5 Peaks Golden Ears Enduro - April 24, 2010

Apparently, I am a mudder.
This was my best Golden Ears Enduro EVER, tempered ever so slightly by two things: 1) the route was reduced in length by over 1km for some unknown reason and 2) mud, lots of mud, in lots of crevices, everywhere.

It was a very chilly, rainy day for the race, with a whopping 2 degrees Celsius air temperature in Maple Ridge and likely much colder at the start of the race in the middle of Golden Ears Park.  The cold must have helped with my mental focus, because for some reason I completely "let go" and ran right through the streams and muck in the first third of the race and screamed down the Eric Dunning trail as fast as I could.  It was fun and quite fascinating to see the steam rising from my body on such a cold day.

I was in great spirits as I made way back to the start/finish line through the Spirea Trail.  I was running with 3 other people when we came upon about 10 metres of thick, dark mud.  As we entered the mud it was quickly evident that this was a DEEP pile of muck.  The woman next to me slid in front of me and I had to bail..I mean seriously bail.

I literally, without exaggeration, did a body plant, face and ALL, into the mud.  It felt unusually good.

I bounced back up and all around me asked if I was ok...I was and carried on.  Every time I came across a volunteer their eyes popped and they asked if I was ok.  I said I was living large and was a shoo in for dirtiest runner and then I carried on.

As I ran the final right hand turn into the finish area I yelled out DIRTIEST RUNNER INCOMING! and was greeted with a huge round of applause and a congratulations from the announcer.  The girl who snipped my chip off was saucer-eyed - she had never seen anyone so muddy.

I then headed over to the med tent because my face plant also jammed some mud into my left eye and with a contact lens in there I was concerned that I would have trapped some nasties not fit for eyeballs.  The med folks found lots of dirt in there and flushed it out and determined that I had a gash on my right arm and right shin - more like an abrasion wound but it was bleeding a bit through the mud.  As they were getting bandages one of the photographers approached me and asked if she could take pictures of me.  So I posed for a few shots, including one with good ol' Harvey Nelsen who congratulated me for being a true trail runner.  The photographer then asked some lady runners to come over and pose with me too...this all before I got the wounds addressed!  But what the heck, they didn't hurt 'cause I was still running on adrenaline.

Then I had to figure out how the hell I was going to get back into the car without grinding mud into the car seat.  Luckily the 5 peaks guys had one extra green garbage bag so I used that, one of my tote bags and my towel.  When I went to ask for the bag Kathryn the 5 peaks owner gave me a technical t-shirt for my valiant attempt at trying to bring the trail home with me!

Oh, and did I mention that throughout the entire event it was POURING...we're talking biblical flood pouring.  I think I will be damp for days.

When I got home I stripped my shoes and socks in the hall in front of our apartment and immediately went into the shower clothes and all.  After 40 minutes I had managed to squeeze most of the mud from my clothes...but not quite all of it...and scrape most of it from my body.  There was MUD IN MY EARS...both of them...how the photon did that happen?

So overall, I was pretty happy with the day, though I think I will be scraping mud out of crevices for some time.