Pretty Muddy Women’s Mud Run Chicago Recap

 Man, oh man, am I excited to share this post with you guys! (Warning: This post is chalk full of pictures & video!) This weekend I had the opportunity to participate in the Pretty Muddy Women’s Mud Run 5k & Obstacle Course thanks to FitFluential and the team at Pretty Muddy. I have always wanted to do a mud run, but to be completely honest I was always intimidated by the obstacles. When I saw this run was all female and focused more on empowering women and having fun I was all about it! We drove from St Louis to Chicago on Friday night and were up early and ready to race first thing Saturday morning! I was in the 8:30 heat so we got there around 7:30 to ensure time for check in and warm up.

The weather was perfect! Not too hot or cold. Sunny. Awesome!

The XSport Fitness area was hosting a kickboxing class, so Payton and I joined in for a quick warm up

She kept asking to get on the stage with the instructor. Future Personal Trainer?

We watched the first few heats take off and danced around with the DJ a little bit to warm up some more.

I kept tweeting and instagraming up until it was time for me to line up!

Finally ready to go! I was so excited to be able to use the gopro for this event!

The best cheerleader ever! When she saw the first few heats take off she kept pushing me towards the start saying “It’s time to go mama!”

Finally we were off! The terrain was a little rough. I don’t know how you trail runners do it, but dodging sticks, holes, stumps and mud was tough! I had to focus to make sure I didn’t misstep.

The first obstacle was a tunnel of bubbles, so fun! And Slippery!

After that came the Cargo net climb. I was a bit apprehensive about it first as I’ve had some issues with these in the past, but once I started climbing I felt awesome and was having a blast!

Another obstacle to navigate… a cage filled with beach balls! It made me wish I was on the beach lounging with a cool drink!

So, this mud slide looked epic. Except, by the time I got there the mud had dried quite a bit, so I had to bounce down instead of slide down. It was still fun though!

The over/under/over walls in the mud pits were so fun!! I love how they made the walls easy to scale, which made me feel like a total beast.

Have you ever wondered what it would look like to run a mud race? Let me show you! I wore my GoPro the whole race and got some great footage! (Thanks to my friend from ExpertPrepper.com for editing the video so you don’t have to watch all 46 long minutes!)

I felt like that went fast! (Even without the super warp fast forward speed!) My 5k times hover around 40 minutes so I was expecting to take closer to an hour with all the obstacles. Turns out I finished in around 46 minutes!! The husband even said he was surprised to see me come around the corner to the last obstacle because he expected me to take longer!

Can you find me? (Hint: I’m the one crawling under the flags…)

I dove right in and was ready to get dirty!

This is just epic. I was dive bombing under those flags like a boss!

And wow, did I get Pretty Muddy!

Waving at my cheerleaders!

At the finish!

Payton wanted to get in the picture with me, but wouldn’t stand by me. She kept saying “Mom, you very messy. You cweeean dat up?” It bothered her so bad!

Still representing CrossFit! Love how the mud didn’t go through the part of the shirt that was screened!

Yea, those shoes didn’t make it home with me.

All in all, I will say this was a very well done race. I would recommend putting mile markers up, as it was hard to gauge how much we had run/had left to run. While I was very competitive with myself and wanted to do every obstacle all the way, there were others who walked or chose not to do some obstacles and that was totally ok. In the end I felt empowered and strong, not nearly as worn out as I expected.

Cleaning up was hard. The showers were actually hoses of freezing water, but none of the hoses were working when I went to clean up. I brought clothes I expected to spend the rest of the day in and ended up getting those muddy as well. I had to rush back to the hotel to take a real shower before check out time. I would say for future mud races to bring a towel, bring lose grubby clothes to change into after the race, and tell your spectator friends not to wear something they don’t mind getting mud on… seeing as its every where. I would also recommend running with a group or at least a friend. There were some long stretches of running that were pretty isolated and it would have been way more fun to laugh with friends through some of the obstacles. It also might help to have mile markers on the course.

Overall it was a wonderful, well organized and fun event. I would certainly do it again! For all my Florida friends, there is one in Tampa in November and you can still use the code FitFluentialPM12 to get $10 off your registration!

Thanks again to FitFluential and Pretty Muddy for the opportunity to participate!

Have you ever done a mud run? Would you?

FitFluential LLC compensated me for this campaign.  All opinions are my own.