Dirty Dash!

I talked Landon into doing his first race ever, and it just so happened to be the Dirty Dash.  If you've never heard of it, you should go to this website http://www.thedirtydash.com/ and for a week or so they should have a video from our race.  Scroll down and you can see the course we did.  Our secret obstacle turned out to be these rope ladder things.  It was pretty great.  

We started out going up a steep part of the mountain (a ski slope in the winter) that was complete mud, with huge sprinklers right on us.  After slipping the whole way up, I was already feeling dead and I told Landon "Just go!" so he could run ahead and not go slow just for me.  We ran on a mountain trail (lots of hills) until we had to jump over hay bails, including one that was two bails high.  After some more running there were muddy tunnels.  Keep in mind that every obstacle had a sprinkler and mud about shin deep beforehand--which can get you stuck and make it hard to jump.  Later on there were wooden walls to get over, more hills, a trail of tires to do high knees through, and Landon even saw a ginormous dead fish by the marshy lake area we ran by.  Then it was back up the mountain and the netted ladder, down a huge slip n' slide, and through the mud pool (under the flags), over the trough and to the finish line.  Harder than any 5K I've ever done, but definitely more exciting! Landon came back and went through the mud pit again so he could cross the finish line with me.  I think he just liked the mud...It was a blast! 

The "Before" shot

Behind us you can see the mud pit with the yellow flags you had to go under.  We found it was easier to just swim than try to walk through the mud.  Up the hill you can see the slip n' slide.

"After" It would be better if you could see my nasty shoes.

They were prepared with freezing cold showers to hose off.

We were lucky enough to get into the first heat, so the course was not quite as bad as later in the day, but by the end everyone was completely gross so it didn't matter. Our times were pretty bad so I'm not going to post them, ha, but I was just glad I finished.  We might get the photographer's pics that they took throughout the course, but they are not available online yet.  It was a good cause, which made me feel better about paying the entry fee.  They give most of the money to the Leukemia foundation, and then they clean off shoes and donate them to people in Ghana.  Landon was smart and wore his water shoes, so the mud and water dripped off, while mine weighed about a ton with all the mud and water by the end of the race.

If anyone ever wants to try it, they do team races in Seattle!  We should get a team together and help each other through all the obstacles.  They even do a piglets run for kids, ha.  :)