After the tires I jogged up the hill near the starting line. Past the tent where they were blasting some pump-up music, I ran through the spay from the fire hose. I came to a bridge over the river. The course took me down the bank and under the bridge. There was another bottleneck here as a row of people carefully picked their way through the river and out the other side. As I was waiting a couple of people came up behind me and hopped in the water. Rather than carefully stepping along the uneven bottom they just swam it.
Damn it! Why didn't I think of that myself?
So I followed them across and passed a few people on that obstacle. I jogged around another pond and came to the obstacle called bucketville. This just meant getting a five-gallon bucket at least half full of water and carrying in a big loop. You were allowed to go two people to a bucket but of course I was out there on my own and not part of a team. So the bucket went up on a shoulder and around I went. I wanted to be able to run, but didn't want to splash out all the water. At the end of the loop the water went back into the pond and we had to cross.
The crossing was maybe 40 feet and I don't think the water got more than 4 feet deep. But I learned something on the last river crossing. I flopped forward and swam right across, zipping right past the folks who were carefully picking their way over the uneven bottom.
On the way to the next obstacle I thought that they seemed more spread out than they had in the beginning. When I got to the next one I found and interesting change of pace. There were multiple jenga games set up on a round table in the path with instructions to remove 3 pieces. This was a bit annoying because all the easy pieces were gone and there were piles and piles of loose pieces on the table. The only reasonable thing would be to make an entirely new stack and then pull three pieces. Anyway I figure if I'm already off and running before the stack falls over then, who cares?
I ran off to the next obstacle: tunnels. The tunnels are maybe two feet in diameter 12 feet long. Too narrow to crawl through I had to slide on by belly. The inside was so slick that on the first tunnel I slid nearly all the way through with just one push. I got a little over enthusiastic on the second one and I bumped my hip on the top of the tunnel. Ouch. But the tunnels were fun.
The next obstacle was possibly the most dangerous. It was basically a slip n' slde on the side of a hill. We had to run, or actually walk, with a funny knee bent gait up the slip and slide. It was around here that I realized I actually managed to pass a few people from two or three waves ahead of me. Once again we looped around toward where the race had started. I ran through the spraying fire hose again and I came to the plunge pool.
This was an aboveground pool maybe three and a half feet deep with what looked like a badminton net stretched across. The idea is you duck under the net and get completely sumberged before climbing out the other side. I should mention the name of this obstacle is "cold splash" As I approached I found two women gingerly climbing into the pool and eyeing the net warily. Well I thought that was ridiculous. This was not exactly the first time I was getting wet this morning. I yelled a warning as I ran up and vaulted right into the pool. I popped up on the other side of the net and climbed out. It turned out the water wasn't all that cold. Maybe it had been sitting in the sun too long. Back down the hill with the finish in sight, I passed a few more people even though the path was a little too narrow. The last obstacle was a maze made my string through ankle deep water in the original pond. There was another bit of a bottleneck here as everyone worked their way through. But, since there were people at all points along the path there was no real possibility of taking a wrong turn and having to double back. After that it was just an uphill run to the finish line.
That was my first ever mud run. I had such a good time I will have to do some more.
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