The weekend before Thanksgiving (yes, I'm once again behind), Ryan raced one of his most extreme races yet. It's called Tough Mudder and if you can't tell from the name, it involved a ton of mud! What you can't infer from the name is the additional combination of cold and water. But first, lets start back at the beginning.
About 2 months back this group of hot and sexy men decided that they would take on the challenge of this race. So, quickly, from left to right, we've got Pat (Betsy's husband), Frank (Nick's younger brother who drove all the way from the UP for this race), Nick (a friend of Ryan's from high school, who gets the award for longest travel as he came all the way from AZ for the race). Then, Ry with his typical picture pose, Nate (another friend for high school) and rounding off the team is Brian (yet another Marmion guy, and Lo's husband).
It begs mention that the cheering squad was me, Lo, Betsy, and Jess (Frank's girlfriend). I don't have a picture of all us ladies but I think Bets does and I will try to update the blog with additional pictures once I get them.
So, for those of you that didn't choose to click on my Tough Mudder link, here is a quick run down. Imagine a 10 mile course where racers go through about 25 military style obstacles. Racers can choose to run alone or with a team, but teams teams are definately the way to go. Obstacles were anything from running through huge pits of mud, to jumping into ice (literally) and swimming, to crawling under barbed wire, to running through electrical wires, to scaling Berlin Walls. Without a team, any one of these would be hard, but 25 would be nearly impossible.
See how muddy they all are?? This is about 1/3 of the way through the race. The temperature was about 45 degrees that day which individually wouldn't be so bad, but add in water, ice and mud and our boys were freezing by the end of the race. The 10 miles of running didn't faze them, it was the cold and wet that really got to them all. By the end we were sure we'd have 3 car fulls of hypothermic boys by the end of the race, but luckily everyone was fine, there were no injuries and everyone crossed the finish line.
The ladies spent the day (about 4 hours from race packet pickup to beer drinking at the finish line) trapsing around the park getting pictures and video of our men. They had 3 suggested viewing areas and once we figured out the map we were able to see our boys quite a bit. There was a decent amount of the race time that we missed though because the boys were routed through the woods, but we will be ready for next year. We've already started planning our picture taking/racer supporting.
So, pictures speak louder than words right?? Well, I've put together a little video for you all, including some action shots of our boys during the race. It's not perfect, and yes, the music ends while the video is still going, but it's what you are going to get today. I hope to update the video with shots from Lo and Bets, but it's been a week since the race and I've got to keep the blog updated so here is what I've got right now. If I update it, I will let you all know, but for now, enjoy! I'll get better at the video's shortly! Promise!!
Come on back in a few days and I hope to have the video updated!!
Happy Thanksgiving y'all (one day late!)
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