Swine Flew....the coop!

At the beginning of the year I knew I wanted to focus on my fitness and part of that goal included running.  After talking to a few fellow runners I heard about the "Dirty Dash" and knew I had to try it out. I tried to recruit some running buddies but the race sold out fast and the only two signed up were me and my brother-in-law Kyle. I prepared to run a 5K and we started to plan out our costumes for the day. Our team name was "Swine Flew" get it? Swine "Flew" instead of "Flu". Haha. While in vegas I came across some wicked knee high pink socks with flying pigs on them, they were perfect but I had one problem....I had to convince Kyle to wear knee high pink socks. To my surprise he was a great sport and we planned our entire outfit around these socks. Here is the finished product:

Swine Flew

Highly recommend swim goggle for any Dirty Dash!

We arrived early that morning so we would be one of the first ones off.  Everyone was dressed up and excited to participate in this race. We even found a close relative to the mother that was accused of tanning too much and exposing her child to tanning----- This lady was dark!

My attempt at posing so she doesn't know Kyle is taking a pic of her.

We then gathered at the starting line and we were off.

First obstacle was muddy ground with a snow making machine throwing the snow in your face.  I immediately wondered what I got myself into but we pushed on and took it one obstacle at a time. When we came to our first mud pit everyone was taking it pretty slow trying to stay as clean as possible.  While waiting my turn to enter the pit I suddenly lost my footing falling quickly into the pit while knocking everyone down that stood in my way. I felt so bad as everyone stood up one by one covered in mud. Kyle just kept laughing. Then we came to the rope wall, we were moving quickly until the girl in front of me froze at the top not wanting to move. A few of us stepped in and slowly talked her into swinging her leg over to go down the other side. Here is a picture of us waiting---

Next we came to the walls, they started out small but continued to grow. Kyle attacked these without any fear.

He was a monster!

After a few more obstacles we came to the mud pits covered with rope so you were forced to army crawl in the mud. We were covered from head to toe, I'm pretty sure I even ate some mud that was kicked into my mouth.

We welcomed any opportunity to wash off our face so we could see and breathe. Kyle at one point even decided to poor a can of orange soda all over his face, only to find out the bandana will bleed red when wet...whoops!

The obstacles kept coming and I was looking forward to the turn off between the 5K and 10K. Once we got there we were mocked for even considering going the shorter distance. I immediately had a battle going on in my head I had only trained for a 5K but they would cheer me on if I did the 10K. In a moment of weakness I gave into peer pressure and pressed forward to the 10K route. The crowd went crazy but I was having second thoughts, too late I was in it to finish.

They failed to mention a huge obstacle on the longer route - a real marsh. We had to wade through the stinky marsh for quite a distance. Lets just say I was less then thrilled but determined to keep going. We went through the barrels-

Over and under the pipes -

On top of the hay bales -

and onto the climbing walls -

I barely made it to the end and I can easily say I wouldn't have if Kyle wouldn't have been such a good sport. What a crazy fun day and now that I have completed a dirty dash I can easily say the Swine Flew will fly again...... Anyone want to join us next time? Let's cross another item off the list:

14. Run Dirty Dash