Muddy Buddy Seattle 2013 race!



http://muddybuddy.competitor.com/rock-n-mud-challenge

I wasn't really going to do any mud races this year, since I'm running so many halfs, but then the Muddy Buddy race came along. This is the first year since I think 1993 that the Muddy Buddy series came to Seattle. I only heard about this race because I ran the Seattle Rock'n'Roll Half Marathon earlier this year and the Muddy Buddy partnered up with them. When I went to the Expo for the RNR half, they had a booth there where you can save 50% on the sign up fee and you get an extra medal for running both the RNR and the Muddy Buddy race and I'm all about my race bling, so I signed up for it.

If you haven't heard about this race series, its all about running with you buddy, it could be anyone, but you have to stay together the whole time and cross the finish line together. Now I have to be honest, I don't really have many friends, I know its weird, but its true. I really only know people who I have at one point worked with, so I had asked my great friend K from work to run with me and she agreed!!! I was so excited to finally have somebody to do a race with. It had been a while, we did one last December together. This race kind of snuck up on me, it just happened to be on my sons birthday, so I wanted to run the earliest waive possible at 8:00 to be able to come home and get ready for his party.

Since the race was sponsored by REI, the packed pickup was at their flagship store in Seattle the day before the race. Unfortunately my buddy had a leg injury that needed stiches and she couldn't run with me, so I was worried that they wouldn't allow me to race since I didn't have a buddy and I really did not have anybody else to ask to run with me. I e-mailed the race director and asked if it was possible for me to just get assigned with somebody else who didn't have buddy or if I could just race by myself. The great news was that either was going to be fine, whichever option I chose, so I decided to just run by myself since I was under a strict time crunch.

Once I got there the parking was easy and super close. My original waive time they gave me was 8:45, fortunately I got there around 7:30 and they let me switch my waive times to 8:00AM as I wished. They had a cute costume contest, the winners got a pair of Keen shoes and REI had set up a photo tent for before and after pictures, so I got my before picture taken and off to the starting line I went.

I think this race had about 12 obstacles, I did complete all but one of them. I just don't have the upper body strength to do rope climbing, it did have knots in them, but they were just way too far apart and I couldn't pull myself up, I did try though.. Most of the obstacles were pretty much the same as usual, there were a couple that had to do with working together with your buddy, at those stations they did have a volunteer to help, I had a very nice gentleman who helped me across one of them. It was really nice seeing the buddy's help each other and encourage each other and go all the way to the finish line.
One thing I was disappointed about is the lack of mud, if you are going to call a race "Muddy" buddy the race better be muddy, right? Well, there was only one mud pit at the very end and even then as you can see from the picture, I didn't get very muddy.

I did have five people ask me where my buddy was :( Every time I had to explain the situation, even the announcer at the very end said "is she running herself, where is her buddy at?" Great, thanks for announcing that I have no friends to the entire audience!

I did have lots of knee pain thru the race, I realized that the pain was much worse on the rough terrain than it was on the asphalt or concrete. I'm glad that I ran it, but I'm not sure if I would do it again, maybe if I did really run it with a buddy it would have been more fun.

Keep on running!

Keili