last weekend, i "ran" my first 5k...tampa's pretty muddy with friends from my old school. it was the BEST thing EVER!!! (you'll see why "ran" is in parenthesis if you read on...haha)
my friend cris is the one who
we signed up for the 8:00 a.m. start. the first thing we encountered
was a "bubble tunnel" where a mountain of suds welcomed us with chilly
dampness. after we got through that little obstacle (the smallest of
them all, really) we turned the corner to find ourselves wading through
chilly water...as you can see, i was laughing about it, and my friend cris was just LOVING enduring it!
after that trek through the water, we ran down the road and came upon this great little mud pit just before the big barn. one friend was totally planning to run the whole race without getting muddy.
seriously? you think you're going to stay clean with the crew you're hanging around for this?
think again, sister!!!
several of us were having NONE of that! so we chased her and corralled her into the mud. we sludged through and continued on our way. just as my friend was bending to tie her shoe on the other side of the barn, another brilliant idea came to the mind of one of our running mates...push her into the nearby swamp! (that would've been amazing, had it happened, but alas, it did not.)
just as she ran up to her, someone noticed a bright red streak oozing down her leg in the middle of the brown sticky mess of mud that was covering her skin up to her knees. we made it to the next obstacle (where you pick up a log and run down and around, and drop the log off before going on), and luckily there was a water station there also. we all stopped, helped her wash off her leg, and realized that she had a fantastic, mud-filled gash on her shin.
the medics were called, we all waited until they came and cleaned it up as much as they could, and she decided she was better off to ride back with them. a few faithful friends stayed behind and waited for her departure, and a few of us decided to continue on as we agreed that she was in good hands, and that she should survive.
we continued on the course, up and over, under and through...mud, mud, and more mud! it was a great experience for a first 5k "run" (with the "injury detour" we took over an hour total to finish!) those of us who finished in the first group hung around and went back to finish again with the rest of our group, along with our injured teammate who ran the last little leg of the race (skipped the last mud pit, of course) and was given the fire hose to spray on the group crawling through the mud.
i'm so glad my friend hookwinked convinced me to do this with them! i did absolutely ZERO training ahead of time and i was fine! i'm definitely going to do more of these, and want to do "real" 5Ks too. eventually i'd love to do some sprint triathlons, but for now, i'll start "small" and go from there.
...gathering up my clothes and shoes to be ready for an early morning run tomorrow...here i go!!!
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