Getting my dirty on...

This weekend was the Dirty Girl Mud Run in Atlanta.  I signed up for this a few months ago and had it on my calendar, knowing that it would be my first event as a Southerner!  How much fun!  And it meant that Kristin would be coming down to stay so that was totally the icing on the cake!  After we registered we totally started planning our outfits, because everyone knows that it's important to look cute while playing in the mud.   Since it was just the two of us, we totally went matchy matchy.  Then I found out that Karen was doing it so she joined our wave.  And then I met Alec and she joined our wave.  Our small team of 2 grew to 4.  The perfect size team.  I wish we had planned it a little more though because we totally could have rocked an amazing team name and costumes, but we laughed hard enough that I got my money's worth! :)

So we were in the first wave, at 8:15.  They had 6000+ people registered so we were told that we needed to be there 90 minutes in advance.  We decided to meet an hour in advance.  Plenty of time for the first wavers (every wave after us probably needed every minute of that 90 minute window).  We all parked right in the front, registered (they gave us these cute shirts and necklaces),

found each other (because we had never met so it was like that whole blind date scenario... looking around for the other person looking around for you), had Kristin navigate the maps for us,

hit the potties and then commenced the people watching.

WHICH WAS FABULOUS!

I'm telling you... these southern girls get into their races!

We lined up at 8:10, but somehow were at the back of the pack.  That lasted until the first obstacle.  Which was a really crowded hay bail climb.  We laughed when we heard someone inform their team to "take it easy, we have a long day ahead of us".  Kristin, Karen and I have all completed 140.6 races and Alec has run a bunch of half marathons.  I'd be lying if I said that the "which of these things is not like the other?" thought didn't cross my mind once or twice.  But that's alright.  We embraced it.  After getting over the hay bails, we made a sprint for it to get in front of some people.  The next obstacle was a wooden wall to climb over.  Then a cargo net that we had to climb over.  In the mud potting soil.  Being the first wave, it wasn't mushed up enough.  And that's when I heard my favorite quote of the day...

"OMG, I lost my bobby pin in netting"

I love women's only races.

We ran through mud pits that were about knee high, and tire mazes.  We climbed through Utopian tubes (or fallopian tubes as we kept calling them).  We scaled a net, did some matrix stuff in a rope maze, climbed up and down a muddy hillside.  We laughed a lot.  And made fools of ourselves.  It was fabulous.

By the end we weren't nearly as muddy as I thought we would be, but then we realized that we hadn't fully embraced the mud pits by belly flopping in them.  Next time my friends... next time.

We got cleaned up and started looking for some food and that was the only thing that I would complain about with this race.  There was nothing.  Not.A.Single.Thing.  We were told that there was some undercover guy selling chick-fil-a, but that sounded kind of scary so we packed up and decided to grab some bunch in downtown Atlanta.  We did have a ticket for one free adult beverage, BUT (and there's a bit but here), they were handing out cans of Busch.  At 9:00 in the morning.

Overall, this was a super fun event.  It definitely wouldn't have been as fun without my fabulous friends and I'm so glad that I got to spend the morning with you ladies. Next time... we'll rock the tutu's, hand made shirts, matching socks, etc.

And we'll belly flop into the mud pits.