My life has been a little crazy the past couple of months, but I am not quite ready to share the craziness yet. What I do want to share with you right now is this race experience. It is a bit late for a review, but that seems to be my theme right now.
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| Celebrating after the finish. |
A couple of months ago a good friend of mine mentioned she would like to do a mud race. I was quick to say, “let’s sign up,” and persuade her it was a great idea. I may have also been on a high from the half marathon. A mud race has also been on my list for a while. It was a new adventure and something to keep me motivated during the lull between my spring half marathon and fall race training.
The race was at the Marine Corps Base located in Quantico, VA, and about an hour and a half north of Richmond.
We had to pick up our packets on race day, so we were up early on Saturday, June 16. I met up with my friend, and after a quick stop for some coffee, we were on our way. Luckily we didn’t hit traffic and were up there in no time.
We picked up our packets and then watched the first few waves of runners head out. They grouped runners into waves of a 100 people to make sure the course didn’t get too crowded. Neither one of us had done a race like this before, so we were pretty conservative with our finish time estimates and this put us into one of the last waves to go.
About 9:30 a.m. we lined up to start and shortly after, we were off. After a short run on the roads and around part of the track, we were off to the obstacles. The first was a set of stairs with a gauntlet of Marines at the top. Once out of the gauntlet, we hit the bases off-road trails.
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| This was after cleaning up |
Over 3.5 miles, you traveled through a number of obstacles including, an A-frame, crawling through trenches, carrying an ammunition box, a cargo net, two mud pits and then running under a fire hose and to the finish. Most of the running was on the trails the Marines use to train. I was prepared for running on the dirt, but I forgot that Virginia has lots of hills. While the obstacles were tough, the hills were killer.
By the end of the race we were super muddy and the fire hose was a great last obstacle. After the finish, we grabbed some snacks and headed to the grass to clean up a bit. Not that it really helped. Needless to say, we didn’t bring our shoes home.
This was my second Marine Corps event and I have to say that they do an amazing job with events. The Marine Corps marathon is definitely on my must do list.
