Website: http://mudnewton.com
Date: Sept. 3/11
Location: Woodnewton, 4849 Concession #6, Uxbridge, On
Time: 9:00am
This was originally a Christmas Tree farm & a cross country ski resort back in the 70’s & 80’s. This farm is 200 acres & they are revitalizing the tree farm. They also host mountain bike races here.
This was the first year for this race, & it is billed as “Ontario’s Coolest Mudrun”. Having run the mudrun in June, I had anticipated that this race would be similar. How wrong I was. I had decided at the last minute to sign up for the 5k, because I had not done an awful lot of running over the summer. I had been having problems with my achilles, so just hadn’t been running, so opted for the 5k, while my friend Laura ran the 10k.
This was not anything like the mud run I had done in June. This was more of an obstacle course, with a mud pit at the end. The race started in the middle of a field, on double track. We started out on the flat, then straight up a long steep hill. Once at the top, we saw the 1k sign & immediately ran back down the other side of the hill. There we met our first obstacle. We had to go through a rope wall. Once through we had to high knees through another set of ropes. Up & down another hill, then through a long set of tires. I opted to walk on the outside of the tires, hanging onto a railing. Up & down more hills with more obstacles. We ran through a school bus, jumped out the back, then rolled underneath it & out the other side. More hills, then over & under tubing set up across the pathway. More hills, then we had to climb over 3 sets of hay bales. I could not get over the first set, so after 3 attempts a man running with his daughter helped me over. I was able to jump & pull myself over the other 2 sets of hay bales. After this I was exhausted & had to run up another steep hill, then had to roll through a ditch under the fence, & continue around the corner to now climb up a ladder to go over the fence to come back down the hill. We ran through a treed section, out to the parking lot, then back alongside the trees & back into the field. Here we had to climb up on a hay bale, & climb up on the back of a wooden ramp that they were pouring vegetable oil on, so that we could slide down the other side. Then another of the same ramps with oil. We ran on another trail out to the water crossing, where Steve from the Ajax Running Free, was the volunteer. This was quite a wide water crossing, & most people were walking through the waist high water. Out of the water, & back on the trail, heading toward the finish line. We had to climb up & over 2 huge dirt hills, then through ankle deep mud, then crawl under the flags in the mud pit, slide down another hill into muddy water, climb out the other side, then finally across the finish line. I was exhausted at the finish & was thankful that I had only run the 5k.
According to the results, they had me placed 12th out of 137 plus 18 that they didn’t know where they finished. I figure that those 18 probably finished ahead of me, because I recognized some of the names & knew that they had indeed crossed ahead of me. The times were not fast by any means, & the course was tough!
My friend Laura ran the 10k & was the 3rd female to finish. She said that they didn’t have any more obstacles then we did, but that they had a bit more of just running. She did say that it was one of the toughest 10k races that she had ever run. I felt like in the 5k, you were either running up or down the hill, or we doing some sort of obstacle. There wasn’t much straight up running.
They also had a 10k Team event. In the Team event, a team was not allowed to enter the mud pit, until the entire team was there. It was amazing how many teams showed up short at least one team member. There they stood waiting, wondering where their team mate was. It was nice to see teams run together, & this was a race where it would have be nice to have some help to get over some of the obstacles. We watched one team wait for at least 15 minutes for their last team member to arrive. Once she got to the mud pit, she collapsed & the men on her team, literally dragged her across the finish line. This young lady was completely out of it at the end of the race, & they ended up calling an ambulance for her. She was dehydrated due to the hot day, & the difficulty of the course. If her team had run with her & helped her along, perhaps this wouldn’t have happened. This definitely did not detrack from the great event.
All in all it was a good race. If you like trails & obstacles, then this is a race for you to mark on your calendar for next year!
