Rock 'n' Mud Recap Part 1: Columbia Muddy Buddy Chicago

I just got an email from the good folks at Columbia Muddy Buddy that informed me of the following:

There are only 384 people in the Chicago area who are as crazy stupid as I am?!  I'm shocked.  Anyway, on to the silly mud photos race recaps you've all been waiting for.

On Friday, I headed down to McCormick Place (so inconvenient!) for the Rock 'n' Roll half expo.  I knew Katie was waiting for me back on Michigan Ave, so I picked up my number, shirt, and swag bag and then hurried through the merchandise area.  Escaping an expo only $20 poorer (they had pink grapefruit Gu electrolyte tabs!) is actually quite the accomplishment for me.  Then I met up with Katie, grabbed some delicious Wao Bao for lunch, and we headed over to the Columbia store to pick up our Muddy Buddy packet.  We were a little early, so we ducked into H&M to try to find some costumes (get it? our last name starts with B.  we're so clever).  We totally scored at H&M AND then when we got back to packet pickup some nice guy from Muddy Buddy HQ handed us free black omnicool baseball caps that just happened to match our new costumes perfectly.

Free stuff!

After that all we needed was a quick stop at Walgreens for some electrical tape and the Killer Bs were ready to get muddy (get it?  our last name starts with B.  we're so clever).

Our start wasn't until 10:30am, so we got to sleep until a reasonable hour and planned to leave around 8:30am for our hour-long journey west to Indian Hills Farm.  Of course, we made Mom and Dad do a fun photo session in the front yard first. 

Katie has a better game face than I do

We got to the start around 10am and got an awesome parking spot thanks to my super cool Rock 'n' Mud VIP parking pass.  The walk from the car to the start also gave us a sneak peak of a few sets of buddies coming into the final section of the course with it's last two obstacles before the mud pit.  We also checked out the mud pit, just to see what exactly we were getting ourselves into.

Source

We lined up with all the other runners in our wave around 10:15, and then stood around for 15 minutes doing the wave and generally getting very antsy to get out on the course.  And then, we were off!  Clearly the obstacles were the highlight of this race, so I'll go through them all in detail in a minute, but there was also quite a bit of ground to cover!  And it was not ground I'm used to running on -- lots of grass and bumps and other things to twist an ankle on.  We started off going up a ramp into a hay loft, which the announcer told us was not an obstacle, but a handy "feature" of the course.  There were also a few "features" toward the mid-point in the form of two nasty hills that were difficult to even walk up and down.  But Katie and I weren't going for any awards (especially after we saw the lines forming before many of the early obstacles) so we kept our pace easy and walked when it got too steep or the sun got too brutal.

Go Katie!  Not sure what happened to me in this shot since we were next to each other the whole time!

Over Under Over: We had to climb over a short wall (came up to about the bottom of my ribs), then under a bunch of netting, then over another short wall.  The over was much better than the under!  The netting kept trying to take my hat off, and I'm pretty sure this is where all the little red spots on my knees came from.

Cargo Climb:  This was one of my favorite obstacles, and also the first one where we encountered a line.  The volunteer told us we were allowed to go around if we wanted to, but we weren't in any hurry -- I wanted to climb on things!  For this we went up a slightly angled cargo net, over the top, and down another slightly angled cargo net, then did the whole deal one more time  Getting up and down the cargo nets was easy, but navigating the transition at the top was a little tricky.  I could never seem to get myself in a good position to start climbing down!

Diamond Balance Beams: I was worried about this one, but it wasn't too bad.  Two parallel "balance beams" (much narrower than an actual balance beam!) started off next to each other, then split apart and came back together.  You grabbed your partners hand and walked across.  Lucky for my, my buddy is a former gymnast so she managed to keep both of us up pretty easily.  I took one bad step down onto the wooden support, but that was our only slip up.

Spider Web: Coming up to the Spider Web it looked like another cargo net, but then we realized that it was made of elastic cords that were criss-crossed all across the frame.  You had to find a gap and work your way through two webs, which wasn't too bad except when we each let go of the elastic with a foot still inside!

Not-So Low Walls:  This obstacle featured two walls that we needed to get up and over, each one just a little higher than I could reach my arms over my head.  The walls had those nubby holds you see on indoor climbing walls, and by stepping on one of the lower holds I could get my fingers over the top, which made the climb much easier!  The backside of the wall was another cargo net, which we were pros at by this point.

Team Traverse Wall:  Surprisingly, the Team Traverse Wall gave us more trouble than any other obstacle.  It was a long wooden wall with a small ledge built into the bottom.  Each partner took a side, and you stood facing each other and "hugged it out" (holding the top of the wall was discouraged) to keep yourselves up.  Shuffling along the ledge wasn't too hard, but then the ledge turned into steps of varying heights, and then the steps got narrower!  We were surprised when one of the girls in front of us fell off the wall, and then Katie fell in the exact same spot!  Apparently that step was a little more worn than the rest.  But she got back up, we finished the last steps, rang the bells at the end of the wall, and headed up the two steep hills.

