My Ugly Mudder 2006

This year's Ugly Mudder brought much apprehension for me and some freakin' cold weather. Apprehension because I know I have not been training as I should be and cold weather because... err... well bush's environmental policies are throwing the worlds climate into a manic-depressive state... or maybe cuz it was middle of February... both feasible... but I blame bush.

Sunday morning, I met up with John from PR and we made the trip out to reading to the Reading Liederkrantz, which is a German singing and sports club. Supposedly when we showed up, the locals (or at least a guy at the race, he may not have been a local) said it was 17 degrees out. I figured it was perfect shorts weather. I feel more comfortable running in shorts than pants... i feel all constricted in pants and i couldn't allow that constriction to hamper what was planned to be an exemplary performance. After registration, we sat around wasted time and one of the other people running the race said something about there being 500 steps in the middle of the course... which I believe was bit of a hyperbole. it is true that there are stairs, but I would guess on the order of 30-40 steps.

anywho... the crowds were enormous, supposedly 860 people started the race. I probably started about mid-pack which was extremely frustrating. The course was changed from last year to help with the crowds... about a .25 mile was added to the beginning of the race before entering the trail. This was a great idea because the crowds did thin out a bit by the time we hit the trail... but even still... up the first hill i was ready to start pushing people off the trail... so I ran off the trail and passed a bunch of people. about a mile in John, who is much faster than I but got caught up in all the crowds, finally passed me.

The course was really hilly, which was the same as last year, but a significant change from last year was the missing 4 inches of snow to run on exposing an extremely rocky trail. About 4 miles in, I was rolling my ankles almost every few steps. The more tired they got the more often i was rolling them. I need to focus on doing my ankle strengthening exercises before the next trail race I do, because I think that was a major problem in the double trouble as well.

The last hill was again ridiculous with people yelling at the top. I was on all fours trying to scramble my way up... i finally made it after about a minute of struggling and ran to the finish line. My time was 1:08:16 which gave me a 77th place finish out of 849 finishers. This time was about 3 minutes slower than last year, but with the extra quarter mile and the state of my fitness, I am pretty happy about it. John also did really well and pulled off a 28th place finish, which is especially impressive for his first trail race ever. nice work!!