Rugged Maniac

It's official...Mark and I are Rugged Maniacs!  We are sore, bruised, cut and we could both go a little while without seeing any mud....but we are Rugged and we most certainly are Maniacs. 

Saturday we spent the morning doing our normal thing.  Kids off to their various events, grabbing food when we could and hitting up a race along the way.  This particular race was The Rugged Maniac.  It's a 5K with 18 obstacles along the way.  Now just two weeks ago we did a race that involved some running and obstacles so we thought "Oh we got this....no problem."  Well, let me tell you.....it was NOT like any other race we had done before! 

Picture Eye of the Tiger playing right here

Clean picture before race

Dirty picture after

My knees don't look too bad here...but the next day they
were a mess

First off this was one of the bigger races we've done.  There were at least 1000 participants in the race and then twice as many spectators.  I should have known that a race drawing that many people there would be something fun to watch.  And the participants provided plenty to watch!  I say that because the obstacles were insane!  Lets see....a tire mountain, several half walls to get over, tunnels that took you underground and into total darkness, mud pits (it really seemed like half a mile of mud pits) a water pit with baffles to get over or under, one large a$$ slide to climb up and slide down, a couple full walls to get over, fire to jump over and the various cargo nets to climb up and then climb down.  Oh yea then there were logs standing up vertically so you could jump from one to another and then there was a large pipe that lowered you into a water pit and then once in the pit you had to pull yourself up through another pipe to get out...using a rope.  Did I mention barbed wire?  Plenty of that there.  Yea it was crazy....but AWESOME. 

After we all safely made it out of the torture chamber race arena we headed for the live bands and beer truck.  We could each have one free beer and after running, crawling and wading we all deserved it.  Christy came to watch and didn't seemed too excited to get a muddy hug...teenagers!  It was a great time.  We're already making plans to up the ante and shoot for a 10 mile obstacle course later this year.  So for sure we have the maniac part covered.