(Mini) Mud Pit:  Katie was really concerned about the mud pit in the middle of the course.  She did not want to be running another two miles in the hot sun covered in sticky mud, and I don't blame her!  But this mud pit was much tamer than the one at the end of the course, and by the time we got there the sun had mostly dried it out.  We came out with shoes covered in mud, but otherwise still pretty clean.

Slide For Your Life:  Another long line, but so much fun!  We climbed straight up yet another (much taller and more vertical) cargo net, which was a little tricky since it was on top of the inflated plastic slide which made it tough to get more than a toe into the net.  And we were dealing with a constant rain of mud from the shoes above you.  Then at the top you sat down and slid down a very steep inflatable slide that a volunteer was spraying water on.  And then we got to do it again!  Some people went around the first slide to avoid the line, but getting to slide twice was totally worth it.  After the slide we ran back across the highway to the start area, where three more tough looking obstacles stood between us and the mud pit. 

Rope Climb:  The rope climb has never been my friend.  I could never do it in gym class and it turns out I haven't improved much.

Not my best camera work, but those are the ropes we had to climb

Katie jumped on the rope, climbed up a knot or two, rang the bell, and jumped down.  Meanwhile, I clung to the rope next to her, totally unable to climb.  Katie tried holding the rope for me so it wouldn't swing, but that didn't make much of a difference.  Finally the volunteer (who had clearly had to help dozens of no-upper-body-strength ladies like myself up the rope) came over to coach me up.  He told me to reach up for the highest knot I could get, and then hold on and bring my knees all the way to my chest to get my feet up to the next knot.  Then all I had to do was stand up and ring the bell, which I only managed to do because the friendly volunteer guy had apparently put his hand over the knot to make it bigger.

Me (to the volunteer): Thanks!

Volunteer: No problem.  But I'd like my thumb back now.

Me: Oops, sorry!

Me (to Katie and anyone else who was listening): I CLIMBED A ROPE!!!!

Katie (happy she doesn't have to disown me): I was not leaving until you got up there.  We are not quitting now!

Rope Wall:  Not going to lie, I was not happy when I saw more ropes.  And these ones were much taller, too!  We had to climb the ropes up what was probably a 12 foot metal wall.  The photos I'd seen before the race made it look like the wall had crossbeams built in as steps, but in reality they only stuck out from the wall a tiny bit, barely enough to get a toe on.

View of the rope wall from the beer tent

Standing at the bottom, I did not think this was happening.  But somehow, I made it to the top not too far behind Katie.  Then we both looked at each other like "umm, how do we get down?!"  We were expecting a cargo net, but it was just a straight drop down the other side!  Fortunately we quickly realized that there were metal bars every few feet that we could climb down like a latter.  Then it was just a few yards until the final climb!

Slippery Mountain:  This one was tougher than it looked.

Slippery mountain, again from the beer tent

Climbing up wasn't too bad, but at the top you had to shift your body weight from laying back, keeping the rope taut, to leaning forward with your hand over the top of the wall.  Katie made it no problem, but I chickened out and grabbed the volunteer's hand to keep from face planting into the wall.  We climbed down the wooden ladder on the back and ran for the mud pit!

To the mud pit!

Mud Pit:  The mud pit was awesome.  And a lot longer than it looked from the sidelines!  There were flags stretched over the top so you had to crawl through, and a guy with a microphone yelling at everyone to "Get on your stomach!" and "Do the backstroke!"

I love me some mud

Katie's not so sure ...

Can you tell which one of us this is?  It took me a minute ...

When we got out of the pit, I wanted to run for the finish, but quickly realized that was going to be slightly difficult with shoes that felt like mud bricks!

It's difficult to find your finish line photos when your bib is covered in mud

After we crossed the finish line, we picked up cold bottles of water, which turned muddy pretty quickly.  Fun fact: mud does not taste good.  Then we went to the hoses to clean our hands before we went to baggage claim so I could get my phone and get more muddy photos (Katie tried to get a little too clean before I got a picture, but I put a stop to that).

After our little photo session, we decided to get cleaned up.  Unfortunately by that point they'd turned off the giant shower of water, but we still jumped into the little pond with everyone else.  It looked like a less concentrated mud pit, but still managed to get us pretty clean.

The shower that wasn't

So we settled for a bath

We decided to back to the car to change into clean, dry clothes before getting our free beer.

Then it was time for the beer tent.  The beer was a little hoppy for me, but I still drank most of it.

After hanging out for a bit, it was time to head home, and pick up some food since we were both starving!  I'm not used to driving to races (except for Reach the Beach, of course) so it was odd to have to put so much thought into the quantity and timing of my post race beverages, but everything worked out perfectly.

I followed up my totally delicious Five Guys burger and fries (and diet root beer!) with a nap on the couch and then started getting ready for Sunday's Rock 'n' Roll half!  

You might want to remember this ... it will come back to haunt me in part 2 of this recap