THE MUDDY BUDDY

was excellent, which made up for the fact that I

had to wake up at 6 in the morning, drink the nastiest protein shake ever, and drive to the middle of nowhere by 8.

A while ago (before I started training for the half- when walking from the couch to the fridge seemed like a feat), Kristen asked if I wanted to do a race with an obstacle course and a mud pit and a little running and biking.

Mud? Obstacle course? Hell yeah.

Running? Biking? Mmm yeah okay.

A while later (just after I started training- when walking from the couch to the fridge still seemed like a feat because of my newly acquired blisters), Kristen asked me what our team name should be. After much thought, I threw out "The Muddles." Like Harry Potter? Muggles?? Get it?? So, Kristen signed us up. Team name: The Muddles.

Kristen said we should dress up like Hermione (Harry Potter character, A muggle) since everyone dresses up for the Muddy Buddy (Mmm yeah, not so much.) We purchased stripper Hermione costumes from the Halloween store. THEN Kristen thought of attaching a broom to the bike we'd be using. THEN Kristen thought of attaching witch hats to our bike helmets. We were stoked about our killer costumes, until we arrived at the race...

We were sitting in the car as people in workout clothes walked past and Kristen goes, "Who wants to get out of the car first?"

We found others in costume and stuck with our people until lining up for the race. The weather was awesome and the area was beautiful, but there were hills. Many, many hills.

The entire race was 6.2 miles split into 5 parts. One buddy runs while the other bikes and you switch off at the beginning of each new part. You know it's time to switch when you hit an obstacle. The obstacles included crawling under a net, climbing a rock wall, walking across balance beams, sliding down a blow up slide, and crawling through a mud pit. Since I had not ridden a bike since a terrifying experience in PE class freshmen year, Kristen rode the first, third, and fifth part, that way I only had to ride two sections.

Here's a bird's eye view of the course. Kristen and I are the black dots (our witch hats). The music was a must.

The trash cans disappearing and reappearing- that's a magic, harry potter-esque touch, definitely not a continuity error that I was too lazy to fix.

The obstacles were mostly fun, but I had some issues with crawling under the net-

The biking sections were soo scary. I have a new found respect for Lance Armstrong. I was trying to figure out how to work the gears and every time I went to break the bike would start screeching, and everyone around me was like "oo that doesn't sound good." YEAH I KNOW IT DOESN'T SOUND GOOD, I'M ALREADY FREAKING OUT ABOUT IT. Going up hills was hard, but I hated going downhill because I was sure I would hit a rock and fly over the handle bars, or a tire would burst or the breaks would go out or my cape would get stuck in one of the wheels and I would die by strangulation (I kept thinking of Edna Mode in "The Incredibles" when she says "No Capes" and then you see a montage of deaths by capes)

You think a race called The Muddy Buddy would be easy, but the hills and the biking were pretty freaking tough. The final obstacle was worth the 6.2 miles though.

The mud pit was huge and freezing and AWESOME!

Kristen didn't find it quite so enticing.

We clocked in at 104 Minutes 55 Seconds

In our age group, we got 16th out of 39.

And, out of around 1,000 teams- we came in at 256.

Not bad, not bad.

Dirty school girls as promised!

I loved doing the Muddy Buddy, but one of the best parts of the race was-

getting THE RACE TEE-SHIRT.

Love it. Love it.

Confession: Missed my run today. I tried to psyche myself up all day and after eating a huge bowl of chili for dinner, accepted the fact that I would not be running 4 miles. I'm going to run tomorrow instead. Promise. Will do a post on it.

later skaters