Gettin' Dirty

A couple weekends back our family went down to Columbia, SC for a couple of days. On Friday night Heather went with the youth to the temple to do baptisms while I hung out with the kids.

Then on Saturday morning, we all went to a "race" that I participated in. I use the term race very loosely because while technically a timed race, most of those who ran would tell you the fun was what happened while you ran race. It was the largest Mud Run in the U.S. (almost 13,000 participants this year, split into 4-man teams) and was sponsored by the local Marine base. The 4.5 mile, 32 obstacle course included: climbing, jumping, wading, swimming, pulling, schleping, sqelching, and hefting your carcass in almost every way imaginable. We finished a respectable 106 out of 3138 teams in just under an 65 minutes. Here are a couple of photos of our team. Before:During:And after:

Mmmm...who needs a shower?!The race organizers also put on a kids mud run - smaller in scale but still full of hills, pools and trenches to get you wet, muddy and messy. :) Madelin and Halle ran the course multiple times (although it took Halle a few minutes to warm up to the idea of getting soaked and dirty). Meagan was bummed she was too young...but there's always next year!Though Meggie-moo didn't run, she wanted to get in on the picture action with her sisters and friends:And Kimball couldn't understand why anyone would want to get dirty on their own...we can only savor the short time until he finds a way to turn the back yard into his own reguar muddy playspace!For a fun youtube watch, you can see a clip of last year's race at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWwv8UCJZfc