My Washing Machine Was Taxed: The Dirt Yard Dash

It was a somewhat spontaneous decision on our part to show up for the Dirt Yard Dash, which is put on by the church  where our neighbor at the top of the hill works.  For the last several years, this church, which sits on a plot of forest and land with steep topography has created a fantastic and significant obstacle course that involves a lot of mud.  Our neighbors at the top of the hill and halfway down the street have participated before.  Dr. Peds said, “I think I’ll take the kids.” I said, “Go for it!” I planned on staying home and enjoying a quiet house, but curiosity got the best of me, and I’m very glad I didn’t miss out on the action.

There were many hundreds of people who participated in the race.  (What a great outreach for a church . . . you should have seen all the college students!).  Runners were divided up into heats, and every 20 minutes or so they would unleash another group onto the course.  They started with the “minis”:  kids aged 8-12.  The neighbor kids at the top of the hill ran in the first heat.  I missed seeing them because I didn’t know they were running.  Our kidlets and the neighbors half way down the street were in the second heat.  I really had NO idea what a course this was.  I figured the kids would just run a small little race and maybe hop through a bit of mud at the end or something.  NOPE.  The kids ran probably about half , maybe more, or the adult course, and it involved running up and down super steep hills, traversing long stretches of hip high mud (at least hip high on a kid), carrying logs, jumping in a sack, crawling through tunnels, scaling walls, climbing up spiderwebs, and to be truthful, I’m not even SURE what else, because lots of the course was off in the forest where it was hard to be a spectator.  Plus, I had no idea where they were actually going, so I didn’t even know which way to go to try to see the action.  The grown ups and teenagers had a whole additional section of the course, which for them was a 5K distance, I think.  It involved navigating a dumpster of muddy ice water, sliding down a mud slip and slide on a steep incline, scaling a creek on a monkey bar contraption and lots of other things.  I didn’t even know that a whole section of the course could have been watched until I was driving out of the parking lot at the church and saw a whole additional part of the race.

Here’s Mr. SP, clean and dry before they started running.  By the time he got to the mud pit he had already been up and down multiple hills and through a bunch of soggy mud up to his waist.  He got to the pit that had to be crawled under, and turned around and did a back flop into the mud.  He was planning on doing the backstroke, I think, but that didn’t work out, and he was so weighed down by mud at that point that he couldn’t do anything but swim.  And swim.  And swim.  He spent a long time in the mud pit actually.  He was stuck.  Some people scooted right through.  I think it was all about technique.  The very best technique seemed to be rolling, actually.

It looked like he was about to stand up at this point, but he actually couldn’t get the right leverage and had to slunk back down and swim some more.  All of his friends and sister passed him, which made him a little grumpy for a bit.

By the time The Banana got to the mud pit she had completely lost a shoe, so she ran the rest of the course with one bare foot.  There were countless people barefoot at this point.  It turns out that mud racers duct tape their shoes to themselves.  Who knew?  She’s such a trooper.  She did not let a lack of footwear slow her down.  Later she told me that the shoe had fallen off three times before it was lost for good because she just couldn’t find it at the bottom of the mud.  

Apparently slogging through mud is much, much more exhausting than I ever considered, because by the time they carried the logs and got to the bunny hop, they were so tired they could barely hop, and they were only half way through.  

After this they were back in the woods, and I missed some of the other obstacles I could have watched because I didn’t know where to look.  Here is the crew coming up the final hill.  

The lady announcing everything at the race had the PERFECT calm, matter of fact voice.  “Oh, here she comes, without a shoe!”  she’d say.  “Oh, this one lost both shoes!”  “Keep on truckin’ Sweetie pie!  Do you want a banana?”  Mr. Sneaky Pants wanted a banana, of course. 

They were in line for a hose.  Bless the volunteers who took shifts running the garden hose.  They had an absolute swarm of kids to hose down.  A little for you.  A little for you.  A little for you.  It took a series of multiple rinses for each kid.  I’m not sure I could have stood inside a swarm of muddy kids for so long.   Our grown ups ran at the same time.  They did terrifically. I was watching our littlest neighbor from up the street.  After her parents slogged through the mud pit, I asked her where we should go next.  She had run in the first heat (sneaking in even though she was only almost seven), and she looked at me with glee and said, “Let’s go watch my dad squeeze through a little tube.”  She led the way, and off we went.

Mr. Trouble on Feet though the race was the most exciting event to watch ever.  He was a little frustrated that he couldn’t participate officially.  At the end he said to Dr. Peds, “I didn’t even get to be muddy.”  Dr. Peds decided that could be remedied, so when all was said and done, he went down to the crawling mud pit and let Mr. TOF gleefully  crawl through.  I missed seeing that because I had left for an errand at the grocery store.  I bet it was spectacular.  He lost both shoes but found them again.

Our garden hose, shower and washing machine all had a busy night.  Next year Dr. Peds plans on participating, and YaYa is working on finding a buddy to run in the teenager division with her.