Obstacle Course Racing: On Mud, Prep, and Gear

When I ran my first obstacle course race (OCR) during August 2011, I had no idea how to dress or what to bring. Thanks to the fabulous ladies over at Spartan Chicked, and through my own trial and error, I've come up with the following tips for getting dirty:

GEAR

Shoes

Most of the OCRs I've run are trail runs with at least some hill running. Regular road running shoes are not going to give you the traction or stability you need. In addition, most OCRs have at least one, if not more, mud pits and, more than likely, several obstacles that involve getting your shoes wet. I ran my first OCR in road shoes and I was slipping and sliding all over the place. Once those shoes got wet - well, it was like I had two weights hanging off of my feet. For this reason, I strongly encourage people to invest in good trail running shoes that drain well. As a forefoot striker, I love the Merrell Pace Glove - light, great fit, nice traction, drains like a dream, and comes out of the washing machine looking fantastic. Inov-8s also get some great reviews from the OCR crowd.

Clothes

For my first OCR, I wore a sports bra, athletic shorts, and a brown tank top. As soon as that tank top got wet, it got heavy. Once it got muddy, it was worthless and a pain to wear. By the time I crossed the fnish line, the tank was down to my knees (no joke!). Lesson learned: no cotton! I have an OCR "outfit" that I wear for all OCR consisting of dark-colored moisture-wicking pieces. My typical uniform is a black CW-X tank, black CW-X 3/4 or full-length pants, Patagonia moisture-wicking underwear, and New Balance moisture-wicking socks. For the Carolinas Beast, I also wore a black moisture-wicking, long-sleeved compression top that I bought at Target. Why do I dress this way? One, you don't have to worry about stains when you wear all dark colors. Carolina clay stains something awful, but since I'm pretty much wearing all black, you can't tell. Two, moisture-wicking fabric will not weigh you down the way cotton will after you get wet. Some people laugh when I tell them that I also wear moisture-wicking underwear, but whether you've got 3 miles or 13 miles ahead of you, you'll be glad that your panties won't be carrying muddy water the whole way! Third, I wear pants instead of shorts because having something to cover your knees during barbed wire crawls can be an absolute godsend. In addition, longer pants protect your inner legs from splinters when going over or through wooden obstacles and protect against rope burns on obstacles like the Tyrolean traverse.

Gloves

There is some controversy in the OCR world about wearing gloves. Some people feel like they are a pain and get in the way. Personally, I like wearing fingerless gloves, like lifting gloves, in order to protect your palms and lower part of your fingers. I will say that I took them off in order to do the monkey bars at the Carolinas Beast so I could grip the bars the better, but all-in-all, I was happy to be wearing them for most of the race. Wearing gloves is definitely a personal choice, but if you do choose to wear them, choose lightweight gloves that will drain water easily.


POST RACE GEAR

So, you've gotten down and dirty, and now it's time to clean up. What do you do? I always pack a bag of essentials so that I can get as clean (as possible) after the race and prior to the ride home. What's in my bag?

• A change of dark-colored clothes (including dark underwear and socks) in a plastic bag. When you're muddy, you'll be glad that your clean clothes are protected by a black bag. And when you've cleaned off at the race, you'll still be dirty, so make sure you wear something that either won't stain or you don't mind if it gets stained.
• 2-3 kitchen sized garbage bags for your dirty items
• Extra shoes or sandals
• Extra pairs of contact lenses and a small bottle of saline solution in a Ziploc bag. I wear contacts and have managed to get mud or dirt in my eyes at several OCRs. An extra pair of contacts was the difference between utter misery and being able to enjoy post-race festivities in comfort.
• Sunscreen. Once that protective layer of mud is gone, you will need some protection from the sun.
• 2 towels. It goes without saying that these should be towels you don't mind staining. I bring two towels because water pressure at the hose down stations vary, and you may need to towel-off a bunch of mud with one towel and then clean off again with a second towel in order to get somewhat clean. Also, it's nice to have an extra towel to stand on if the ground is very muddy in the changing area.
• Ibuprofen. Because you never know!
• Sweatshirt. As with water pressure, water temperature in the hose down area can vary. Combine a cold wash down with a decent wind (like at the Virginia Spartan Super), and you will be grateful to have a warm sweatshirt to slip on.

EXTRA TIPS

• Use a dark towel to dry off with after your first real shower, or you will run the risk of staining your towel
• Wear dark panties or a pantiliner after the OCR. There's no nice way to put it, so I'll put it like this: Mud goes EVERYWHERE ladies. It does not discriminate. And it eventually comes out. Enough said.
• Body Glide is your friend. I coat the bottom of my feet with it in order to avoid developing blisters or hot spots from running with wet and muddy socks.

