Mud Mountain 5K

I've been looking forward to this race for so long. Everybody just kept going on and on about how much fun it was, and I had never run this one.

Friday night, I had to go in to work at 9:30pm to make sure my weekend contractors got started on the right foot. I was there until after 11pm, after which I went home and couldn't sleep. I finally went to sleep sometime after midnight.

I should have known then not to run a race for the first time when it was celebrating its 13th year...

Saturday morning, I woke up at 5:15am. I had to leave my house by 6am to meet up with Barbie and Shanna so we could ride to the race together. I did NOT want to get out of bed. Nope, sure didn't. But, I made it. We get to the race, and there are people everywhere.

First issue- not enough port-a-potties. In order to keep my bladder under control for a race, I pretty much have to go to the port-a-potty 3 or 4 times until my bladder is good and drained. This was not possible for this race. We were in line at the port-a-potty during the singing of the national anthem (!!), and there were people in line ahead of us that weren't even running the race! HELLO!! If you are there to observe, and the race is about to start, let the runners into the potty FIRST!! Especially when the race is not being chip timed.

We managed to get through the port-a-potty line and to the starting line before the race started, though. This was truly a cross country race, complete with the extremely wide starting line. We start off running across a grassy field, and narrow down to a trail through the woods. There were some brutal (brutal is an understatement) hills, uphill and downhill. I liked the downhills, but you had to be careful of your footing, since it was all grass and trail. Several areas were muddy and nasty, and me with my newest pair of running shoes.

OK, I'll give them this- it was kind of fun to run in a different type of race, but I'm truly NOT a cross country runner. But, the absolute worst part of the whole race was getting to the finishing chute, and there was a LINE there. You were trapped while waiting for them to tear the tabs off of race numbers (?) write down bib numbers (?) I truly don't know what the big hold-up was. Luckily, Barbie walked over with a fresh, cold bottle of water for me while I was standing there. That made it better.

My official finish time was 32:11. I was 4th in my age group (just out of the medals :-(

I was pretty pleased with the placement, though. There were 567 runners in all at this race, and to place in the top half of my age group made me happy.

We went out and ran a cool-down after the race, another 3 miles. This "cool-down" made me realize just how slow I am. The other two girls were taking it v-e-r-y easy, and I was struggling to keep up! I think I'll be running a 2nd marathon in December to try and get my qualifying time... I was so lazy after this race, I skipped my planned 15 mile run on Sunday morning. Gah!

The worst part- after the race, we were all standing around waiting and waiting for the results. They FINALLY started with the results, and got the top 3 women finishers WRONG. More waiting and waiting... They tried again- still WRONG. (We knew the overall winner, and they didn't have her results in there correctly). Finally, they went ahead with the men's results (the older men's results were questionable). More waiting and waiting...

Finally, they told us all to go ahead and leave (most people had already left). They posted the results on the website later and will be mailing out the medals for the women. I won't get one, barely (sob!).

This was their 13th year people! They have always been well organized and not had these issues (according to others who have ran it before).

I so don't want to post a picture from this race. My boobs look funny and lopsided... OK, I'll post it. I can't help myself- I love pictures on blogs... maybe you all won't notice my lopsided-ness!