crowned in orange

 {pre-race, so dry: andrew, viv, sue, roommatesarah, jaeden, me, marina, natalie}

RACE REPORT MUDDER STYLEZ 2013! 

photos in the first half were largely handled by marina, who (along with jaeden) is an absolute genius and thought to buy a disposable waterproof camera. 

the peeps will be abbreviated to a letter so as to not be so much with the typing names overandover. you already know most of the crew. easy peazy.

s: sarah,  n: natalie,  m: marina,  j: jaeden,  u: sue,  
e: me (hi! actually. i'll just be me. i. mostly.),  

l: (so sad) larissa (wasn't there...)

then the two day-of additions! first was viv-in-larissa's-place. friend of sue. she is a tricky babe, as she managed to convince the race-organizing-folk to let her take the spot even though they are very NO-TRANSFERS-DAY-OF! i do not know what magic she used, but it worked and in she came and on she put a tutu. second was andrew-a-BOY-on-the-team. friend of natalie. he had been signed up for a later start-time with a friend who 'got a girlfriend and got lazy' aka he was all by his lonesome and we were oh so happy to have him along. he was a bigtime help, as you'll hear soon. i was sad we didn't have an extra tutu for him as he would've looked mega babely with a little tulle-round-the-hips.

v: viv,  d: andrew 

(cause 'a' is a letter often required in regular sentences. obvi.)

let us begin. up at 6:30am in a travellodge in barrie. i am my father's daughter, so i was very very very prepared for race-day with my clothes, snacks, waiver, sunscreen all checked and double checked, thus prep went very smoothly. we made our way to the parking field, then onto the shuttle to the racegrounds. a huge brigade of yellow school buses. we borrowed some grease paint from dudes dressed in camo. ready! it was a chilly morning, certainly, but i was so hyped and excited i didn't really feel it. there was much hopping up and down and lunging and some gummy spiders to get things going. the energy on the grounds was fantastic. s and i were waiting for the team by a bench, adjusting our shoelaces and putting on sunscreen, when a guy bounced over to us.

'EXCITED? ARE YOU EXCITED?' said he.
'YEAH!' said me 'GUMMY SPIDER?!' holding out my candy.
'what? YEAH!!!' said he.

the gang all came together, we were introduced to d, and we headed to the startline. the call went up, we started running, and after about 5 meters we hit a wall. HI WALL! d helped each of us before pulling himself over. he was kicked in the back of the head, but not by any of us. and that's when we learned that HAHA nope that hadn't been the startline, THIS was the startline. a huge collection of mudders were corralled between the wall and the blow-up-start-arch under which a man with a mic was pumping us up. we sang and cheered and shouted back at the mic-man 'URAH!'. we took a knee, the whole swath of us there in the mud, and the mic-man requested we all shuffle forward to make room for 'whoever owns that foot' - we all looked back to see just a leg trying to get over the wall. we did shuffle forward. the leg made it in with a human attached to it. we were encouraged by the mic-man to be supportive, caring, helpful to our fellow mudders. to remember that this is a challenge and not a race. we stood and sang the national anthem. we were set free on the course.

 {jaeden looking totally pro on the first-trick-wall}

i'm not gonna talk much about the running/walking bits because they are pretty much the same. up the ski hill, down the ski hill, through deep mud, sticky mud, oozy mud, slick mud...  i'll slip in interesting things if i think of any as we go along.

 {the map. note that it says 'mile-markers' but means 'kilometer-markers'. 16 and a bit.}

OBSTACLE ONE: glory blades
completed by: all

a wall that tilts toward you, thus making it very hard to get any sort of foothold to boost yourself. a reeeeeaally good wall climber miiiiight be able to smear on this one, but i am not one of those. we gave d a hand with the hoisting as we didn't want to abuse or wear out our valuable strong-armed-asset too early in the game. he got kicked in the shorts, this time by one of us: n. lucky they were friends before and have a history to hang onto. oh. and there were two of these walls. once you got over one, you went ahead and did it again. the bruises under my arms began here.