I hope to have a recap of the 2012 Carolinas Beast up soon!

When There Are No Words

I know I haven't written in a while - 4 weeks to be exact. It's because while I had things I wanted to say, there was one post that needed to be written before I could say anything else, and I wasn't ready to write that post just yet.

You see, as I was finishing up my last post, my 14-year-old dog, Wicket, started aimlessly wandering around the downstairs, seeming confused. The husband and I noticed that his breathing seemed off. Husband offered Wicket a dog treat and for the first time ever, Wicket refused it. We petted Wicket and he walked into his crate and laid down.

He never got back up again.

The next morning, as I was getting dressed, my husband told me that Wicket had passed away in his sleep. And even though I knew it was coming, it still hurt so much.

There were no words. Just tears. Lots of tears.

But a month after losing my sweet furbaby, there are now words. And they need to be written before I can write others.

I adopted Wicket from the shelter when he was 8 weeks old. It was January 15, 1997. I didn't want to pay the pet deposit for my apartment, so my friend Josh, who lived in a house, technically adopted the puppy for me. I had gone to the shelter earlier that day and saw a cage full of puppies, along with their mother. I actually had picked out a different puppy - the runt of the litter - figuring he might be the easiest to care for. When Josh returned to shelter for the adoption, the runt was gone. Josh called me up and asked me what he should do. I told him to use his discretion (Josh wanted to be a vet at that time) and pick out the best pup that was there. As he later told me, he returned to the cage and one black and white spotted puppy came flying up to the door, trying to lick him maniacally.

That puppy was Wicket.

Up until then, I had never had a pet - I had never had to take care of anything other than myself. It was a learning experience. But I took care of Wicket as much as he took care of me. Through thick and thin, Wicket was always there for me, always  ready to curl up to me or lick the tears off of my face. I called him, amongst other things, my "baby-dog." He was my furbaby. And I was his mom.

In time, real children came along, and poor Wicket found that he was no longer my priority. He still enjoyed laying at my feet or playing ball in the backyard, and he was always up for a good rawhide. As my kids grew, he loved hanging out underneath the dinner table and I found I never had to worry about cleaning up the floor!

But time kept moving forward, and my baby-dog grew older. The dog who used to love chasing tennis balls for hours started having trouble running. He stopped caring about squeaky toys. He stopped being as excited about eating. His black muzzle and spots started becoming more and more white. He slowed down.

And then, one night, he stopped.

It's been almost one month since I hugged his lifeless body and kissed his head, saying goodbye. And even now, one month later, there are tears rolling down my face as I write this post. The pain is not as sharp, not as acute, but it is still there. The loss still hurts.

He was my sweet boy, my Wicket-Ewok, my insane ball dog. He was the dog who attacked a watermelon and barked at a jalapeno pepper. He was the dog who let me hold him tight after I lost my first pregnancy. He was the dog who protected me when we were confronted by an off-leash dog on a trail.

He was my dog. And now he is gone.

Gone, but not forgotten.

I love you Wicket. Thank you for sharing your life with me. I will never forget you.

Rest in peace.

Mid-Atlantic Spartan Super 2012 - the update

First, I need to apologize for not updating sooner! Things have been crazy busy with work (I work for myself and my business is expanding). I think I may finally be done with the working around-the-clock thing, and things have started settling down.

Now...on to the Super Spartan update!

The Super Spartan was advertised as an 8+ mile obstacle course. But, as those of us who do Spartan series races know, the pre-race estimations are pretty darn poor. All said and done, the official distance estimate was around, oh, 10.5 miles.

Considering my longest distance to that point had been 6.2 miles, I ended up in a bit of a hurt at the end.

I ran (or should I say, walked) the Spartan with my friend Shana. She and I did the Spartan Sprint together and the South Carolina USMC Mud Run together. Shana has had a bit of a rough summer with her lungs, so we both knew this race would be slower than we would have liked in general.

Little did we know just how slow it would be.

All Clean and Smiling Pre-Race

We were in the 9:30 wave on Saturday. We lined up at the back of the wave (I mean, really, who were we kidding if we lined up closer to the front) and started off at a leisurely pace. I was a spirit leader in high school, and I'm sure Shana figured out pretty quick why I was good at leading cheers. I'm just lucky she didn't bean me in the head.

