Demo Diaries: Getting Through a Mud Run

Sylvia — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 23:44:11 +0000

Getting your period can ruin an important day. Getting your period the night before a Spartan Race can put a person into panic mode. The night before my second Spartan Race, I realized that I got my period a few days early. I started flipping out… how I would be able to trek up Blue Mountain with cramps, and worst of all, how would I make it through the mud pits and swims with Aunt Flo around? I knew how tough my first Spartan Race had been and I was really worried.

The morning of the race, I packed my bag and made sure to include a bunch of my favorite U by Kotex Sleek tampons – better to be safe than sorry right?

Right before our wave time, I hit up the port-a-potty. The no-slip grip on the tampons made using my port-a-potty experience a little more bearable. If you’ve ever used a port-a-potty before a race, you know what I’m talking about.

Getting to the starting line I was a bag of nerves. Not only was I terrified at the view of the sandbag carry ahead of me, I was nervous about springing a leak in the woods. Throughout the race, I felt great. I was able to conquer most of the obstacles (and burpees!) and not really worry about having my period because I knew I was protected.

After reaching the finish line, I hightailed it back to the port-a-potty before heading to the beer tent. I was tired and relieved that I made it through the race without any accidents. I was also excited that I was able to smash the stereotypes that women are incapable of exercise on their period. (Yes, there are people who still believe that! Crazy I know!)

A victory for me thanks to U by Kotex!

You can learn more about U by Kotex on Facebook and Twitter.

Have you ever tried U by Kotex?

I wrote this review while participating in a content series through Clever Girls Collective on behalf of U by Kotex, and received products to facilitate my post and compensation for my time to participate.

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Running Dirty

Sylvia — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 04:48:07 +0000

On Saturday, I did mud run number three of the season- Running Dirty in Englishtown, NJ. Running dirty is a 5k which includes the Hell Mile, which is a mile with obstacle after obstacle.

Coming off of two Spartan Races, Running Dirty was completely different. I don’t know if it was bad timing, since it was the weekend before classes started for most colleges in the area, but there were not that many people at the event at all. We were in the 9:30 wave and there was probably 75 people who started with us, and Tommy said that the numbers only went down after us, which is sad since the race was a lot of fun.

The course was well marked with tape showing you where you needed to go and name signs for each obstacle. The major difference that I noticed between Running Dirty and my previous mud runs was ironically, the amount of mud. This was my far the muddiest race I’ve done, and the mud just kept coming. It was difficult to walk quickly, let alone, run in some spots because you would just sink into the trails. The obstacles were not taken as seriously than in other races. There weren’t volunteers at each obstacle to make sure you did it, and no one really cared if you just breezed through them. The obstacles, with a few exceptions, were also much easier than the previous races I have done.

Of the obstacles I can remember, there was a walk climb, a few under and over walls, two barbed wire mud crawls and one sand barbed wire crawl. There were two swims and there were other obstacles in the water, like the balance beam.

There were also two pipes we had to shimmy across, monkey bars, drunk monkey bars which went down and back up, a huge platform we had to run across, a cargo net climb and a crawl through muddy water under a net.

Overall, we had a blast. While the race wasn’t extremely physically demanding, it was a great time, especially since I had a whole group of friends to run it with. I think that Running Dirty would make a great first mud run/obstacle course race for someone who is interested in trying these types of races, but a little scared to do something more difficult like a Spartan or Tough Mudder.

Have you ever done a mud run/obstacle course race? Which obstacle would you want to try?

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