The Dirty Dash

The Dirty Dash is something I've been wanting to participate in for a while now, but I've had a hard time finding anyone willing to pay the entry fee to do it with me.  (Since it gets fairly expensive the longer you wait...)  Fortunately, the week before the event I saw a post on Facebook by the Dirty Dash about needing volunteers in the afternoon, and those volunteers would be able to run for free in the morning.  A friend in my ward, Laycie Call, was planning to volunteer anyway, so we decided to do it all together!  

We got up early to be up there (at Soldier Hollow in Midway) by 7:30am (September 22) so we'd be ready to start by 8:20am.  It was colder than we anticipated, so we actually waited around till the 9am wave to run the course...

Pre-race cleanliness:

We trudged through a few freezing mud pits and pools, including "the lake" which is basically a natural swamp that reaked...

Over a few walls...

Up the hill, through the "over under pit"...

And down the giant "slop n slide."  

We didn't have time to do the whole 5.5 mile course, so we decided to take the 3.5 mile short cut, ending up in the final mud pit.  We had a lot of fun, even with just the two of us.  

 

Post-race filthiness:

 

We collected all our goods at the finish line, used the hoses to shower off, which actually turned out to not be as cold and the mud pits luckily, and then found a tent in the parking lot to change in.  

We got back up to the volunteer tent and had a few minutes to wait around so I bought Shad a little "I Love to Eat Mud" t-shirt and a hoodie from the store, since volunteers get 50% off.  Score!

We were originally told that we'd be volunteering in the parking lot, directing traffic I'm assuming.  But when we got up to the volunteer tent we were told to hang tight and we'd be sent out to a water station or obstacle, which we actually preferred.  Well, as it turns out, we were assigned to probably the worst spot on the course: the bottom of the slop n slide.  

 

When we went down it earlier while running the course we were able to get going pretty fast and slide out and keep sliding on the mud- there were no puddles or holes at the bottom to stop us.  But by 11:30am when we got up there to help, there were huge holes full of muddy water at the bottom of each chute.  One of the guys in charge told us we needed to keep piles of straw in those puddles to prevent people from getting hurt, which was a valid concern since we witnessed one girl break her foot just after we got there, but it was near impossible to keep the straw there.  Every time we threw some in someone would fly out of the chute and push it down the hill with them.  The only way to attempt to keep them full was to stand right at the base of the slide and continually throw straw in without stopping, getting soaked in the process.  Every other person that came flying out splashed us.  

 

It got to the point that we were so tired and frustrated that we gave up and walked half way up the slide and started yelling at people to slow down at the end instead, which actually seemed to have more of an effect cause most people would actually listen.  After 2-3 hours of this I was pulled up to the top of the slide to help at the pudding snack pack tent, to help open boxes and tear off tops for runners to eat pudding.  Much easier and less stressful!  After about an hour of that the runners died down as the last waves came through and they didn't need us to do pudding cups anymore.  

About this time the generators and motors on the slide were struggling so the slide wasn't able to stay inflated at the bottom... It was kind of a mess.  But it did prevent people from being able to get going as fast.  But luckily we weren't needed anymore and we were able to leave to go home. 

I'm glad we got a "post-volunteer" picture as well.  The rolled cuffs on my jeans were full of mud and straw.  Awesome...

 

We should've just stayed in our race clothes to work the slide.  But it's alright, even though we were dirty again, it was still worth it to volunteer and run for free.  I'm already looking forward to doing it again in the future!