Swamp Pigs

I never knew how many different kinds of mud you could have in one place. Last Saturday we saw them all.

I ran the swamp romp this year instead of taking photos. I had a great time, and it's Wednesday and I'm almost recovered. The skin has started to grow back on my heels, at least, and I can walk without limping much.

Yeah it hurt. But it was also insanely fun.

Our team was Allen, Keoni, Frank, Harry, Cliff T, and myself. Keoni, Allen, and I hung back more (re: we walked a lot), while the others were more solid runners. Although in the end I did pretty well in the rough spots - the crawling and swimming and jumping over things. It was the running in boots that killed me.

And this is how the race went: You run down a dirt track for a few hundred meters. The first obstacle is a slippery, muddy ramp, with a nice big lake of muddy water on the other side. You run a bit through the woods. There are monkey bars, slippery as well, from which I did a graceful belly flop into the muck below. You then come to a 200m stretch of water and mud to wade through. Then it's more running. This is where things started to really hurt. My sucks went down, my moleskin slipped off, parts of my boots started gouging holes into my feet. This part sucked.

Then: mud mud mud. Sloppy gloppy mud that splashed all over. Thick viscous silver mud that threatened to swallow you alive, and from which people had to be rescued. Mud that was easier to swim through than walk through. More obstacles to jump over or slither under. Drainage pipes you had to crawl through. Some beach walking. A bit of ocean swimming. And one final maze of waist-deep mud.

And then you finish, two hours later, and you strip down to your skivvies and firemen hose you &the marines down.

It was worth all the pain. Hopefully the Queer Leaders will email me their pics soon. The one above is from last year.

Lessons for next year? Secure the moleskin better, and wear tight socks.