We went through the first couple of obstacles - over and under barricades (some through barricades). Under some nets. No problem. The course was set up on an old horse steeplechase run, so we then ended up going up and down the obstacles that horse would have jump. Being all of 5'2" (and only used to running on 2 legs) I had a slight disadvantage compared to the average competitor on the course, but I did just fine anyways.

After the first set of horse obstacles, we came to a hill trail that we had to climb. We met up with some other racers while in this area who we thought would be running at our pace, so we all agreed to stick together and  do the entire race. As Shana and I quickly learned, things are not always as they seem. While our compatriots were very nice, they were not as interested in running as we were. And so, as it turned out, we ended up walking, rather than running, most of the race.

Let's just say, lesson learned for the future, and move on from that, shall we?

More horse obstacles (over 3 dozen) and then we came to the barbed wire crawl. It must have been at least the length of a football field. And there were hills. I thought I came through pretty unscathed until a few nights later when the husband was scratching my head and found a definite scab on my scalp from a close-encounter with the barbed wire. Oops.

More running. Then the monkey bars around the 4th mile. At the Carolinas Sprint,  I made the first rung, and that was it. I wiped my muddy hands off on the grass and started swinging. I made it halfway across, and then I hit a patch of mud on a rung and bam. It was 30 burpees for me.

There were more hills after that.My calves started giving me warning signs on those hills and I started popping Sports Beans, trying to keep my calves from mooing too loudly.

More obstacles. Wall climbing. The women had slats to help them out, and I got over with no issue.

Next big obstacle was the log balance. Stumps about 2.5 to 3 ft high were spaced across a patch of field, and we had to jump from one to another and cross the field. I had successfully completed this at Rugged Manic in May, so I wasn't too scared. I made it across with no problem. The guy next to me channeled Daniel LaRusso on the last stump and did the crane off of it.

Cargo nets followed. I love cargo nets. Honestly, I do. Up and down. Up and down. Big smile on my face.

Tractor flip was next, around mile 6. There were men's and women's tires. I came. I saw. I flipped. On to the next obstacle.

The next obstacle was the Hercules pull. Basically, pulling a weighted bucket using a rope and a pulley. I used a trick I learned on the Spartan Chicked Facebook page to conquer this one - using my hand to "tie off" the load as I pulled on it in order to make it less likely to slip through my fingers. 

More running in the sort-of manner. I'm sure all of my "teammates" wanted to bean me as I encouraged them to run a little bit more.

Next was the sand-bag carry. Females had to carry a 20-lb sandbag (men had a heavier weight) up and over boulders, under trees, and across a trail. For a muddy mommy, it was a piece of cake. Unlike carrying a toddler, the sandbag rested nicely on my shoulder and did not kick or scream the whole time. Bonus: It did not pull my hair, either.

More pseudo-running. Then a lovely high cargo net. *aahhh*

The next obstacle was a new one. We had to put a rubber band around our legs and hop over obstacles. Having had two children, this was the obstacle that proved to be harder for my bladder control muscles than my leg muscles. Let's just say, I fought the law of gravity, and the law won.

Next up - climbing muddy hills followed by climbing a soaped-up incline wall. Not an easy feat, but one that  I proudly accomplished without any help.

By this point, I was having to stretch out my poor calves after every obstacle. Cramps were constantly threatening me. I had shared more Sports Beans than I should have and my calves were not happy with me.

The cement block pull was next. Basically, we had to pull a cement cinder block around a field by a chain. I had a sneaking suspicion we were paying for the privilege of tilling someone's land for them.

From here, we walked/ran to the last high wall. The volunteer stationed there warned us that lots of people had cramped going over the wall. And we pretty much all got added to the illustrious list. As I was perched on top of the wall, I was not sure if my calves would cooperate enough for me to come down. But they did, and I came down safely without help. I have to say that at least 75% of the people going over that wall cramped on it, judged by the screams I heard.

Good times, people, good times.

Finally, we made it to the last few obstacles, all centered around the viewing area. First up, the horizontal traverse wall.

Hangin' Tough

At the Carolinas Sprint, I fell off of the Traverse Wall on the second hold.  I was determined to do better at the Super. I carefully picked my way to the end and put my foot onto the last hold. A-ha! Victory at last. I held my hand out for the last hand hold and...

Wham! Down on the ground. Burpees for me.

So glad there were no children listening near by.

Next up was the spear throw. Yeah, who was I kidding. I knew there were burpees in my future.

Last major obstacle was the rope climb. Sure, I had accomplished it in the gym, but that had not been after covering over 10 miles. The bottom of the rope pit was filled with mud and water. I waded into the waist-high water and started my climb.

