As some of you would know during the past week we didn't know if I would be able to join Karen for this year's Muddy Buddy race (our 5th Muddy Buddy) in Austin, TX. My 100 year old mother has lived a good healthy life but during the last week the Hospice workers have told my sisters (Lynda and Suzanne) that mother could go at any hour. If she would have passed away earlier in the week then Lynn and Paul Dean and I would have been on the road to Utah and would not have been here in Texas today for the race. Mother was willing to pass away at any time but her body held on for several days longer than the Hospice team had thought. She finally received her reward and moved on to heaven Saturday night, so we will not be leaving for Utah (via Colorado - Desiree) until Monday morning for a Wednesday funeral.
The Muddy Buddy link is shown below.
Link: http://www.www.muddybuddy.com/results.php
When the official race photo's are available if you search for them, our race bib number for our team name "Boston Bound" was 857.
For those not familiar with the Muddy Buddy series, they do the race in 9 locations around the country. You do the race as a 2 person team. One team member starts on the bike and 2 minutes later the other team member starts running. There are 5 segments in the race and the team members switch off biking and running each segment and there are obstacles at the end of each segment that you have to work through.
The biking is done on some tough terrain trails with some of the hills very technical and steep and rocky. The trail is loaded with bikers and runners and can be dangerous as you navigate around slower participants. Last year Karen wiped out on the 3rd segment on her bike and tore up her forearm and foreleg. This year neither of us had any falls and the chain did not come off the bike, a great year. We ran and biked our guts out and earned every ounce of glory, and did a great mud swim through the mud pit at the end of the race.
Our wave of the race had 12 teams and started at 8:56 AM as we were entered in the coed division with ages adding up to 96 or higher (the oldest group). We may have been the oldest team there with our ages adding up to 106. The last 3 years even though we are a coed team we had to compete against the men's teams in the same age group, and we won the race 2 of the last 3 years. So, I predicted a win again this year because now we were just competing against coed teams.
We ran and biked and did the obstacles as hard and fast as we could because you really never know how close the competition is behind you. After the race finish times were posted, we noted that we also beat all of the men's teams of the same age category, and we would have finished 2nd if we had competed against the younger coed teams from the 2 divisions below us, so it was a real nice race. Our finish time was 41 minutes 23 seconds (I may be off a second or two).
Andy and Shea from our Monday night running group at McNeil High School were also registered and ran the Muddy Buddy, but they were in the youthful coed teams so we were not competing against them. They ran a great race and took 2nd place in their division, finishing with a time about 20 seconds ahead of us. They are focusing already on next year and a 1st place finish in their division.
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