Mud, mud mud!!!

Debbie (JJ's girlfriend) talked me into running my first 5K and it was a big mess!!  We did the Soldier Hollow Annual Mud Run in June. There was TONS of mud and we were covered when we were done!!  You could run individually or as teams so we decided to get my sis, Julia (Jesse's girlfriend) and Julia (Debbie's friend) and run as a team.

I started running on the treadmills at the rec center, a few months before, because I was so nervous.  I can run pretty fast but only short distances so I was worried about how I would do running very far.  I know a 5K isn't that far but I am really not a runner.  So, I hit the treadmill... and was actually quite proud of myself (I can brag once in a while right? ) I ran a little over a 9 min mile for 31/2 miles.  I was dying but I wanted to see what I could do.  Over the next few weeks I got a little bit fast and was getting close to an 8 min mile.  The funny thing was, once we started running, it was pretty hard to go very fast, with all the obstacles and mud. 

We started out running up a huge blow-up slide covered in water and mud.  We decided to link arms and run up together.  It was SO funny!  All of us were slipping and sliding and laughing so hard.  Luckily, all of us made it up without falling. There were huge bails of hay that we had to scale, along with wooden walls, gross mud holes, slippery tubes we had to belly-crawl through and a HUGE mud filled swamp that smelled SO disgusting.  We were a huge mess when we were finished but it was a lot of fun!!  I think I might tag along with Debbie on some of the "normal' runs that she does because I had a lot of fun.

Paul (with JJ, Jess and Rob) was taking video and pics of us as we were running along so we have some pretty funny video of us.  I need to upload our "after" pics but I can't figure out how to get them off of my video camera, so stay tuned for those...