Let's Get Dirty!

Have I ever mentioned that I have crazy friends who convince me to do things that are against my better judgement? Once again, they led me on an adventure I never would have considered before I met them...The Dirty Dash (a 5K obstacle course/run through the mud).  I was not only grossed out by the idea of slogging through the mud, I was worried about not being strong enough to conquer the obstacles.  "Don't worry, we'll help you!" my kind friends said.  "It will be fun!" "We'll all stick together!" "Just think of the photo ops!" were their other convincing arguments.  When we signed up for this event several months ago, it was before we knew Mariann (far right) would be moving to Texas at the end of August.  It was very fitting that this was our farewell "Fantastic Four" event.  The majority of the pictures that follow were taken by "Little Blue," Mariann's intrepid camera who has documented our many adventures over the past four years.

Here we are, excited and nervous, and CLEAN, before the start.

When I told Kylie I was going to do the Dirty Dash, she was immediately on board.  She signed up her good friend, Erin as well.  Gretchen's daughter, Julia, Brooke's son, Jared, Mariann's husband and son, Jimmy and Izaac also joined our crazy team.

Groups started the "race" every twenty minutes in heats of about 200 people.  As we all herded together at the Start line, the announcer told us it wasn't really a race since they weren't timing us.  He went over the rules, which included, "If you see someone trying to skip an obstacle, push them in the mud!" 

We were feeling a little too clean, and decided to dirty things up a bit...

Here we go!  This was the only part we really ran, for maybe 1/2 a mile at the beginning.  I was starting to think, "This isn't so bad, not too muddy..."

Then we got to the mud river, where Brooke showed her rule following abilities by trying to push down anyone in her way!

This "river" smelled disgusting!

The first of the real obstacles...

Kylie set the standard by swimming through.

A tire obstacle...not too hard...

Kylie decided she wasn't getting dirty enough,

so she face planted in the muck.

Slogging up a hill, fortunately there was a cargo net to help us up.  It was getting really muddy and slippery!

The slip and slide was a lot of fun.  Kylie was a little upset about getting washed off, though!

At the bottom of the slip and slide, about 1/2 way through the race.

This was one of the more challenging obstacles.  We had to get ourselves over about a dozen of  these slippery, slimy, plastic pipes, under which was a disgusting river of sludge.  I saw one guy swimming under the pipes, I won't say "under water" because it definitely wasn't water, but he was fully submerged.  Ewww!

The amazing thing to me was that once we were fully muddy, we loved it!

This is near the end of the course.  We had to wait in a line for the next obstacle, so we took the time to pose.

If you haven't guessed by now, Kylie LOVED being muddy!  I have a picture of her when she was about three, sitting in the dirt in front of our townhouse in Palatine, covered head to foot in dirt...she hasn't changed a bit!  If I can find the picture, I'll add it for comparison.

Jimmy and Mariann (she's chewing gum! ewww!)

I felt a lot muddier than I look.  You can't really see, but on top of my head is a solid mass of mud, thanks to my good friend Brooke.

This was a hard obstacle, too.  It was so muddy and slippery that it made it challenging to get over the top without loosing your grip.

While we waited for the final obstacle, Kylie and Julia had the brilliant idea of rolling down this hill...you can't really see it, but there's a huge rock right under Kylie's hip.  She got a massive bruise!

This was the hardest one for me...Kylie was so sweet and helped me over.

Almost to the finish, all together like we promised!

We did it!  And I had such a great time.  I'm so glad my crazy friends convinced me to loosen up and give it a try. 

Jared wasn't able to run with us because he sprained his ankle, but fortunately Kylie is a generous friend and knew he wanted to share in the mud.

Check out this pile of nastiness!  People could donate their shoes...yuck!  I took mine home and washed them.  After several power-washings, they actually got pretty clean and now they're my yard work shoes.

This is the shower area.  Kind of creepy, but I was so muddy that I didn't care.  It felt so good to spray all the muck out of every crease and crevice, well, as much as you can without fully undressing!

Another thing to check off the bucket list!  I don't know that I'll ever do another Dirty Dash, but knowing my friends, they'll come up with something equally crazy next time!