Monday, November 14, 2011

Dirty Dash 2011

Ever since my brother-in-law, Gavin, did the mud run called the Jailbreak [1], several years ago, I have wanted to participate in a mud run. At the beginning of this year my friend April pointed out that the Dirty Dash [2] would be in Salt Lake City, Utah, in September and asked if I wanted to do it. Since I had not yet divulged that I was pregnant (and due three weeks before the race [3]), I made up some lame excuse for why I couldn't. Fast forward several months to August, when Matt brought home a newspaper with an advertisement for the Dirty Dash. I had forgotten all about it and since Lillian came early [4], I could now enter the race. So with only three weeks before the big day, my trusty companion, Jordan, and I signed up for the 5K and started training. Now, you may recall that I did my last 5K in just over 28 minutes.[5] Our first training run took us over 40 minutes. It was my first time running since May (when I was 24 weeks pregnant). After three weeks of training, my best time was 32 minutes.

The race was held at Soldier Hollow, an old Olympics venue. They wet down most of the course, to make it muddy, and put in several obstacles, including mud pits with artificial logs, walls to climb under or over, pipes to climb through, a rope swing, hay bale hurdles, and a large slip-n-slide. The race was a lot of fun, but was very difficult. During my training I had not taken into account the elevation of the venue (Midway is 1000 feet higher in elevation than Provo) or that there would be so many hills. We got quite muddy and I feel like we got our money's worth. My only complaint about the race was that the obstacles caused a bottleneck and we had to stand in line to get through most of them. In the end the race took us about 60 minutes and I attribute this to the bottlenecks, elevation, and hills. The Dirty Dash will revisit Utah in June 2012. Jordan and I hope to be there, running the 10K.

Matt and Lilli came to cheer us on and take some pictures.










The Dirty Dash organizers strongly encourage the wearing of costumes.[6]








Notes:

[1] See http://www.runthejailbreak.com/.

[2] See http://www.thedirtydash.com/.

[3] See Matt's post It's a Girl!

[4] See Matt's post Unexpected Delivery.

[5] See my post Resolution Run 2011.

[6] There were also guys wearing wedding dresses and a 50-year-old man wearing a skimpy French maid costume, but Matt didn't take pictures of them.

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