Mudderella.

At the beginning of the summer, I made the decision to participate in Mudderella; a 5-7 mile obstacle course. I talked a little bit about it over the course of my preparation. I took various fitness classes and started running and followed Mudderella’s exercise program. Well, it took place September 6th and I feel like I’ve finally had a chance to sit back and process how it all went.

First of all, the event itself was supposed to be 30 minutes from my house… then it was moved to an hour away from my house… and finally, a week before — it was moved 2.5 hours away from my house. All the way to Maine. I wasn’t totally thrilled with this but luckily for me, Sean offered to drive me and my friend, Ainsley. Once we got there, they had free parking though you had to take a bus from the parking lot to the actual event. It ended up being fine but it drove Sean crazy to be on a bus filled with women singing Pharrell’s “Happy”. They had lots to do before your assigned “warm-up time” so we decorated ourselves with press-on tattoos and ribbons.

The obstacle course wasn’t totally difficult. Though for someone, like me, who dislikes the outdoors, being dirty or hot, and is afraid of water and bugs — it was a bit overwhelming. It took us two hours to get through — it was 95 degrees outside with 97% humidity, at points it was thundering and/or lightning and/or raining and/or the sun was beating down on us. With every raindrop that hit the ground — the more mud appeared on the obstacle course and the more that bugs came out. Yuck.     There were 13 obstacles along the 5 mile course. Everything from crawling through underground tunnels, where you couldn’t see a thing, to climbing 10 feet (or taller) walls, to wading through 4 feet of muddy water, to carrying each other for certain distances. One of the hardest things was keeping balance, especially after getting my shoes all muddy — it made it impossible to actually run the 5 miles. Another difficult thing was convincing myself that I could complete each obstacle. As I approached each one I thought to myself “nah… no way… I’m not doing that” and then the weirdest part was that I just sort of did it and thought “huh… what a surprise”.    

I’m happy that I saw it all the way through and that Sean and my parents came out to see me and support both me and Ainsley. It felt pretty good to do such a physically and mentally challenging course. It makes my next 5K race seem like a breeze.