OBSTACLE TWO: artic enema
completed by: d, e, s, n, u, v,

jump into a train storage car that's been filled with water and ice (and dye for funsies). s and i went together in the blue water. it. was. cold. not so bad as i expected when i first hit the water, but immediately sinking into the bones when i had to duck under a barricade in the middle. i opened my eyes under water and was surprised that it was pitch black opaque. on the other side i turned round to see s holding on to the barricade. hitting the water her lungs had slammed shut and refused to open. she had just recovered enough to semi-speak 'i can't breathe...'. scary. she held on there for a moment, and i swam back to her and waited the few seconds it took her body to regain its vital functions. i put my hand under the barricade in the water and found hers on the other side and we got her underneath and out the other end. i am grateful to my years doing dumb things like swimming in lakes in saskatchewan for getting me through this one.

 {natalie validating the team name 'badass ballerinas'}

OBSTACLE THREE: funky monkey
completed by: all

monkey bars. that go at an incline. and then a decline. over muddy water. i will say that we all 'completed' this one, but not that we all succeeded. i certainly did not. i got through one and one quarter bars before i went in the water. i'd like to think it is because my gloves were soaked and my hands still a bit frozen. but i doubt i would've made it much beyond two or three bars even in optimal conditions. not within my talents, this one. d, u, and v made it fully across and i am insanely impressed by this.

OBSTACLE FOUR: kiss of mud
completed by: all

crawl through rocky mud on your hands and knees (unless you're too tall, and then scoot on your belly) under a grid of barbed wired. ain't no thang! easy as pie.

OBSTACLE FIVE: electric eel
completed by: d, e, n, u, v, j, m

shimmy on your belly through shallow water below hanging live wires. (it should be noted that s was not allowed to do the electrical things due to her heart and stuff. we the team were pretty supportive of not having her die.) it is a strange thing, being electrocuted. the first one i felt hit me on my cheek and i thought that someone had just come up suddenly and blacked out my vision on the left side. when i looked left there was nothing there blocking my view. i stopped for a second to puzzle then scurried on. got a few light shocks along the way but nothing too bad. one in the wrist and one more in the head that are worth noting on the pain-scale. not pleasant, but also not the very worst thing i've ever felt.

 {still the biggest of smiles for sarah and me}

OBSTACLE SIX: cliffhanger
completed by: d, e, s, n, u, v, m

down a little slope into about 3 feet deep muddy water (noticing a theme) and then up a steep hill. the bottom of the pool was impossible to see, and not exactly even. people going ahead would oh so kindly demonstrate where there were pits by slipping into them messily. then, of course, the hill was slick as hell and you had to try to carve out little shelves to get yourself up. mudders helped mudders by offering a leg or an arm up. i very much liked this one.

meanwhile, weather-wise it was definitely keeping up with the cold and wind, and some on our team were beginning to feel the brutal effects of continually getting in and out of the water. there was an overall stinging of fingers and chattering of teeth. it was getting harder to warm up while jogging between the obstacles. m, j, s, and me were determined to do this race thing together and keep the pace that worked for us all. slow for me and my nervous-post-flu-stomach in the beginning, gentle on the downhills for those with bad knees... i know my own goal was not about speed, but about enjoying and pushing and challenging. for myself and for the group.

OBSTACLE SEVEN: firewalker
completed by: d, e, s, n, u, v, j

jump over a fire into a mud pool. SO FREAKING FUN! and also a great chance to stand by some flames and heat our hands.

 {jaeden chillin and illin}

OBSTACLE EIGHT: hold your wood
completed by: all

carry a big ol' log for a while. either on your own or in twos. s and i handled this one as a pair, and i thought of it as a sort of brutal session of active release therapy for my neck and shoulders. i am quite sure that we said some hilarious things - cold-and-race brain had begun to set in - but i can't for the life of me remember what they were. i know we laughed a lot.

