Training for a Mud Run

This past weekend, Jenn and I (along with our good friend Logan) competed in this year’s annual Big Sur Mud Run. The fact that it takes place approximately 40 miles from any portion of land which can be called Big Sur seems to be conveniently overlooked by the event coordinators as well as the thousands of folks who sign up for the run each year. In keeping with tradition, I suppose I shall do the same.

Anyhow, when I say that we “competed” in the event, do not be misled (as I was into believing it took place anywhere near Big Sur). We were no more likely to win the race (or indeed finish within binocular-sighting distance of the leader) than Alexandra Wallace is of earning a “UCLA Former Student of the Year” award.

The 5.5 mile course wove its way through the CSU Monterey Bay campus (located in Marina) and the surrounding woodlands (much of which we learned, but don’t yet understand, is a Salamander Protection Area), and included several decent hills, a handful of manageable obstacles, approximately 800 or so caffeine-juiced ROTC cadets posing as angry drill sergeants eager to scream at you to “drop and give me twenty!”, and no less than four sloshing mud pits through which you were expected to crawl lest you wish to incur a verbal bashing by any of a number of the aforementioned drill sergeants just frothing at the mouth for a sissy like you to come their way. For non-runners like Jenn and I, this was not a competition to win. It was a challenge to finish. On your feet and with the fewest number of paramedics involved as possible.

Not only did we finish the run in a very respectable 600-somethingth place, we did so without stopping. Actually, we did pause to drink water along the way, and Jenn had to retie her shoes a couple of times, but basically we started at the start line, and did not stop until we crossed the finish. It came to us as something of a surprise to learn that, at a moment’s notice, we can up-and-run 5.5 miles through muddy, hilly terrain thick with angry young people.

Do not get me wrong. I am fully aware that an astoundingly vast array of people in the world do far more impressive things each day (my friend Craig Christ just finished his third Ironman Triathlon, another friend Jessica gave birth a few weeks back, etc.), but I am equally certain that they at least take some steps to prepare for their achievements. Craig ran, swam, and biked for hours each day, even while stationed in Kyrgyzstan (with not a drop of standing water for hundreds of miles in any direction), while Jessica had to learn how to keep a brand-new human alive without ever having seen her face to face. Heck, the game of golf is always a strong contender for “Least Stimulating Competition to Watch Live or on Television”, and nevertheless showcases a gaggle of smartly dressed folks who have spent astronomical numbers of hours striking a motionless ball precisely with a metal stick to the point that others fall over themselves in order to see them do it. All of these people are good at what they do at least in part because they prepared ahead of time.
We didn’t.

We came up with a number of plans to get us ready for this mud run. We were going to get up 30 minutes early for a brisk jog before breakfast. Failing that, we figured an evening run would be easy to fit in the schedule. It was, except that neither of us cares for running. The thought of setting out at 5 o’clock in the morning with the idea being that we would keep running in no particular direction for some fixed period of time, and with no motivation other than because this was the plan bores me to tears. It occurs to me that lots of people get into a sort of Zen state when they engage in a leisurely sprint around the city from time to time.

“It clears the mind”, they say.

For me, this sort of thing only happens when I glance over my shoulder after crashing through the woods at break-neck speeds and realize that the angry boar I stumbled upon seventeen miles back is no longer snapping at my heels with a blood lust which, in my experience, is utterly unprecedented. Seeing as how this type of event only happens every six months or so (in a good year), you will understand when I say that I just didn’t get around to running much before this mud run. Instead, I decided to focus on staying well-rested in the six or eight months prior to it and counted on adrenaline to get me through. I guess it worked because about four miles in I talked myself into believing I was being chased by a creature with large fangs and managed to sprint the rest of the way to the finish.

Captain Luke!!

After an immensely maddening experience of navigating through the dire straits of federal bureacracy (ie, United States Coast Guard), I've finally managed to right the ship, pump the bilge, and sail away with my Captain's license in hand! That's right, I'm a Captain! The powers that be have decided that I am fit to drive a vessel not greater than 100 tonnes (think: in the 100ft range). Thus, this very weekend I am scheduled to skipper not one but two of the dive boats that I have crewed on for some time now. I'll admit to being a bit nervous (especially if the bloody wind starts blowing from the south), but in the end I'm sure that a) I'll do just fine or, b) I'll break something and force my employers to cash in on their well-stocked insurance. Either way, my goal (as always) is to make sure that nobody dies. Wish me luck!

I (nearly) burnt the house down.

Today I learned that our smoke detector fails to detect smoke, even when faced with an angry black cloud of burnt legumes. I basically blame Mexico for the impromptu lesson, here's why:
Jenn and I came to the realization recently that we hadn't prepared homemade Mexican food for as far back as we could recall. Even when you consider that my powers of recollection rarely extend further back than three or four days (a week if I'm well rested), anyone who knows me - or at least has met me in passing - will point out that this long of a burrito-hiatus is an inexcusable, shameful oversight on my part. You see, I love Mexican food nearly as much as I love cookies. There is nothing at all like the sense of satisfaction that comes from licking up the remains of two plates of nachos which were lovingly prepared and vigorously devoured.
And so it was that we agreed to make fiesta potatoes tonight. For those who are not familiar, this meal basically involves a baked potato piled high with the usual Mexican fixings: beans, cheese, sour cream, salsa, and guacamole if you can get your hands on some. While we picked up the needed ingredients up the hill at the grocery store, I left a pot of soaked black beans simmering (or so I thought) on the stove top. Since they need to boil for a few hours (after being soaked overnight) in order to be soft enough to eat, I figured we'd be home in plenty of time to prepare the rest of the meal before the beans would be finished.
You, Jenn, and the rest of the world realize that this line of logic was doomed from the start.
Too little water + too much heat = disaster.
Had I been more clever, I might have placed the beans in a crock pot earlier in the day, feeling quite confident that the use of this device for the job likely wouldn't result in me debating just a short time down the road whether throwing all my clothes away and shaving my head will eliminate the acrid, offensive stench of smoke in the apartment. As you can imagine, I am not (or at least was not) that intuitive, and so it came to be that we arrived home later than expected to the faint smell of smoke downstairs in the parking space and Jenn's proclamation that "it smells like something's burning". I ran up the stairs and into a cloud of dense, roiling black smoke. The foul smelling blanket of vaporized black beans was so thick I couldn't see my own knees, much less the rest of the enshrouded apartment. I saw no flames though, and briefly marvelled at the silence in the house. When I attempted to take a breath and hold it long enough to assess the damage I discovered, for the first time in my experience, how impossible this is to accomplish when you share a confined space with something that has been on fire for quite some time. Thus, I bent down below the cloud, coughed out the useless breath I'd just taken, inhaled a deeper one (this one with fresh air in the functional parts-per-thousands concentration rather than per-million as at eye level) and dashed around the house turning off the stove, confirming that the incinerated black beans posed no further threat to life or property, and opening every window we had before stumbling my way back down the stairs to where Jenn stood awaiting news of the damage. When she asked how bad it was, I replied, "On second thought, forget Mexican. Let's go out for Thai food tonight."
And so we did.