So… today was the ol' Mud Run.

Long story short, I'm alive and very pleased with how I did.

We got to the checkin area at 6-freaking-30 in the morning, which is when they recommend you arrive, even though the race doesn't start until 9am. So we hung out for a couple hours and let our bodies fill with nervous anticipation. Well, I did at least.

At 9am, the individual racers started. At 9:15, it was our turn to go.

The start of the race was pretty easy. Because we were all glommed together and the track was pretty narrow, there were lots of spots where we were forced to walk. After about a mile there were marines with firehoses spraying down the crowd, which was very refreshing, but the water weight seemed to add about ten pounds to our clothes. There were some obstacles in the course along the way, like hay-bales to jump over, and a couple little knee-deep swampy areas to cross. The idea of not getting ones feet wet was very unrealistic.

Pretty soon, two of the guys who'd trained the most were ahead, and three of us remained behind a little. After a little while, though, I soon looked around and found myself alone.

After two miles was the start of "Suicide Hill", the two-mile long hill that I'd been told ghost stories of for a while now. It was roughly analgous to where the coast highway goes up towards the Torrey Pines golf course, but maybe a little longer, and maybe more steep in small parts, and less steep in others. For whatever reason, I didn't have nearly as much problems with the hill as I anticipated. Near the top, I passed one of my teammates who'd jetted ahead early on. We stuck together for a little while, but he soon fell back.

The great things about hills is that they go down as well as up, and the back of the hill was a nice stretch leading into the second half of the course. This was generally pretty flat, with some more obstacles. There were two areas of really nasty, gloppy mud, about 30 yards long, each with a wall in the middle that needed to be climbed. The wall was about chest height, and I had no problem jumping up enough that I could easily straighten my arms, and then throw a leg over and jump off. There were a lot of girls stranded at the walls, though, that required the assistance of big burly men (like me). I offered my help to someone, and she said she wanted to give it a try herself first, which was admirable, but she didn't even come close. I gave her a quick boost and over she went. Yay. There was another muddy area that was a very short, VERY steep hill that had been watered down and was VERY muddy. That was a killer, because every step made your foot slip back a few inches. It too was conquered, however.

At the first of the obstacles after Suicide Hill, I found my other teammate waiting. He said he wanted to go through the obstacles with someone else, and also said he'd only been waiting for a minute or so, and didn't expect to see me (I haven't really been talking up my running abilities). We traversed the obstacles together, and ran together the rest of the way, getting to the final big mud pit (250 yards from the finish line) in 1 hour and 18 minutes. There, as arranged, we rested and waited for the rest of our teammates, the last of whom arrived 10 minutes later, looking very pale and complaining of feeling like he was going to throw up. We rested for a little more, and finished the race officially at 1:31:55 or so.

I felt pretty good after the race. I never really felt like I was panting for air. My legs were tired, but not really that tired. We were all pretty jazzed at our performance and were feeling pretty good about ourselves. We got a little cleaned up, and got some sandwiches, and that was that.

Now, a few hours later, I'm definitely feeling it more. The sun came out right as the race started, and was shining brightly all through the race, and then it got cloudy just as we finished. I got a lot of sun. I'm pretty wiped out now, and feel pretty out of it, so if this writing doesn't make sense, there's the reason. But, all in all, I feel pretty good about how everything went. I'm not really looking forward to doing it again anytime soon, but who knows.