Stupid Thing #6 – Mud Run

A series of “stupid things” can’t be complete without spending a Sunday morning rolling around in the mud! And so, we hauled our butts out of bed this past Sunday, and headed out to the Claireville Conservation Area to run in the 5th annual Toronto Mud Run.

The run was a 5k trail run through some swampy trails, across some knee-deep rivers, up some steep muddy hills, and through some obstacles, and it ended with a graceful leap into a giant sopping-wet mud pit! The trail was well-primed, as it had rained quite heavily the night before, making the already-muddy route even slicker…which of course made the whole experience all the more worth it!

The route began with a bit of a gravel-road run before heading onto the singletrack wooded trails. The idea (I think) was to get people running a bit so we’d be in order of speed and a bit spread out, thus avoiding a bottleneck situation on the trails and at the obstacles.

Unfortunately, these efforts didn’t pan out so well – as some of the runners (the ones doing the 10k run) took a wrong turn, and ended up getting to the obstacles at the same time as us 5k-ers, which resulted in everyone arriving at the obstacles at the same time. As you can see in the photo below, we had some long waits in the middle of the run as a result. After we waited a few minutes to cross this creek, everyone was struggling to get up a very slippery hill. You can see people already lining up. That wait was almost 10 minutes long!!





The highlight of the route came at the end as we entered the giant mud pit. Prizes were to be awarded for the most creative entrance into the mud pit. We opted for the more traditional option of stepping gingerly into the pit until we gracefully sunk knee-deep in mud, and then did the classic duck waddle trying to get our legs out without losing our shoes.


The run was definitely fun, but nothing to be taken too seriously. We got a good run in for the first half, but the delays the rest of the way meant it was more of a social outing. :-) To give you an idea, our usual pace these days for a kilometer ranges from 7:00 to 7:30, but here are our split times for this "run":

1st km - 8:13

2nd km - 8:04

3rd km - 7:48

4th km - 23:31!!!!

5th km - 10:10

After we had our fill of dirt and mud, we made our way to the outdoor communal showers that were set-up. We washed off some of the mud we were covered in, and opted to change into some fresh clean clothes before getting back into our AutoShare car. I’m guessing that car seats caked in mud would have been grounds for being kicked out of AutoShare!

You can see some more pics here.