Hey readers – yesterday I raced the X-Terra Mud Run at Filinvest in Ayala Alabang – here in The Philippines its been a casual start to the rainy season but the day before this event, the sky’s just opened up = extra mud!
The dynamics was a 10 km off road run with 10 different obstacles to over come that ranged from climbing up a wall, crawling in muddy trenches, crossing a mud-pit with a robe, carrying a heavy car tire, ect. all with a guarantee to get VERY DIRTY!
I have been very busy in the past few weeks as well to be and Joyette being sick on race day so I put extra emphasis on my mental approach to this race. Especially since there was lots of unknown’s for everybody on the start line.
My goal, was to break the course into 3 different sections, the caution sections, the steady sections and the HAMMER sections. I was released in wave ‘B’ 10 minutes behind wave ‘A’ so it meant I had to overtake 100′s of runners in the process on top of the added physical and technical challenge off road events bring. Its the athlete against the terrain and their minds – not against the clock!
Pre-race briefing.
The one thing I noticed, was a much more laid-back and joyful atmosphere at the start line! Nobody was there for a ‘best time’ but rather a good time and face a new/exiting challenge on a new race venue!
Everybody seemed like they wanted to take advantage of the first 800m as it was asphalt!
Me taking the lead of my wave right before the first obstical!
This picture is worth 1000's words and needs a funny caption!
This challenge, you have to crawl over these boards that was covered it slippery Vaseline - note how they are all smiling =)
The OVER and UNDER section!
Quite a few people lost their shoes during these obstacles - speed laces are not a good idea!
Even the boss himself got down and dirty!
The wall climb was the hardest of all the obstacle in my opinion!
The local Police participated in strong numbers!
Sprinting to the finish!
Finished 1st in my wave and 3rd overall - both 1st and 2nd placers where in the first wave so they had a slight advantage of clear trail but there is also a special prize for winning your wave as well so all good may not have won that one if in wave A!
Woah thats was hard!
After my finish, I gave a few tips to the 5k wave behind me 
Big bright smiles where easy to spot at the finish line!
Joyette manage to get 2nd place overall female in the 10k!
All in all this was a great experience – I strongly recommend this to those feeling the redundancy of typical road races and looking for something more out of running, whether its for extra enjoyment or a bigger challenge or more discovery – these events will not disappoint!
Anyway, some of you might be waiting for my Dinagat Island Challenge race report – yes it will come soon, its just that I damages the memory card of my water/shock proof camera playing around in the 10 foot waves of Cloud 9! Hopefully I will be able to get the pictures back…I realized that I would have rather the camera break, even though its more expensive it is replaceable able versus the pictures which are not replaceable…
