We R dirty!

I think I just participated in one of the funnest races I have ever done! I heard about it a couple months ago and thought, that sounds awesome! So, I asked my super cool sistas if they wanted to be a team, and most of them wanted to. We had a team! The team consists of 5 people, girls, boys, girls and boys...whatever. You run the whole course together and do the obstacles together and finish together.

We determined our team name would be SPAM with the phrase,

"That is one nice piece of MEAT!"

Hollie and I worked for like 4 hours Friday trying to put together these shirts that I think ended up pretty cute.

The race went in waves, our time was 10:40, perfect time! Not too early and not too late.

The first started you off going straight up a hill that was not just dirt, it was complete mud! Running up a hill in mud, at the beginning of a race is a little difficult, at least for me. It takes me at least a mile to warm up and get going.

Here we are taking off!

The next part of the course takes you up the Solider Hollow mountain on switch backs to get to the top. In the meantime you are doing a few obstacles, the first being haystack hurdles...well not hurdles to me, more like jump on the haystack and jump off. You then ran for about another mile and you came upon big black tubes that you had to crawl through, I think there were like 3 or 4. Ouch to the knees!

Here is a view from the top of the course to the bottom where the finish and the starting line were. It was pretty sweet and pretty crowded (like 4,000 people participated).

After you reached the top part of the course, they had mud walls that you had to climb, jump or however you wanted to get over them. This part was one of my favorite parts! There was just a ton of mud before the the walls that everyone was waiting in, mud splashing everywhere! The mud fights begin! We were falling, pulling each other down, throwing mud...mud was everywhere and it was awesome!

Here we are coming upon the mud walls...o'my!

Lisa getting ready to go!

Time for some fun shots before we conquer the walls

Stacy gracefully jumping off of the wall...look at her go!

Me trying to get over the wall.

After we conquered the walls (at this point we had like 10 pounds of mud on our shoes which made it a little harder to run) we ran down the mountain and over by Deer Creek Reservoir where we were led to the swamps and muck of the reservoir. It was yucky, smelly, yucky and smelly. deep and sticky! I am fine getting in the mud, but this mud, I did not want to be in, I think if I was to get covered in this mud, I would be spending some serious time at the doctor.:)

We made it through and were on our way to the end of the race. We had to climb up the hill that we just came down and make our way to a sweet part of the race!

Here is our team trekking up the hill.

Seriously??

Stacy really getting into running up the hill...or the fact that we knew our pictures were being taken and we couldn't look like we were walking, when that is all we really wanted to do. :)

We made it to the slip and slide of the race! So fun! It was a big inflatable slip in slide with 5 slides so your whole team was able to go at the same time. It was crazy fun! Nothing like being 8 again and having fun going down a slip and slide.

Off we go!

You would come to a dead stop at parts of the slide, you would have to get up and run or try to slide again.

At the end of the slide there was another pile of mud, surprised?

That was awesome!

Just a quick shot before we make our way to the finish line.

The finish line was a huge mud pool, liquid mud that was probably about 3 feet deep. It was pretty sweet.

You were suppose to go under these flags to make it to the finish line, but we had a little more fun. Nothing like woman's mud wrestling...

Such a blast!

Alisha

We made it and we made it dirty!

After the race, they had showers to clean off. I think if we were to wait in the line for the showers, we would have waiting for about 1 hour..no way!

So we lined Stacy's car with towels and made it to my grandparents house which is just a couple minutes away. Russ hooked us up by hooking up the hose to the water heater and we were able to have a luke warm shower instead of the freezing cold shower we would have had at the finish line.

I am still finding mud in places that I never thought I would have mud...but was it worth it? O-yeah! I loved it! The race course was pretty hard with the hills and all, but the mud and the fun times made it all worth it! The fact that we were running the race to have fun and not to be competitive made it even better.

Thanks team SPAM for the "Dirty" time!

And thanks to our many cheerleaders that came to support us and take lots of pictures of us...You are the best!

Iron Man

A couple weekends ago I was able to go to St. George to see my friend Jaci compete in the Iron Man. It was amazing and motivating (for that day, then the motivation kind of drifted off :) I went with my sister Stacy who was also seeing a friend compete, my mom, Cooper and two of Stacy's kids, Jackson and Emma. It was a short trip, but a good one!

On Saturday morning, Stacy and I took the spectator bus to go and see the swimmers start the LONG race, did I mention LONG, holy cow it was long!

Here are a few swimmers in the freezing 50 something degree water. Burr!

Look at them go! I think I would be at the VERY back of the pack where there was nobody, just so I would not get clobbered.

Love the close up shot of this dude, don't know who he was, but love the shot. But dude, if there is a chance you read my blog and want this shot, let me know, I will email you it. :)

I really don't know what this guy was thinking...no wet suit, are you serious? Obviously he was, because there he was in the freezing water with no wet suit. Hypothermia!

We were able to watch them transition from the swimming to the bikes, pretty sweet. I was only able to get the rears of our friends, I would just sit there and wait to see if it was them before I started taking pictures, by the time I realized it was them, it was too late. But not to late for a good old rear shot. I decided against posting them, if it were me, I wouldn't want my rear posted on someones blog, let alone my own.

Stacy happy to be in Sunny St. George!

Mom being the number one spectator!

Coop and Jackson toughing it out...they were troopers.

One of Emma's break downs. Cute girl.

We decided to let the kids have a break and get lunch (yummy Jimmy John's, I seriously don't know why they don't have more of them in the SL Valley) and some park time.

While we were waiting for the biking to running transition, Coop and Emma wanted to wade in the water.

Here is Superstar Jaci coming in from biking I think 112 miles, it may have been more.

Off she goes on the run...smiles all the way!

Okay Jaci, you just swam 2 1/2 miles, biked 112 and now you are going to run 26 miles, and you are smiling??? What? Rock star!

Here is Heather on about mile 13 of the run...13 more to go...yuck!

All smiles too!

Here we are at the finish line.

The guy in the middle of this picture, fell off his bike, broke his collarbone, put an icepack on it and started with the run. His buddies saw him walking and they got off their bikes and started walking with him. They walked the remainder of the race. So awesome!

Heather finishing!

I was too slow on the camera and was only able to get Jaci's rear, once again.

I just wanted to show you what I have to deal with...look at fashion no, no Stacy is pulling off. I seriously could not quit laughing when I saw this... hilarious!

I want this guys job! He is the announcer for the Iron Man and gets to yell the names and cities they are from, he comes down to the crowd and gets everybody pumped...it looks like a killer job!

Stacy and Heather at the finish line!

Good job ladies and thanks for doing the Iron Man so we could have a mini vacation, one that was a little exhausting. I was wiped out by the end of the night from following them around. I can't image how they were feeling.