The 3 of us (my sister, her boyfriend & I) ran together. During the first mile or two, there were a lot of points where the trail bottlenecked and we ended up walking in a traffic jam. We made a pit stop around mile 2, then encountered the long uphill section. My sister's BF and I ran the hills, then waited for my sis at the top. Once we got to the mud, we all pretty much stuck together. There were no marines at the first wall (that I saw) but a couple of really nice guys offered to let me step on them, which was helpful. Unfortunately with the mud on the other side, I couldn't see what I was landing on, so I twisted my ankle. That left me limping for a few minutes. The lake crossing was fantastic, and everyone around us was commenting on it. The water was nice and cool, and the current created by the mass of people just propelled us along. I twisted my ankle again at the second wall, and fell over at some point in one of the mud pits. The slippery slope near the end wasn't very slippery this year. The marines were spraying water at the top, but most of it ended up in a little erosion channel down the middle of the trail, with mostly dry dirt on either side. The final mud pit was plenty muddy though, we all scraped up our knees crawling through it.

Nothing, I wasn't trying to go fast, this was a fun training day.

Waited for our other friends to finish, met up with dad & husband, shower, beer, and burgers on the way out.


The traffic jams, and my sister! She'd kick my ass in a swim though.


Good times! We'll be back next year, although hopefully this time on a Saturday, and with a team if we can get one together.