This article appeared in the May 2003 Pacesetter.

The Mudders and Grunters 5 Mile Race

March 30, 2003. The beginning of a new season… yes, apparently the beginning of winter. While twenty members from the Albany Running Exchange were packing their bags for their first trip of the year, meteorologists throughout the northeast were warning the region of an impending storm. This made us only all the more anxious for the Taconic Road Runners Club Mudders and Grunters 5 mile adventure!

The race took place in FDR State Park in Yorktown, NY. After a dangerous two hour drive through rain, sleet, and snow, the ARE finally arrived, en masse, with about forty five minutes to spare before the great journey.

The only covering was a pavilion that could hold about seventy at best; the race had over 250 runners, not to mention all the family and friends that came to attend. As a result, many resorted to hanging out in the bathrooms to avoid the freezing rain that was pelting the runners and the course.

The first half mile of the course led the runners in a circle coming right back past the start. There was nothing difficult about it, which was quite different from what was to come.

After about a mile, the course took a sudden downward dive, and before the runners had anytime to figure out how to traverse it, we were running across a swamp out of the Neverending Story. The course was very well marked with 3 foot flags about every thirty to fifty meters, but often the question was how to get between the two flags.

Following our first muddy encounter, we ascended a steep, but quick climb, only to come to a muddy strip line beneath some power-lines. Our next stop was through a rolling section of thorn bushes with a generous array of small creek jumps. This was nothing compared to what we would find in the final mile.

With no mile markers or persons calling out times, one would find his or herself completely lost in the race. In fact, about halfway through the race, after an extremely steep climb of around 200 meters, the race veered right off the trail, through the unbroken forest. While the flags were abundant, so were the taunting downed trees, leaving us forced to either run around them or jump right over them. To make matters worse, this was a substantially sheer drop, and also sent us on angle rather than straight down the hill.

The last mile began as innocuously as the first, but so does the calm before a storm. After crossing a road and running about 100 meters on a grass field, runners were met with a four feet deep, freezing creek. Perhaps forty feet across, there would be no avoiding this obstacle. Runners took all different styles and approaches, from pulling themselves across the supplied rope, to swimming, to backward flips-the race even gave out an award for the best water crossing. Following the crossing however, was a near half-mile of the thickest mud and muck on the course. There was no way to avoid it, and the suction sound of each step only further reinforced the severity of the course. The race finished with a sprint across a soaked field, before the final eighty meters-straight up a hill.

All twenty ARE members completed the roller-coaster of a course, and then proceeded to seek warm, dry clothing, shelter, and the generous supply of post-race refreshments. In addition, there was team competition, for which we had five teams: Nature Monkeys, Dirty Flying Nuns, Slightly Numb, Bearded Brutes, and Bloody Englishmen. The Bearded Brutes, consisting of Josh Merlis, Tim Koch, Ryan Clark, and Marcus Catlin, took the team competition, aided by Merlis’ first and Koch’s fifth place overall finishes. For their efforts, each won a picture frame and a cookie. In addition, they won the coveted Geronimo Cup, which is a skull signifying the completion of a course that some others may not have survived. It also ensures that we return next year to defend our title, as next year’s fastest team takes its yearly possession of skull. In addition, ARE members Keely O’Connell and Liz Paola were top-10 overall finishers in the female division, and several of our members won awards in their respective categories.

Following the awards ceremony, we gathered together for a few more pictures, before our last muddy trek of the day, that being the walk from the pavilion to our cars. From there, it was two hours back to Albany, and a return to normalcy on that mid-Sunday afternoon.