…or not as the case may be! This week’s summary of my training for the Pilgrim Pacer Half-Marathon in November is devoted to the 4th annual Mud and Muck 5K and 1 mile Mud Dunk. Sponsored by the Trail Nerds, this family friendly “clean” fun event raises money for Harvesters, a local distributor of food for those in need. I’ve long been a fan of Harvesters Community Food Network, it is a company that benefits many of the clients who get services from my agency. And of course I love the Trail Nerds, so participation in this was a foregone conclusion. I decided, however, not to participate in the race this time (saving my energy for next week’s 8 mile trail run) and instead donned my “volunteer” cap again. And as I expected, it was a great pleasure and a tremendous amount of fun.

I joined the head honcho of the Trail Nerds, Ben Holmes, on Friday night to set up the flags across the mud pit and then went out early Saturday to help set up. In the process I met more wonderful people including Mel, Coco and Matt. When the event started, the pit looked as it did in the picture that begins this post. When all was said and done, it looked like this:

I had the honor of staffing the pit during the run and this is just a small taste of what happened between the “before” and “after” pictures:

[Note: It is more fun if you start these and then open them up full screen. I hadn’t used my phone to take video before and had I been using the ol’ bean I would have turned is sideways to get a better wide-screen view, so my apologies.]

It was SO MUCH FUN! The very first little girl who jumped into the pit sank about half way in and lost her shoe. She was the first of many who lost shoes and eventually had to abandon all hope of finding them. Interestingly enough, someone found her shoe later on in the day as they dug for their own. This too was a trend that continued throughout the day. All manner of technique was employed, some more effective than others, to enjoy the mud while not becoming a permanent fixture in the pit. And when the last person had their fun and disappeared round the bend to head to the clean-up area, what remained was evidence that the pit takes no prisoners: shoes and socks, barely identifiable as such, littered the ground. And far down the path towards the finish line signs of the battle remained:

The campus at Unity Village was a beautiful area to run in. I will be returning there in the future to put some training time in. We saw deer and geese when setting things up on Friday night and the trails that meander through the woods promise a great deal of serene running and interaction with nature:

The weather was great for the event and I felt honored to be a part of it. Thanks to all who participated, it was fun watching you enjoy the mud pit.

For those interested, I got less running in this week than I would have liked but did a lot of strength training and feel confident that the week ahead will be another good one, to be capped off with an 8 mile trail run, my longest yet.

Have a great, healthy week everyone!