The Hippo Song

Mud! Mud! Glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood
So follow me, follow
In to the hollow
And there we shall wallow in glorious mud!

Today was the Muddy Buddy. Brian's parents came into town for the occasion. They wanted to see their boys do their first race together.
We got up at 4:45 and prepared ourselves for the race. Fortunately we had done most of the preparations the night before. We set off at 5:30am for somewhere between Dripping Springs and Johnson City.
Brian and Kev's age group started first, then all of the other age groups followed in 6 minute increments. I got their start on video. My age group started at 8:12am. Jenn started off on the bike and I started on foot. The obstacles along the way were an inflatable wall (about 12 feet), with a cargo net up the side to climb up, a wall to throw yourself over, another cargo net, but this time free standing, monkey bars, and of course, the icing on the cake... a giant mud pit.
This race was definately more challenging than the last one we did, I felt like I'd had an awesome workout and I definately felt like I did a good job, I think my muddy buddy did a great job, too. . The best part of the race for me was the mud pit. I think the reason I like it is because I'm usually a tidy and clean person, and getting into a mud pit breaks away from that norm for a few moments. I feel strangely liberated and free as I wallow in the mud pit. I think of all the people in the pit when I was in it, I enjoyed it the most, or at least that's the way it looked. It was therapeutic for me. I accidentally flung mud right into Jenn's mouth... I was meaning to fling mud at her, just not in her mouth... she was a great sport about it, though... and flung some back.
We crossed the finish line and were greeted by Brian, Kev, and the family. After the finish we headed over to the cleaning area where a bunch of people were rinsing off with hoses. We had to wait a while for a hose, but cleanup was pretty easy. We all took a change of clothes so that we wouldn't get the car all nasty.
I'm not sure what our time was, because it hasn't been posted on the race web site, yet.
After the race, with mud still in my hair, we went to the Nutty Brown Cafe for breakfast on the way back into Austin. They had a fabulous brunch buffet that had all kinds of goodies. I highly recommend it!
Afterwards, Brian's parents headed home and we dropped Kev off and headed home ourselves for some movie watching and veging out on the couch.
I love the muddy buddy.