MercerMe hits Mudderella

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Last Saturday, three MercerMe editors (Merritt, Andrea and me) plus another 5 of our friends, participated in the mud-run “Mudderella” in Englishtown, NJ at Raceway Park.

“Mudderella” is a non-timed female dominated (but not female exclusive) mud run with challenges: 5 non-consecutive miles running and 13 obstacles.

Many people participate as a team. Our team was called the “Mercer Mud Maidens.” (For our next adventure we plan to change the name. It won’t always be mud.) And, as a good team, we had team shirts. And team socks. And an idiotic amount of team spirit including having our own Facebook group so we could post our training efforts, pictures and offer encouragement.

We primarily trained for the event independently, except that I worked out, as per usual with GymBuddyTara and Anne.

And we also had a few team training get-togethers especially since some of the girls had never met each other. One event was rock climbing and we did a few park meet-ups where we challenged each other to work out hard, look like fools and sweat a lot.

This was the first mud run I’ve done but it seems like, compared to some of the others — like Tough Mudder, Mudderella is much easier. No fire. No electrocution. No clear and imminent chance of drowning.But it was a lot of fun. There was a lot of mud.

Here are a few tips to get you started:

1) Get an early starting time. The later in the day, the more disgusting and hot and time consuming the event is. And less parking. We had a start-time of 9am and that was perfect especially since we had a good deal of nursing mamas on our team who wanted to get back for wee-ones’ nap times.

2) Pack light. But bring the things on the race’s check list. Those things are important. We all brought those things plus a change of clothes, towel (okay I forgot mine and had to use the free t-shirt they gave me for finishing the course), flip flops or change of shoes. Your shoes WILL be trash when you are done.

3) It turns out you CAN bring a cell phone if it is in a super-duper water-proof case in a zip lock bag and you have one person on your team who is either a wimp or has a knee injury (I’m the one with the knee injury. Also a wimp.) who doesn’t attempt the fully submerged in water/mud obstacles. The professional photos the race takes are CRAZY expensive. Like your team could chip in to buy one teammate a brand new cell phone instead.

We’re trying to figure out what to hit up as a team next… Jersey Girl Triathlon? Perfect 10 at Mercer County Park?

This picture is all of us at the Hopewell Boro Block Party minus GymBuddyAnne — to prove we’re not total dirt trolls.