"Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts."
-Dan Gable
Apparently the place to be this weekend for active twenty-somethings in South Carolina was Columbia for the USMC MudRun -- the largest mud run in North America. A couple of months ago, a high school friend of Rob's invited him to join his team. Team BOHICA was made up of two Army drill instructors, a high school football coach/Army vet... and Rob.
Every fifteen seconds from seven in the morning, a team left the starting line of the race to complete a 10K run with 34 muddy obstacles in between. Rob's team left late in the day (around 4:00 pm), after the mudpits had already been made really soggy and the trenches really deep.
Another one of the wives and I ran along the Spectator routes (and sometimes just through the woods) to catch up with them to photograph them and provide SAG support at some of the obstacles. We may not have gotten super muddy, but we also got our exercise!
Obstacles ranged from walking across logs, swinging from ropes, sludging through muddy trenches, and climbing up wooden walls. And, if you couldn't conquer the task, you were required to take a penalty... sometimes just waiting an extra minute and other times PT exercises (pushups, situps, flutter kicks, etc) until the drill instructor in charge decided to give you the go ahead.
An hour and forty-five minutes later, four dirty boys jogged across the finish lines. Mud and sludge covered almost every inch of their bodies, not to mention the scrapes, bruises, and blood. They walked right over to the makeshift showers to clean up as much as possible before we headed home.
Now, they're anxious to do it again next year!
Find more photos on my Flickr page.
