Mud In Your Shorts = SuperGoodTimes

Author: ODB

This weekend was the Atlanta leg of the 2009 Muddy Buddy, a two man – six mile trail run/mountain bike race. The race was held at the Olympic Mountain Bike trail in Conyers (where they had the Olympic Mountain Bike race in 96). 1100 teams (2200 people) competed on Saturday, and as someone with some experience in putting on a contest, this was a very organized event.  There were 12 heats of racers, with the mens teams starting first, youngest collective ages to oldest, followed by the coed teams, and then the all-women teams.  Team Gnarly Boots (yours truly and the Mrs) competed in the co-ed age 55-65 (combined) which put us in heat 6.  The format of the race was that each team raced along a 6 mile loop off-road track, with one bike per team, and the non biker sprinting to catch up to the bike which was left at the five obstacles on the track, where the runner and biker would swap.  The biker would drop the bike, tackle the obstacle, and take off running to the next obstacle.  The original runner would sprint to the obstacle, grab the bike, and race off to catch the runner and swap once again at the next obstacle – theoretically leapfrogging the whole way.  But since they started the bikes 1 minutes ahead of the runners, and given that the first leg was the longest run, it was virtually impossible for the runner to ever overtake the original biker, so Fiona was always waiting for me a few minutes at every second obstacle to grab the bike from me.

There were five obstacles in all, which meant that the discipline you started out racing would be how you finished.  For some reason, we decided that I would run first-  and your entire time is based on the runner since they will obviously be slower than the biker.  I am not the greatest runner in the world, but I made up some ground on the bike and gutted out the rest.  We finished with a time of 47:10, which put us 212 out of 1100, and since we have never raced this event before, and only trained about 3 weeks, it was not a bad effort.

The first obstacle was 1.5 miles down the course and was a three foot high 15 foot long balance beam which you could not fall on or you had to repeat it, then I grabbed the bike and raced off for a mostly uphill mountain bike climb for about a mile to the second obstacle , all the way yelling “on your left” racing past runners and stumbling bikers – which allowed me to make up some time.  The second obstacle was a crawl under a 20 foot long length of marine netting – and a chance at a much needed breather before it was off on another mile run to a seven foot tall rock climbing wall with a rope ladder on the other side to climb down.  The fourth obstacle was a ten foot long rope climb up an inflated wall with a slide down the other side, and then it was a brutal uphill run to the finish.  I nearly passed out trying to run straight up the last hill, but I know Fiona was waiting so I sucked it up and kept going.  It was on this leg where a fellow racer asked me if I was ok, since I sounded like a dying race horse, even though I was passing the guy who asked.  I gave a thumbs up and cursed him under my breath and kept going even though my legs were threatening to stop working.  I stopped feeling sorry for myself when I came upon a lady well ahead of me racing with one leg amputated.  We exchanged some words of mutual encouragement which I used as inspiration to slog it out to the last obstacle, which was a fifty meter crawl through a mud pit with hundreds of spectators cheering you on.  I was completely out of gas at the end, but it was a great time and I cant wait to do it again next year, albeit with a lot more training.

The pictures below are from SuperGoodTimes superfriend JC, who after being out until 3am the night before made it out to Conyers by 7am to photo all of our gloriousness.  Thanks JC for documenting a great event.

 

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