 Starting to Climb

To tell the truth, I was exhausted. I gave it my all. I fought through as much as I could. And I climbed a whole lot of the rope. But I got to a point where my leg muscles all simply said: "Hellz no!"

On the Way Down

I made it between one-half to three-quarters of the way up before I knew I was not going to make it. Again, far better than I had done at the Carolinas Sprint in March, but not completion.

I did my burpees and prepared to rush the gladiators at the end. Bam! Through both of them! Got my medal, smiled, and then -

The calves called it quits.

I went down with painful cramps in my left calf. For 5 minutes, I sat in the t-shirt area, massaging my calf and willing myself to stand up. Volunteers were kind enough to bring me bananas and sports drinks, and I did finally stand up and walk out of the finishers area. My friend Laurie took pictures. We all smiled. Things were good.

And then my right calf said," Screw this!"

Bam! I went down again. The cramping was so bad, my right foot was pulled in towards my calf. Laurie was nice enough to help me work out the cramp, and after 15 minutes, I could stand up again. 

So, I completed the race, which was my goal, even if it took a whole lot longer than I would have liked. I had a good time, but because I didn't push myself, honestly, I didn't feel a huge sense of accomplishment at the end.

I did learn some lessons, though, that I hope will help me as I prepare for the Carolinas Spartan Beast in October. First, I need to get some mileage on these legs! The Spartan Beast is advertised as between 10-12+ miles, which in Spartan Speak means probably 15 miles. I've started running again in preparation. Second, I need to fuel throughout the race better. I picked up some Cliff Shots Rox and used them on my 7-mile run last weekend - not bad! And three, I learned that unless I honestly push myself, completion won't feel all that sweet, because even if no one else knows it, I will know that I didn't try my hardest.

Now, if I could just get my calves on board...

It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday...

Have you ever had a wound that you just couldn't stop picking at, even though it hurt every single time you did it? If you haven't, then congratulations! - You are absolutely nothing like me.

Which may not be a bad thing necessarily. But I digress.

For the last two and a half days, I've had an emotional/psychological wound that I just can't stop picking at. I know I should - I know I should just step away - but I can't.

Let me explain. A Facebook page was started for my "class" in middle school. Call it a cohort, a bunch of kids who happened to born around the same time and ended up at the same school together - whatever. I was added to the group a couple of days ago, and I probably should have just politely left the group. But no,   I am one of those people who likes to poke that wound over and over again.

And my, oh my, do I have some crazy emotional wounds from middle school.

I know I said in my first post that I was going to be honest, but there are some things I still am not going to be upfront about. A good deal of that had to do with 2 out of the 3 years I was in middle school. A lot of stuff happened, a lot of it not good and beyond the pale of the typical awkward-pubescent-experience. But there are some things I am willing to be upfront about. Like having been bullied. My goodness, did some people have a field day with my awkward, giant-eyeglass-wearing, no-fashion-sense, head-always-in-a-book self.

There's a thread on that FB page about what your most embarrassing moment was in middle school. People have posted about various silly things they did that everyone laughed about. I have not contributed - no need to be Debbie Downer and point out that my most embarrassing moments were pretty much all instigated by the same people posting in that thread (or their friends).

Like I said, I really should stop poking.

I guess what makes things so much more painful is that my Older Boy is currently dealing with a bully. He starts kindergarten on Monday, and I have this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I look at his cheerful, bubbly self and think back to the little girl I used to be at that age - cheerful and bubbly. Before the bullies metaphorically knocked me to the ground.

I want to post on that board: "What the f*$k are you all smoking?!? Talking about how great junior high was? Or don't you all remember the nerds and peons you stomped into the ground with your comments and sneers?"

But that was over 20 years ago. Most of them have forgotten, I'm sure. Hell, I wish I could forget. One of the down sides to having a great memory is that you don't forget.

*sigh*

I've always wished that I could have stood up for myself more. That I would have stood up for myself more. I've wished that I could have said those things, as a 13-year-old, that I thought to say as a 20 or 30-something-year-old. I've grown up, gone on.

 I'm not that girl anymore

Mostly.

Maybe.

Or maybe she'll always be a part of me. A reminder, a remnant.

But I wish I could just forget and let go. Or at least just stop poking.

Motivational Moment #6

It sucks when life gets in the way of training (and blogging). Hoping this silly season will be over soon...1 week until the Mid-Atlantic Super Spartan and I am not ready...

Motivational Moment #5

I will never be the fastest or the strongest. But I will still be lapping everyone standing on the sidelines.

Motivational Moment #4

If you can get past the incorrect possessive, it's a pretty awesome sentiment.