Another early start to get to the lovely Boughton house, I'd organised to meet Marieke, to get the train over to Skipton and then travel up to the event site with Stuart. Of course after my day celebrating getting my results, I hadn't changed into my running gear, so ended up getting up to the eyes before I'd even started along with forgetting my towel, it was turning out to be one of those days. We waited near the change tent for the others to turn up, I'd put a post on facebook and no one had looked at it by the time we decided to use the bag drop. Stuart decided to wait for some people he had ran with last year. (as it turns out he waited till 12 and it took longer to get round the course)
We got into the warm up area and did the warm up thing and I noticed that my trainers had holes in them, which wasn't great. We got up to the starting area and Gil did the safety talk and the pledge reading, there were three others who were mayor's of A town, with my 19th I was in the top spot. We set off and hit creek crusade and the fella who was on his 18th caught up to us and we chatted for a bit, he was on his second lap, having done it in 2:45, which is pretty fast. given the terrain. We had skidmarked which was weird as it only had one to get over, then onto arctic enema. I decided to wear a hat that I'd bought at the phoenix festival back in 96. I took off the hat and held onto it and it was thorougly soaked, so of course it meant I couldn't hear anything being spoken, I found couple of bibs with pins still attached and used them to hold the sides of the hat up. We had a bit of a bottleneck at the second creek crusade with people walking through slowly, I noticed that people were have problems getting out of the water, which explains the speed.
We wound our way back over the field to cry baby which was quite stong but nothing too bad, for birth canal, they had put down carpet which made it easier to get through. We crossed another field and back round to bale bonds, which were two sets of bales two bales high. Not as challenging as Scotland but still, hard enough. Mud mile was pretty deep but had some good footholds, to get up and over, with a nice bit of mud between each mound. Through sewer rat and into a big pool of mud before heading down towards kiss of mud, the course had various parts of the course right next to each other, so it was quite easy for people to end up going the wrong way. Kiss of mud was really slippery on the hill to the obstacle, with lots of mud to crawl through, then really slippery trying to get back up the hill. We came upon a really long queue of people and noticed it was for a slide down a hill so as it was getting cold and Marieke didn't want to wait, we walked a bit further and walked down the side of the hill, mud slides are fun but not worth getting cold over.
Killa gorilla was up a hill twice and back down again before heading back up and along the top of the field, we could see people in the distance and after running past a body of water that had been used as an obstacle for the last two years and now no longer an option, which was a bit sad. We continued up hill and rounded to king of the swingers where we saw that the queue was enourmous, so decided that we wouldn't wait in the cold to do something we've already done. We got up to quagmire which was pretty deep and a bit of a climb out of the water and then across a huge pile of mud. We got to hero walls and someone had fallen off the one we were going to use, it looked like a nasty cut on the head. The walls were slick with mud and damp which made them scary to use. Then onto funky monkey which I managed to get to the second rung before landing in the water.
I bit of a climb up a road to cliff hanger which had no ropes but was still a challenging bit of a climb, before heading over the moors and back down again. Then we hit devil's beard and met John who was volunteering both days. Down a bit more hill to hold your wood which was back to long poles that needed teamwork to get round, as there was just two of us, we asked others for help but they were all too busy helping each other, which was a bit of a poor show, so we didn't do it properly. We ended up back at kiss of mud to do swamp stomp, which was really deep and thick mud. Back past killa gorilla and onto liberator and then pyramid scheme, I helped a few others after hooking my feet over the bar at the top. Round and down to a mud track and stream to do hero carry, I just carried Marieke the whole way making me a double hero. Then up an incline to balls to the wall for some reverse abseiling, then round the field to everest, but u after seeing the queues to do it, decided not to bother, then a short run to dead ringer and electroshock therapy, I had thought about doing it but decided to skip it, as I didn't fancy the rinse station, as the weather wasn't very warm.
Saturday was a great day, only spoiled by no one else being there to take part and the bottlenecks for some of the course, a great 19th Tough Mudder.
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