An Obstacle-Full Weekend!

Patriot Trail Run

This past weekend was not only busy.  It was messy, as well.  For Mr. Marathon, not me, don't worry.  On Saturday, he had the Patriot Trail Run 5K.  The run didn't start until 10 so we actually got to sleep a little bit, which was refreshing!  Once we woke up, we headed to Patrick Henry Community College, where he is a student, for the second annual Patriot Run.  If you remember the first annual (last year, obviously), then you may or may not remember that he came in first place overall.  This year was no different!  Despite the trail being an actual 5K (last year was short a few tenths of a mile) and having a few more obstacles, he defended his title!  After lots of running on a trail, climbing over 6-foot hay bales, jumping through tires, carrying 50-pound buckets, going through a maze in sand that you had to crawl through, climbing over a cargo net, completing various exercise stations, and balancing on a balance beam (and many more obstacles), he came in a solid first place overall in 25:55.  So that was totally exciting!

1st Place Overall!

Afterwards, we both hit the trail for training runs for the day.  I had a ten miler because I am beginning to taper before my marathon (in 8 days!!!!!!) and he had to do 20.  We knocked out those runs because we knew that Sunday would be a busy day.  And boy, was it!

We woke up at 4:00 AM on Sunday morning for our next adventure.  We were traveling to somewhere near Charlotte, NC, for Mr. Marathon's first Tough Mudder!  After waking up and getting ready, we met the friends we were riding with and hit the road on the two and a half hour journey.

While they were still clean

Taking off

 


This Tough Mudder was quite the experience for everybody involved.  It was a huge crowd of people and everybody was pumped up and excited, which really set off a good vibe.  After getting all checked in and marked up and photographed while the boys were still clean, they headed toward the start line.  After a little bit of a warm up, they congregated at the starting line, then right on time, they were off.  I was merely spectating with my friend whose hubby was participating too.  So, we followed our trusty spectator map and got on a spectator route to see the various obstacles.  This particular run was 10 miles with tons of obstacles, so we did our fair share of moving as well.  Granted, we got a little less muddy (for the most part....).

Anyway, here is a quick overview of the obstacles that I managed to see hubbs on.  The first one that I got to see was called Quagmire, which was essentially a mud pit that they had to run through.

Quagmire

The next one I saw (we missed a few already by this point) was called Arctic Enema, where they had to jump into pretty much what looked like a dumpster filled with ice water, and duck under the wall in the middle and swim to the other side.

Prairie Dog was the next event we saw (again, missed some more).  Prairie Dog was an obstacle where there were tubes and you had to climb using a rope inside of the tube to pull yourself up the tube, which was going uphill.

The next obstacle seemed pretty scary.  It was like a high dive into a pool of water.  The jump was pretty high!!!

Arctic Enema

Prairie Dog

High Dive

At this point, my friend and I got kinda lost and sidetracked from the other people we were with.  We were becoming thirsty, tired, and delirious (from all the running and obstacles of course... oh wait, we didn't do any running or obstacles... heh...)  so we found a water stop, then got lost, then came back to the water stop, then decided to park it in front of an obstacle that we were sure they hadn't come to yet because at this point we had no idea how they were doing and where they were.

Pitfall... Surprise!!!!

So we just waited at Pitfall, which is an obstacle that is a pool of water and holes are dug randomly so you never know when the water is shallow, or when it's deep.  Surprise!

The obstacle almost directly after Pitfall, we managed to watch, and it was just this big inflatable thing the runners had to jump over.

Big Inflatable Thing...?

We also got to see our boys do the Funky Monkey Obstacle twice-- once on sloped monkey bars/ladder things, and the second on pipes and rings.

Funky Monkey

After Funky Monkeying, and going through what's called the "Mud Mile", they  had to conquer Everest, which was a quarter-pipe that they had to run up and get to the top ledge.  This one, Alfredo seemed to not have any trouble with at all!  He just popped right on up there.

Running up Everest

Conquering Everest!

The final obstacle after Everest was the Electro Shock Therapy, which sounds terrifying enough just by hearing the name.  It was a pool of mud and sludge with hay bales in it with dangling wires that were charged and ready to shock anybody who touched them.  As a spectator, this one was awful to watch, because I could hear the zaps and crackles from the wires and the various curse words from the participants.  It seemed really tough, and I'm glad I did not have to do it.  Mr. Marathon and his gang made it through, some fast, some not so fast; some graceful, some not so graceful.  But most important of all, they finished muddy, and in good spirits!

Electro Shock Therapy

Coming up tomorrow, we have the Pancake Run in Danville, as well as the Dirty Dan Dash (for him, not me!!), and the Time Traveler Pi-Miler (again, for him, not me!).  Tomorrow will be a busy day, so look for the upcoming blog post.  Hopefully we'll have it posted by Thanksgiving.....

The boys.... all muddy!