Intro:
Long before Tough Mudder or Rugged Maniac came onto the racing scene, the Godiva Track Club has held a muddy obstacle course event called the Misery Run. Since at least as far back as 1999, they’ve put together this fantastic little race on an old cattle farm in Chatham County. For just five bucks. Can you believe it? This event was so much fun!
The race consists of 3 laps of about 2 miles each. Each lap consists of jumping two hay bales; and running through a forest with downed trees to jump over, rocks to scramble upon, and a huge puddle to wade through.
After doing all the above 3X, you are presented with one final obstacle: The manure pile. I seen pictures from years past of waist deep manure. Ick. However, the farmer didn’t have many cows this year, so they made the manure pile out of mud instead. I was not sorry to hear that news.
Here are some photos of the race:
The Hay Bales
They didn’t get a shot of me going over the hay bales, so I included a random picture so you can see how much fun it was. 🙂
The gigantic puddle:
The Manure Pile:
Recap:
This is a time predictor race. The prizes were chocolate! The goal is to come as close as you can to your predicted finish time. I thought the total distance was 6 miles, so I put in a time of 1:10. However, it turns out the distance was more like 5.8 miles, so I beat my time by about 10 minutes. That put me pretty far down in the rankings. Crap, no chocolate prize for me 😉
Final note: I had brought some really old running shoes to wear, and then just tossed them in the trash when I was done. Did not want to try and wash running shoes after running through that much muck!
That looks like great fun- especially with a chocolate prize! Triathlon training can get quite repetitive, sometimes it’s nice to mix it up a bit and try something different.