What better topic to start my blogging career with then this past weekend's Dirty Donkey Mud Run held at the almighty Mount Blackstrap Provincial Park. A team of my fearless CrossFit buds entered the BRIO Beaver Beaters to tackle the 7.5km uphill obstacle course in the rain (I would like to add I did not come up with the name, I would have chosen Jacked & Classy if I had it my way). As most of my friends know I am no cardio bunny. Me plus running does not equal blissful serenity, what it does result in is a sweaty, red faced, heavy breathing mess experiencing the worst shin splints of life at the moment. But either way the experience was still AWESOME! My very first ever "longer distance" run and I didn't die.. frick yes.
It was pouring rain Saturday morning as we embarked on our journey to the unknown. As we pulled up to the race site we immediately spotted a massive (in the eyes of someone with a fear of heights it was gargantuan) cargo net wall and a barb-wire encompassed mud pit anxiously awaiting the finis-line crossers. We were freezing as we donned our matching white team wife beater tank tops and bandannas. Pain is beauty, right? We saw many other familiar CrossFit faces as we waited nervously at the start line as our group of runners were the first to christen the course.
Dodging the sloppy trails through the trees of Blackstrap made the journey very interesting. People were slipping and falling all over the course. The first obstacle was a wall of hay bails stacked up that you had to climb over and subsequently drop into a pit of mud. Obstacle number two was a swamp walk. A stinky, sludgey walk through a slough of bugs and god only knows what else. I'll consider obstacle three the treacherous hike directly up to the top of the "mountain" (I put quotes around mountain because anyone that knows the Blackstrap Ski Hill also knows its nickname as the Pimple of the Prairies), but still it was steep and slippery as sh*t! The fourth obstacle was a giant homemade slip and slide down a hill that lead almost directly into a wooden wall that you had to scale and climb over. Next came a giant garbage dumpster full of sludge that you had to crawl through followed by some pallet sled pulls (now that is something we have trained for!). We got a bit of a break as we maneuvered through the wooden balance beam and army crawled through their manmade tunnels. We finished off the course with the sky high cargo net climb and dove head first in to a pit of mud to stop the clock.
In just over an hour the Beaver Beaters completed their first ever Dirty Donkey and couldn't have been happier. We were muddy, soaking wet, bleeding and bruised but we were stoked. Fifteen minutes after we finished talks of Spartan Races and Tough Mudders ensued...
