anna & chia: Superleague & Mudd Rush

Hi Chia!

Oh what a weekend! I am sore and battle-scarred, but I am loving the memories of the challenge, comradeship and accomplishment of this weekend.

Superleague

Saturday morning I was nervous about the grand finals. In the previous round our team had won 5 games but lost 2, and to be honest, it shook up my confidence a little bit. To be honest, I think my confidence has been shaken a bit too frequently in the past few months in all facets of my life, so perhaps that is why I was so nervous on Saturday, when really, I had nothing to worry about.

So all morning I was listening to pre-game songs to get me amped up. My ultimate 'pre-game' playlist include:

Amazing - Kanye West
Better, Faster, Stronger - Kanye West
Edge of Glory - Lady Gaga
Party Rock Anthem - LMFAO
Yeah 3x - Chris Brown
I Gotta Feeling - Black-eyed Peas
Supermassive Black Hole - Muse

Anywho, I listened a lot to the top 3 songs and they really got me pumped! I also realised that even though Kanye West is a little bit full of himself, his songs about being so awesome and that 'you should be honoured by my lateness, that I would even show up for this fake Sh*t...' is the kind of positive self talk we need at times. Perhaps him being full of himself is good for some situations =)

Anywho, here's some pics from the day:

Team photo pre-game

Mom and Dad ended up coming to watch my finals too! It was really nice having them there, and it made me remember back in the day when they used to watch my hockey games. Anywho, we ended up winning the grand finals this year! YAY!

The Inaugural Western Mudd Rush

On Sunday, I woke up like every other Sunday morning. I rolled over Kev who is always still deep in dreamland somewhere, to grab my iPhone that has been plugged into his MacBook to charge overnight. I had a quick look at Facebook and then remembered that it was wasn't any old Sunday, but it was Mudd Rush day.

Our heat started at 3pm, so we had a whole morning to enjoy. But man, 1pm came around so quickly. Ben, Amy, Kev and I met at Thien's at 1pm and drove to the Mudd Rush together.

Chia, it was awesome! What I loved the most was the atmosphere! The vibe was just fun fun fun! There were awesome costumes! People dressed as brides, prisoners, cowboys riding horses... and because there were no prizes, everyone was just there to have fun and finish the thing. It was a 9km obstacle course filled with lots of running and lots of physical challenges along the way.

We first had to crawl through this black plastic tunnel just to get through to the starting line. We were then waiting in the starting area with the MC amping us up with music and just general encouraging and inspirational chat. He was awesome. He got us all excited.

When it started we had a short run until we reached our first obstacle. The organisers did not hold back on us; we needed to crawl under barbed wire! From that obstacle I was completely covered in mud.

My shirt was caked with mud and my participant bib was hanging by 2 pins as the mud had weighed it down, ripping it off the pins.

The other obstacles included: - jumping over logs which had mud under and on either side of them, climbing up a rope net which was draped over a log which was about 3 metres high and which you had to climb down on the other side (this one had someone injured), a huge hay stack which you had to climb up, over and down the other side, a massive waterside that was literally a plastic sheet with inflated rubber walls on either side to contain the water (and people) that ran down a very steep hill, was scary fun, but it also had a serious injury there, climbing up a wall by holding onto a rope, ongoing 'hurdles' which were these metal fences which you had to jump/climb over and then crawl under (this shattered me). After that we were met with an ice bath which we had to jump in and trawl through which made all my muscles in my legs and core muscles seize up for the run which had 'fk off hill' in it (a steep up hill climb). After that there were more running parts and crawling through mud etc.

By the end of it, we were all exhausted but super happy with our accomplishment. There was this warm camaraderie amongst all participants - people from different teams helping each other over the obstacles, mass encouragement for those who needed it and of course, there was friendly competition.

For us, there was this group of people dressed as American Football players. They just kept catching up to us, and vice versa. But they were good fun. However, we ended up beating them =P

Here's the pics I got from the day. Unfortunately, I didn't have my waterproof camera at the time, so here are photos courtesy of Kev's camera!