Muddy with a Buddy

This morning Tina and I were up at the crack of dawn to drive to San Jose for the Muddy Buddy . According to the directions we were supposed to be there by 7 am, but let me tell you, there were people still coming in at 7:30 and 7:45. We got there VERY early.

Yet, not early enough to score a small t-shirt. One of the things that really pisses me off is when these event people don't plan out their resources appropriately. I mean c'mon people, you think I'm out here for my health?!?! I'm here for the goodies and I don't like being short changed. And why bother asking me when I register what size I want if you're not going to have enough?!?! Anyway, the shirts are MEN'S sizes and they ran out of small. So it looks like either I have another night shirt, or Jeff gets a free tech-t.

And while I'm ranting, let me just mention how male-centric this race was. As I already mentioned, the shirts were men's sizes, but even more disgustingly, the men's waves all went out first, then co-ed (because, hey, at least there's one man) and the women get to go last. Wouldn't it have made more sense to send out the waves by age? So the short story is that we arrived soooo early and then we were in the second to last wave. Ugh. Ah, so this is why Tina and I do so many female friendly events. At least we aren't relegated to the back of the pack there!

Aside from all that testosterone favoritism, the race itself was SOOOOO fun. Well, all except the first part. But let me explain the premise. So, 2 person teams. One person starts out mountain biking, the second person starts out running. There is an exchange point with an obstacle after which you switch activities. The person that was biking now runs and vice versa. Continue for roughly 7 miles, with 4 switch points and a GIANT mud pit at the end. Fun, no?

The worst part was the first segment which poor Tina had to bike up. "Running" up it was bad enough, but biking was horrific. Very uphill. Most people were pushing the bikes it was so bad. Finally it leveled off and we came to the first obstacle, a small rock climbing wall. After that, my first biking segment which was mostly downhill, which was a relief, but since I'm such a chicken, I was riding the brake the whole time. It would really freak me out to hit the bumps and have the back of the bike bounce up. Then a sort of beam a-frame that you had to climb up and under and over. Then I was back to running. Tina passed me pretty quickly on the bike and offered water but I was still chugging along okay at that point. Next we arrived at a big inflatable obstacle with a cargo net to climb on one side then down the slide on the other. It looked pretty steep from the top....wheeeeeeeeee. Back onto the bike for another fairly downhill ride to a balance beam. Great, not like my legs are jello-ish or anything. If you fell, you had to start over. Luckily there was no falling on our team. Finally, we meet up at the end and do our crawl through the mud filled pit. My knees got a little scraped up because there were sticks or little rocks or something in the mud. Sheesh, they really need to have clean dirt mud. :-)

Off to the hoses we went for a quite lengthy rinse. Wow, it takes a while to get all that mud off. Back to the expo to pick up a few free goodies and what do we find?!? They already did the raffle! Or at least already handed out tickets and we didn't get one. Man, the organization of this thing really stinks. Thanks for sending us out next to last and then giving away the goods while we're still getting ourselves put back together!

Overall they get high marks for fun-factor but they definitely failed in both the organizational department and in female-friendliness. I hope they ask for feedback because I'd really like to help them improve so it's better when we do it next year. Right, T? :-)