushing her around in her stroller. She wasn't very happy about the fact that she couldn't get out and walk around. But she did get to see some doggies and squeal at them.
I was thoroughly soaked with mud when it was all over. Even after taking a free(zing) cold shower at the venue [3], there was still a lot of mud on me. It took two hours to wash out my clothes: one hour in the hose and one hour in the washing machine.
Some of the more unusual costumes we saw were a guy in fishnet stockings and colorful boy shorts (top left), a man with green troll hair (top right; Google it if you don't know what that means), nuns, mimes (bottom left), Batman, the Incredible Hulk (bottom right) [4], a herd of Miss Piggies, men in leotards and tutus, etc.
Notes:
[1] You can read about my first Dirty Dash here.
[2] DI is short for Deseret Industries, a non-profit organization found throughout the western United States. It is similar to Goodwill Industries elsewhere. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret Industries and http://providentliving.org/channel/0,11677,2022-1,00.html.
[3] They had hot showers available, but charged for those.
[4] Matt says that, ironically, both Batman and the Incredible Hulk chickened out and climbed down the side of the treacherous hay bales. So much for superheroes being more capable than the rest of us!
Here are some shots of the Olympic venue at Soldier Hollow, where the race was held. That small blue strip in the left photo is a long slip-'n'-slide that we all had to come down. The yellow arch in the right photo was the starting line.
Here we are before the race.
As I mentioned before, this year Jordan and I put a little more effort into coordinating outfits. For a little extra flair, Jordan wore a hat that featured an elephant head, and I converted an Easter basket that looked like a duck into a hat of my own. On the bottom of the basket (which became the top of my hat), I wrote 'Duck of Doom' in reference to the game Munchkin. Wearing this made it a lot easier for Matt to spot me and also made me more recognizable to the other runners.
Poised and waiting for the countdown.
And we're off! If you watch to the end of the video you'll see that someone even raced with their dog.
A lot of the obstacles were either inaccessible for Matt or were too far away for him and Lilli to get to them as fast as Jordan and I did. So these videos are only a few of the highlights, but several things like culverts or a cargo net aren't shown. Here he tried to take a video of us as we reached the first set of mud pits. We're so far away that you can't really make us out at all. But I decided to include this video because you hear a Western Meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta) sing a few times.
These hay bales were on a downhill slope, so they were a little treacherous. Matt says that he saw more than one person come down on the other side a little too hard and hurt themselves. You can see one such victim sitting by the bottom of the hay bales with one of her friends, waiting for an EMT to arrive.
For this obstacle we had to get down and crawl in the mud. Matt says that before we got there they had randomly placed mud spurts going off and that they let kids in the crowd push the buttons to make them spurt. But when we got there there was just a guy standing there spraying people with a hose. Crawling in the mud is pretty hard on the knees, so we got up as soon as we were past the guy.
Finally! We made it! It took us about 2 hours to finish this year, partly due to the long lines we waited in to get through some of the obstacles.
Here are our 'after' poses. In the last photo we're pretending to be the animals from our hats (in case you couldn't tell).
Even Lilli got to play in the mud! It wasn't all fun and games for her, though. She managed to lose her hat and one of her shoes while Matt was pushing her around in her stroller. She wasn't very happy about the fact that she couldn't get out and walk around. But she did get to see some doggies and squeal at them.
I was thoroughly soaked with mud when it was all over. Even after taking a free(zing) cold shower at the venue [3], there was still a lot of mud on me. It took two hours to wash out my clothes: one hour in the hose and one hour in the washing machine.
Some of the more unusual costumes we saw were a guy in fishnet stockings and colorful boy shorts (top left), a man with green troll hair (top right; Google it if you don't know what that means), nuns, mimes (bottom left), Batman, the Incredible Hulk (bottom right) [4], a herd of Miss Piggies, men in leotards and tutus, etc.
Notes:
[1] You can read about my first Dirty Dash here.
[2] DI is short for Deseret Industries, a non-profit organization found throughout the western United States. It is similar to Goodwill Industries elsewhere. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret Industries and http://providentliving.org/channel/0,11677,2022-1,00.html.
[3] They had hot showers available, but charged for those.
[4] Matt says that, ironically, both Batman and the Incredible Hulk chickened out and climbed down the side of the treacherous hay bales. So much for superheroes being more capable than the rest of us!
Congrats!
ReplyDeleteAnd I laughed at the Duck of Doom reference. :-)