In September I was able to run the Dirty Dash with my little sister. We tried to talk our other sister into it, but she had just had a baby the month before and it wasn't going to work out for her. We did this race last year and It. Was. Awesome! This year they had promised more mud and they delivered! Leah and I were maybe halfway through the race and looked at each other and said we were already dirtier at this point than we were at the end of the race last year. The mud was everywhere!
I had decided that after this race, I was donating my shoes. It had been about 7 years since I got these shoes and they had long since passed their limit on mileage. Here's a picture of our shoes before the race. That's right, my sister bought Keds for this race. The sad thing is, those little keds had more traction than my running shoes on one of the mud hills we climbed up. And if you look closely, you can see the holes starting to form on my shoes. It was a good thing this was their last race. They would not have survived another race, probably would have fallen apart while I was running.
Here are our shoes. Notice how white Leah's are? Yeah, not so much after the race.
Here we are before the race. It fell on Courtney's birthday. We had to do something for her since she wasn't racing, so we made shirts!
And on the back, Dirty Girls Have More Fun. Because what fun is this race if you don't embrace the mud?
Here we are coming to the finish!
This was right before jumping into the mud pit.
And here we are after our leap in the mud! Covered, head to toe in mud. It was so great! The obstacles included: jumping over bales of hay, crawling through giant tubes with mud in the bottom, traversing over army walls, running through a swamp, climbing over a giant net, going through a ditch filled with muddy water with tubes across the top that you had to climb over or duck under, a rope swing, balance beams, running through tires, climbing up a muddy hill with a rope, the giant slip n' slide and of course the mud pit to finish it off. Would I do this again? ABSOLUTELY!! Hopefully my dirty dash partner will join me again next year. And maybe we can talk some other family members into the awesomeness.
