Running in the mud is so much fun!

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On Sunday I headed to a local park, Weald Park in Brentwood, with my brother, his girlfriend Emma, their puppy dachshund BK and my furry running partner April.  The intention was to walk the dogs and then I would run and that is what I did.

I am happy to run in the mud and dirt and as I have an OCR this Saturday I thought it a good opportunity to get to the park, do some trail running, play on some obstacles and get dirty.

April is my furry running partner and she’s not a puppy but I’m fairly certain she thinks she is.  She has the energy of a puppy and runs around like a loon.  I moan about having to stop a lot when running with her as she has a weaker bladder than me (which is quite hard) and pees every two minutes, even my brother and his girlfriend noticed and I was like yep thats why my runs with her are stop start stop start.

She is funny though – ran straight for the lake and thought she could walk in only to find it was a ledge and promptly disappeared!  I laughed as I knew she would be ok – she’s a lab and any sign of water, even a little puddle, and she’s in it!  My brother and Emma, however, looked a little worried like we should help but I said no she’ll be fine and then she reappeared.

April is normally very well behaved and yet a big coward but with BK she was one naughty pup and would not listen to a word I said.  So I was ok with the fact she had a long walk and then I took her on a run with me.

The park has a lot of wooden elements based around the children’s story book The Stick Man and I figured this was a good excuse to get on them before my next OCR event this weekend.

Now I cannot lie there were a lot of parents who did seem to keep their kids close rather than let them run on the playground activities (which I saw as OCR obstacles) near the crazy lady (me – in case that was not clear) who was running around covered in mud.

Everyone was avoiding the mud and I was running straight through it without a care in the world.  I even ran through a stream and at the end I saw a lady probably in her 60’s just staring at me like I had just escaped from a local mental hospital.  I should have been embarrassed or ashamed but I could not have cared less – I was having a blast!

You would think this would have been good practice but I was still pretty useless on most activities – managed a whole two monkey bars (don’t get jealous), my foot went through the cargo nets every time and as I was running through the forest I ran straight into a huge branch – so Saturday at Nuclear Fallout 12k should be fun (for those in the group with me who can laugh at me)!