Muddy Buddy Experience Part 1

I woke this morning to, well pain. It was a chore to lift my legs out of bed. I pushed to the shower and let the hot water wake my stiff muscles. Yesterday, I completed in my first Muddy Buddy Race. Today, I am in the beautiful vacation spot of Blythe, CA. For those unaware of Blythe, it is a border town of 10,000 on the CA and AZ border. We had a little car trouble on the return trip and found nothing open on a Sunday evening.
I was introduced to Muddy Buddy by my good buddy, JT. I have been mountain biking for the last 3 years and it is now a passion of mine. I love it! JT explained Muddy Buddy as a mountain bike and running event where one team member starts on the bike and the other team member running. At check points, the biker drops the bike does an obstacle event and becomes the new runner. As the runner approaches the check points, he does an obstacle event finds the bike left by his buddy and becomes the next rider. At the end of the race, both buddies crawl through 60' of 10" deep mud in the mud pit to the finish line. They must enter the mud pit together. That description of the event was good enough for me and I told him let's go, I am in!!

We had this great plan to train together and be in our best shape. The training lasted a week when work, family and life just put it on the back burner. I continued riding 3 days a week and running a 3 mile course along 105th St in McDowell Mountain Ranch. Until a knee injury sidelined me. In hind sight, the injury wasn't much; it was more fear of hurting my knee at 42 and exhaustion that sidelined the running. I started riding again about 3 weeks before the event and my mountain biking game was on. The goal - ride hard and make up for my weak running.

In the meantime, my dieting had paid off. I lost 20 pounds over the past 10 weeks prior to the event. That is a whole other story that can be found through by blog. Anyway, my weigh in for the weight loss was the day before Muddy Buddy and I had a lovely dinner of broth the night before my weigh in. Where am I headed, well, I was a little weak going into this event. No running and no nutrition added to my weakness. Both JT and I have been very busy. So, we decided to make a quick road trip to Cali, spend the night at his sister's, do the event and drive home. Cool, let's go!!

And so we did, we crossed the desert and went to Claremont. JT's sister and brother in law Cristy and Kelly took great care of us. In the morning we were off to Bonelli Regional Park in San Dimes. It was a rush showing up. There were 100's of people coming to compete. Costumes are big w/Muddy Buddy and many were dressed to the tune. Drag seemed to be big and we saw 3 sets of wonder women. Some guys some gals. There were 80's aerobic outfits, cows with utters, and many other funky outfits. I was wondering how you run, ride and crawl through mud in a costume, but it looked fun! Start the race!

Watch for the next posting of "Muddy Buddy Experience part 2"