When I first heard about the mud run for girls, I felt very excited and knew that I wanted to join at least for the experience. I imagined a run similar to those with obstacles, but instead of various obstacles, there would be a muddy path somewhere along the route. That’s the picture I had in mind. I imagined a small “pig pen like” mud hole that runners would have to go through.

First Impressions

Come race day, I headed over to Nuvali with my fiance Philippe (who took the awesome photos by the way) and my friends Clarissa and Ivica. As we walked toward the event grounds, Ivy kept saying, “why isn’t there anyone here?” Oftentimes, we would follow the flock of runners to get to the starting point but we couldn’t see anyone. I even had to ask, “ Are we sure it’s today?” haha Soon, we saw the tents indicating that we were in the right place. A few runners swooshed pass us. We looked at them and didn’t notice much mud on their bodies. We calmly thought, there wasn’t going to be much mud.. even thinking we could finish the run clean. Boy, were we dead wrong!

Warm Up

We headed over to registration where we found out we would be running at 7am and joining wave #10 or the Bossy Wave. There were less than 20 runners per wave, which I highly appreciated. Sometimes, running in smaller numbers can be so much more better. Anyway, as soon as your wave is called, you would need to join the others at the event grounds for the warm up. I was ready for a basic stretch when the two ladies upfront started dancing! It was a body jam warm up! It was fun seeing all the ladies dance, but that just isn’t something I’m comfortable with yet. hehe Still, it was really cool!

A Muddy Terrain!

We started running around 100 meters and I was really curious to see where the mud was at. I then spotted a station with a few marshals and a wading pool. I even told my friends, “I think the mud is in that pool!” I was half joking and half serious. I really thought we were going to walk in the small inflatable wading pool. As we drew closer, I realized they just used the wading pool to store bottled waters for the runners. However, turning to my right, I got the surprise of my life. Oh, the organizers weren’t kidding when they called this a MUD RUN!

A bunch of the runners decided to go barefoot to save their shoes! I luckily decided to use my Reebok Zigtech shoes which proved to be very useful for the mud run! The first few meters in the mud were both difficult and super fun! haha Our shoes kept sinking in what sometimes seemed to be a bottomless pit of mud! The difficult part was getting it back out! At one point, we even had to walk on a balance beam across the mud. We opted to just go through the mud though because I personally have no sense of balance and I was sure I was gonna fall anyway!

We then needed to crawl in a 10 foot long tunnel with muddy water inside. After the tunnel, it was time to “swim” through the muddy water! the water was waist deep though there were areas where our feet would really sink into the mud. My friends and I actually tripped a couple of times and ended up tasting the muddy water! In all fairness though, it didn’t taste like mud.

After we were through with the mud-filled course, we had to run/walk around 1 kilometer to the mud slide. Ivy and I decided to finally remove our shoes – not to save it from the mud but simply because all the mud inside them started getting really heavy. We eventually made it to the mud slide… it was extremely fun!

Finally we finished the run, all muddy and happy! Oh, and by the way, check out the finisher’s shirt! Love it! The material used is also really nice.

Marshals

Did I mention that most if not all of the marshals during the run were guys? They weren’t just any random guy though, they were a bunch of friendly and good looking guys. A little inspiration for the ladies to get down and dirty all the way! (no pun intended!)

Cleaning Up

The stressful part came after the run. It was time to clean up. The showers were okay, but taking a bath was very difficult. There were only 4 shower rooms, 2 of which had no water and one was already “flooded” due to the clogged drainage from all the mud. So, we had one shower room and several muddy ladies.

Looking forward to Part 2

I really am looking forward to a second all women’s mud run! I’m sure it will be another experience I will cherish forever! Just hoping there’s something that can be done with regards to showering.

Check out https://www.facebook.com/thedownanddirtydash to stay updated on the next run!

You can also visit https://www.facebook.com/littlerunningteacherpage for some photos from race day!