OBSTACLE NINE: dirty ballerina
completed by: all

was this one not named for us? a track of mud into which trenches have been carved. the goal is to jump over the trenches as the day goes on the edges get more and more broken down, the trenches get wider, the take-off-and-landing segments get smaller. this was a HOOT! the ground was reasonably sand/soft so as long as you watched for rocks and roots, you could just give'er and hope for the best. i think i got across maybe 3 out of 10ish and the rest i had to clamber out of, but it was sooooo fun to do.

OBSTACLE TEN: trench warfare
completed by: all

crawl through a zig-zagging tunnel. i am incredibly grateful to my amazing teammates on this one. i am with the claustrophobia, and this was one of the ones i'd been nervous about. i was worried about going into a bit of a panic stuck in there (like emma may remember me doing that one time in the cave...). s crawled ahead of me and m behind, being wonderfully encouraging and making me laugh. wasn't so bad after all. i totes kept my cool. check me out with my bad self.

OBSTACLE ELEVEN: walk the plank
completed by: d, e, n,

climb onto a 15 foot platform, then jump off it into deep (muddy) water. awesome. i used to be a diver. i love to climb high things like ropes and silks and walls. so this wasn't particularly frightening for me. i might've done it a 2nd or 3rd time just for the fun of it if i thought my team would tolerate it.

OBSTACLE TWELVE: mud mile
completed by: d, e, s, n, u, v,

but isn't it all the mud mile? HAHA! yes. but also: climb over a series of ridges with waist-ish deep puddles in between. a busy stream of mudders. this made me feel like an ant in the best way. so funny all the people up and over and sliding down and up again and scrambling. i made short-term-friends with the strangers around me as we splashed in and out and smashed our shins into rocks. this obstacle also showed the divide in our group: those who were happy to chug along and do this as a team, and those who had a more fast-track mentality. about halfway through the ridges u and v decided that it was 'taking too long' behind the other mudders and hopped out without completing the ant-colony-march and.

 {sarah, marina, and andrew running through a truly beautiful patch of forrest}

OBSTACLE THIRTEEN: greased lightening
completed by: all

half way down a steep hill (one of the black diamond runs?) there was grainy snow that overtook us. beyond the snow was a slip-and-slide kind of arrangement with the slope covered in thick black plastic. m and i stepped onto the plastic at the same time, immediately losing our footing, slamming down on our butts, and zipping along much faster than we expected. m made it to the bottom first, so i was able to see the danger of not getting your feet dug in quickly once you hit the snow again. she has one heck of a sandpapered back side. at the base a woman next to me shouted up to her male teammate 'GET YOUR FEET DOWN OR YOU'LL LOSE YOUR BALLS!!!' and i agreed with her that that was very good advice. 'too late...' s told the woman as the guy came to a halt in the snow.

and this is where we officially broke up. very close to this last obstacle was a water and aid station. our group was cold. everyone was so cold. the aid station was handing out silver warming blankets, but ran out just before we got there. m and j were more than just chilled. they were getting dangerously cold. their hands were no longer useful. while s and i wrapped ourselves around them to try to warm them up and decide what to do, u, v, d and n opted to run on and we encouraged them to fly free without us. they had been keeping a faster running pace throughout the day, and it was only fair to let them go forth and keep themselves warm (or speed the process of getting off this damned mountain).

s and i were still feeling good despite the cold, and i'm fairly certain our prairie roots are to thank. after a few minutes huddled there, it was clear that m and j were not enjoying anything at all anymore, and that it was the end of their day with the mudder. i'm sad that the cold took them out of play, but i know very well the misery of being that frozen and i'm proud of them for listening to their bodies and not pushing to the point of injury or illness. they headed away from the course towards another aid tent that was rumored to possess a heater.

and so it was just s and i. and this is where i'm gonna take a breather and call it a day. to be continued!!!