Mud Parts

I have mud in my lady parts. I have it in my ears, deep in my nose, and the gritty sounds when I grind my teeth mean I have it in my molars. My hair is like the Statue of Liberty's-- hard, immobile-- and my belly button is plugged. At one point one of my eyes was spackled shut but then someone used me as leverage and I went face first into the water, thus un-gunking the eye and restoring stereoscopic vision of the three miles I had yet to run. I just finished a Marine Mud Run, and I feel glorious.

Five miles on a rutted dirt path in a windy field punctuated all too frequently with mud pits and obstacles, and it was fun? And I paid, rather handsomely, to do it? Yes, and yes. What made it bearable, even wonderful, was running it as a team with four other women. We made jokes, cussed, held hands through the worst of the hip-deep, and once suddenly neck-deep, watery pits, climbed walls, and belly-crawled through horrific-smelling muck, and not once did I think to myself, "I wish I was somewhere else."

Maybe once. The first wall-- it was fifteen feet high and there were Marines sitting on top of it yelling helpful things like "GET OFF MY WALL!" and on the way up I got a snoot-full of falling mud off someone else's shoe. Then at the top I realized there were easily eight of us all trying to crest at once, which left me with less than a foot of room to maneuver, unless I wanted to end up in Lieutenant Screamerton's lap, and as I was delicately trying to establish footing on the other side, he let loose with another blood-curdling request that I get off his wall, and so I did-- very quickly and suddenly. I think five photographers caught my plummet to the ground, where I then abandoned all dignity and rolled with my feet high in the air. There is only one thing to do when you eat shit this spectacularly, and I did it. You yell, "Whoo! Hell, yeah!" and jump up and flex.

I can feel it now, where this is going to hurt later-- right butt cheek and lower back-- but I also have a plan. I'm going to take a handful of Ibuprofen, drink a liter of water, and then gently rub the sore spot with my Third. Place. Team. Medal.