17th Annual Marine Mud Run

I finally did it! The NAS Lemoore Marine Mud Run, and it was a BLAST! Every summer the Marine's on base set up muddy obstacle course/5 mile run. I've wanted to do it each year, but aside from the fact that I am in no way a runner, Chris has been gone the last 2 summers and last summer I was pregnant on top of it all. So originally I wanted to rope Chris into doing it with me, but yesterday was also Clara and Jonathan's last t-ball games of the season. I gave up on the idea of doing the run, until Friday night my neighbors and I went out for a girls night and by the end of the night I had them talked into doing it as a team with me (we even bought matching purple shirts!) Saturday morning we were all nervous, and cold, and each of us was just waiting for another person to back out so we all could, but no one did, and we're all soooo glad! It was so much fun. Rumor is that it will be the last mud run here in Lemoore because most of the Marine's are leaving the base, which made for a great arguing point when I was trying to talk every one in to doing it. There's some speculation that the reservists that stay behind may carry on the tradition, in which case, Chris will be doing it with me next year! We weren't successful in talking my neighbor, Courtney into doing the run. Instead, she offered to come along and take pics from the side and cheer us on. On race day, we realized, that was every bit as important.

The first COLD mud pit. That's my teammates Carrie and Melissa behind me.


What have I gotten myself into?


My team: Brianna, Izabella, Jose, Carrie, Me, Melissa



Just the girls: Carrie, Melissa, Me


Everyone else had energy to run...I should clarify that what I did was actually more of a 'Mud Walk'

Brianna bowed out gracefully about midway through. Keeping in mind she is only 10 years old, and getting over bronchitis, she did awesome for as long as she hung in there.

The rope obstacle. You were supposed to just pull yourself along on the rope while your body floated behind.

Over the logs. At each obstacle, there were Marine's yelling (in a good natured way) things like, "The faster you get through my water, the faster you'll get over my log!" They helped out if you needed it at all, but since we had a team we helped each other get through the obstacles.

Walking across the ropes

Every mud pit (and there were about 7-10 of them) started with a deep mud pit. Once you were all wet and slippery, you had to climb up a mud hill, which became more difficult each time someone else dripped all their water up the side of it. This particular hill was towards the end and had a slide built in on the downside, leading into another mud pit. I didn't think to straighten my legs at the end of that slide, and went completely under the muddy water. It's a little difficult to wipe mud out of your face when there's no part of you that's clean!

To the Finish line!

One last team pic: Carrie, Izabella (Carrie's 12 year old daughter, did the whole race, but was freezing cold at the end!), me, Jose, Melissa.

We had a blast. Typically by this time of year it's pretty hot already, but it's still been hanging around 65-74 degrees lately. The morning on the mud run started in the lower 5o's. I think it got up to the mid 6o's, but it was still cold. We figured out that if you still had mud caked on your arms when you came out of the pits, it kept you warm as it dried. There were a couple sets of walls to climb over, cement tunnels to climb through, and a rope to swing out into a mud pit from. There were watery mud pits, sticky mud patches and harder dirt to run on. We had our shoes duct taped to our feet so we would not lose them in the mud. I thought it would be fun, but it was even more fun than I thought. Definitely something I look forward to doing again. Maybe next time I'll even run more of it :)