SMALL CHANGES: Gettin' Dirty-Into the Mud Challenge

Let the season of FUN begin!!

before

After...some dirty and soapy girls...

Last week I was invited to run with a couple of my athletes at the Into the Mud Challenge, a fun 2.5 mud and obstacle course race and I was excited to be able to join them. I had never done a mud or OCR course before so this would be a first for me!

I started the day with a little run on the treadmill since it was cold and raining in the morning. Perfect weather for a mud run. What started as an easy run, turned into some hill work at mile 3. I was thinking about those Knoxville hills and the Quassy course ahead and decided to add some hills...then 500 vertical feet became 600...700...800 and then I was wanting to go to 900. I ended up at 944 vft! Goal achieved.

The "rules" I invented for today's run were to keep the incline at a minimum of 2.5 % and I would adjust the pace and incline every 2 minutes. Some were fast, hard hills and some were steep and slow. I threw on some of my favorite "dig deep" tunes and before I knew it, 7.5 miles were done and I felt sooo good! I did not want to stop. But it was time to get ready to head out to play in the mud!!

We all met up at the Y and we were ready to GO and rock these CAMO outfits! Since the team said this was more for fun vs. time, I decided that i might as well cute it up! I even rocked some glitter eyeliner, cuz that's what you do when you wear camo...right!?

JDP, Me and Karen

Once we got to the race site, we got our stuff and waited the hour until our wave. The waves were 200-250 each wave and the day started at 8am...we were not running until 12:45 so we arrived at the school 11:30...we had some time to kill so let the shenanigans begin!