Heath's Random Thoughts

Muddy Buddy Results

Back after popular demand, I am finally getting a post out there. My apologies to the 3 or 4 of my loyal readers for not keeping this updated more regularly lately. With the recent move and Kelly's half iron man and my race, there wasn't much time for blogging.

Now that things have settled down a bit I thought I would post an update on how my Muddy Buddy adventure race went. I was hoping to have some pictures to include with the post, but somehow my partner and I did not make it into any pictures taken by the photographers at the race. Fortunately, Dan's (my race partner) wife had her camera and was able to snap a few good ones at the beginning and end of the race, but she doesn't have them uploaded yet. I will try and post some once I have them from her.

The Muddy Buddy, is a 7 mile long course over pastures, dirt trails through woods. Each leg is around 1.3 miles. Well as you all know, my race started at 7:30 AM the day after Kelly's half iron man, so after trekking from Benton Harbor, MI to Elgin, IL Saturday afternoon, we settled in for some dinner and then sat in the hot tub for a while at the hotel. The weather worsened shortly after we got to Elgin and began to rain, but with the race not starting until Sunday morning I was not worried. Then Sunday morning came I what do I found outside my window but a steady rain fall still coming down. Not to be deterred we packed up and headed out to the race at Indian Hills Farm outside of Elgin. As we parked the car and grabbed the stuff to head up to the registration tent, the sky completely opened up and came down on us in buckets making a wet situation wetter. The girls retreated back to the car and Dan and I (already wet from standing outside) made our way to the registration tent about half a mile from the parking area. The rain continued to come down as we got our stuff and then went back to the car to get the bike and the rest of our gear for the race. By then the ladies had dug up a couple of umbrellas for themselves and all 4 us made our way back to the starting area. As we got closer to race time the rain finally started to let up and about 10 minutes before the start it completely stopped! Although, little did we know the damage was already done. Keeping in mind that the course is approximately 85% off road on pastures and dirt trails through the woods you can imagine what kind of condition the course was like after having 2" of rain dumped on it all night the night before. We decided that I would run the first leg and Dan would bike because he had hurt his hamstring a few weeks before and thought the biking might be easier on it. Since who ever runs first ends up running the most legs it made sense that I should do it. Right away into the first leg I knew we were in trouble. As I ran, the course got progressively gooier. Running it it was a trick, but imagine riding a bike through it. They start the race wave by letting the bikers get a 2 minute head start then they let the runners go. By the time I got to the first transition point and traversed the obstacle (climbing wall) Dan had already dropped the bike off and began running the next leg of the race. When I found the bike it was caked with mud and I had to dig globs of it out of the brake assembly before I could take off. About 50 yard in I foolishly decided to shift into another gear to ease up the peddling and felt the chain give way completely. I looked down and sure enough it had come off the cogs. I quickly got off and flipped it up side down to get it back on track as another racer passed by saying, "its going to be a long day man." Boy was he right. I manged to get the chain on with minimal effort and took off on the leg again catching and passing my teammate about 100 yards form the 2nd transition. I dropped the bike off and threw a cup of water in my face and made haste to the 2nd obstacle (a balance beam). As I ran by the race official I stated, "nothing like racking myself to get the morning started" and climbed up and carefully made my way across (found out later that my teammate had fallen off of them) and took off on the 3rd leg running. All along the way was muddy and big puddles every 10 feet or so and I quickly decided that it was just easier to run through them than to try and go around each one so I began splashing my way along about about 4 puddles into this plan I stepped into one that was about knee deep and almost when face first into it. Toward the end of this leg was a huge steep hill that the bikers were pushing their bikes up and the runners were barely maintaining a brisk walk up it and then we hit transition 3 (giant inflatable climbing wall with mega slide on other side). I quickly made my way over this and found the bike my teammate had just dropped off. The next couple of legs involved 3 more steep hills and another climbing obstacle. In the final leg my teammate and I spent a large part of it together because he need to walk the bike through several parts of it and I kept catching up to him. Then we came to what can only be described as a marsh land. Normally this looks like it would have been a pasture in a low area. As we looked head to the few dozen people carrying their bikes through the 100 yard long area we realized that this was going rough. We started out as Dan hoisted the bike up and we slopped through the soup. A little ways in I saw he was struggling with the bike and asked him if he wanted me to carry it for awhile. He wasn't sure if that was against the rules since it was his leg to ride the bike. But considering the bike was riding him at that moment and he had a bum hammy I went ahead and took. Little did I know that it weighted and extra 30 to 40 lbs with the extra mud on it and it was quite a work out. Once we got through this point we came to solid ground an Dan got back on the bike and rode it to the last transition point just before the finish. I took off running and met him there couple of minutes later and together we crawled into a trenched out mud pit that we had to crawl through for about 20 yards together before crossing the finish line.

We were tired and muddy but smiling. We found out later that we finished the race in 1 hour and 10 minutes about 15 minutes after the first people to complete the course which was pretty good considering there was a wave in front of us. It was a great time and it truly lived up to its name as the Muddy Buddy! I would also like to give a shout out to my buddy buddy partner Dan for braving the whole thing on a bum hammy and my lovely girlfriend for cheering me on, even if she didn't want to give me a hug when I crawled out of the mud and crossed the finish :).

posted by Heath @ 2:06 PM