Gru's Crew (Race Recap)

Saturday morning arrived and it was time for Dirty Donkey, a 5k obstacle mud run.  Jay picked me up with Jenn in the van.  We then picked up Ed and Kerri before heading out to Spring Hill for the event.  At the turn off, we could see a few obstacles and the finish line.  Further down, we reached the parking area and met up with Bryan.  We then started work on our costumes.  $3.50 yellow tee's from Michael's, blue duck tape as suspenders and 3D glasses with the front frames spray painted silver and the lenses popped out made up our minion costumes.  The night before I also made myself a cyclops eye for a bit of variety.  We geared up headed down the road away from the entrance towards the starting area.

Bryan, Ed, Jenn, Kerri, Jay, Me

Along the way, we saw racers running along a path in our direction.  Many people pass by recognizing us as minions and told us how awesome our costumes were or just shouted out MINIONS!.  We even passed by Ace Burpee (a local radio host) who finished his race and wished us good luck and to have fun.

It was about a 10 min walk to the starting area and we used the Porta-a-potties.  Problem, my drawstring to my shorts broke with one end stitched inside securely.  I had to wrap it around my waist and secure it the best i could.  It worked ok, but I had to keep tugging up my shorts.  Wasn't too big of a deal as I was wearing compression shorts underneath.  Everyone, but me, had been wearing the glasses, as I was wearing the cyclops goggle.  Some had removed them and had them resting on their heads when I noticed silver on the bridges of their noses.  Haha, some of the paid had rubbed off the glasses.  Seeing as I was the only one not wearing them, Jay jokingly accused me of pranking them.  Would have been a good prank if it was intended.  Anyways, we waited for our heat to start and observed the other team's costumes.  Very few stood out, except a couple dressed fully in a unicorn and zebra costume.  Lots of matching t-shirts with their team names written on them and matching accessories like tutus, bandanas, knee high socks, etc.  Many more people acknowledged our costumes.  Felt good.  Jay then nominated me to be our costume designer for future races. 

11:30 arrived and it was time to get marshaled in.  We waited at the starting line for the horn and we were off.  The first obstacle was the hay bails, which were easily scaled. Further down, we had to crawl through a mud pit on our hands and knees.  We got to a set of hurdles.  I jumped over the first and saw people crawling under every second one.  There were no instructions, but I heard someone say that this was the over under, so I followed suit.  Speaking with a friend afterwards, she thought they were just hurdles and jumped over them all.  Who's to say what they actually were.  After this, my memory kind of lapses.  Not sure the order of the rest or if I'm missing any, but I'll try and recollect as many as I can.  There was definitely a wall with a horizontal rope that you had to hold onto and shimmy your way across.  I was unable to do it, so in order to bypass it, I had to do 10 burpees.  Moving on, there were balance beams, which were easy enough to do.  If you fell off, you had to restart.

We arrived at the main road and had a long run towards the hills.  Here we passed by more people walking from the parking lot to the starting area.  We got even more acknowledgements of our minion costumes.  We cleared a cut out area in the chain link fence and ran up a hill.  This was where I started to slow down.  It was a long winding path to a series of tires that we had to step through.  We neared the top which featured a cargo climb.  One side was closed off because of an injured girl that was being attended to.  It appeared to be a leg injury, knee or ankle maybe.  We ran down the other side of the hill.  The terrain was rocky and steep.  Was definitely more difficult than it sounds, but the rocks were pretty hard on my feet as I was wearing my vibrams.  We ran right and then up the hill again.  Not fun.  At the top was a high wall which we had to scale.  These strong guys were sitting on top assisting people up.  One guy crossed his arms and grabbed a girl's hands.  He lifted her up while twisting her and sitting her on the edge at the top.  My turned came and I tried stepping on the foot hold, but slipped off, unable to grab the top.  They guy on top coached me and said to try again and grab the ledge.  I jumped up off the foot hold and realized there was 2x4 secured at the top to hold onto.  I was impressed that I managed to pull myself up without any assistance.  The other side had foot holds and ropes to climb down.

Continuing on, there was a slip and slide going down the side of the hill.  Even with the fire hose, I couldn't get enough momentum to go down and had to use my hands and feet to push myself down.  At the bottom, we had to drag a pallet on a rope down a stretch, around a tire and back.  They said one per team, but split our team into 2, so we were 3 per pallet.  Was kind of silly, but we got through it.  Great, one more climb to the top of the hill.  Here was a large crate filled with muddy water.  7 golf balls were hidden at the bottom and if you found one, you won a $25 gift card to the Running Room.  I made a half assed attempt to find one as I crossed the crate.  I jumped out and followed my team to a pair of long tents that went up hill.  The clay we crawled through had formed tracks to follow.  It was actually really hard on my knees and I attempted a few times to raise up off my knees to my feet without my back hitting the inside top of the tent.  As I exited the tent, there was inexplicably a crowd of spectators.  This confused my team mates and they ran right instead of left and around the ropes.  I followed them and we hopped the rope to the final obstacle.  We arrived to another mud pit which had a chain link fence covering it.  So we entered the pit on our backs and pulled ourselves through by grabbing the chain links. It was a muddy run to the finish line, but not before we took one group pic by one of the official photographers.  At the finish line we were congratulated by volunteers handing out orange ho rags (buffs).

My bib and finishers Dirty Donkey Ho Rag (or buff)

We grabbed a free vitamin water and walked over to the area where firemen were hosing people down.  We got hosed down by freezing cold water the best we could, but we were still very muddy.  Everyone's duck tape was all flapping off by now, so they ditched it, while mine was still intact.  We walked towards the parking lot and I got my phone to take some after pics.  Unfortunately we were no longer at our muddiest.

Back - Bryan, Ed, Jay - Front - Kerri, Me, Jenn

Just me, post race.

We cleaned up the best we could with Jay's baby wipes and changed. Jay and Ed had fabricated some make shift shorts out of garbage bags to protect the van which looked more like giant diapers.  Seeing as the beer gardens, etc was quite the trek, the majority voted we just pick up fast food on the way home instead.  I would have liked to check out the festivities, maybe run into other racers I knew, but was no big deal.  Bryan departed to his vehicle and we lined the car with blankets and towels and left.  Kerri's mom was going to pick her up to go to the lake and we waited for her closer to the entrance.  Kerri left with her mom and we headed back to Winnipeg.  We ended up at St Vital Centre and picked up food from the food court.  Jay got Subway while the rest of us got pad thai.  Jay then dropped us off as I retired to my home to properly shower and eat my lunch.