A couple of firsts for me on this one: my first mud run and the first time that I’ve tried running a race as part of a group.
The photos shows some of us in our new club t-shirts!
This is the first time I’ve entered this event but, from what others have said, it was the muddiest it’s ever been. Obviously, I’ve run through mud before and I’ve also experienced the occasional path where it’s hard to pull your feet out of the gloop but this is the first time that my trail shoes really proved their worth.
Significant sections of the course were covered in a couple of inches of runny mud on top of, well, firmer mud. I did slide around a bit but I was rock solid compared to one of our group who was running in road shoes. To be fair, he only fell over once in the entire 8 miles however, he had to do a lot of arm waving in order to remain upright. One thing that I found early on was that trying to put on a sudden burst of speed didn’t work very well; instead of propelling me forwards, my foot would just slip! The rest of the course was a mixture of some tarmac sections and some gravel road with puddles. A lot of these puddles were the full width of the road so dry feet wasn’t an option!
Although we were aiming to run this as a group, we ended up splitting into two groups. Towards the end, I felt that my presence was pushing some of the group to go beyond their limits so I headed off on my own. A final sprint along the grassy finish straight went well once I’d remembered to pick up the pace gradually. I think that having trained up for a marathon gave me a significant advantage in this race.
This was a couple of weeks ago now, so I’ve been slow in putting this report together!
