Pretty Muddy

The run was fantastic, had such a great time.

Girls, mud, music and beer?! What’s not to love!
This was such a fun event! The set up was very well organized, from the parking and check-​in station with drop zone for belongings that didn’t need to get muddy to the finish line including pictures, free beer and music. They also had a great station off the side set up for those that were clever enough to bring a change of clothes after washing off. I wasn’t one of them, but if I had been, this would have been a nice feature.
The course itself was pretty fun. I thought there would be a little more mud, but I made up for that by climbing through what was there under walls, over walls, under nets, over nets, through pond/​lakes, down slides, etc. etc. etc.
‘Twas a muddy good ol’ time! It took me back to being a child and making mud pies for the fun of playing in the dirt! I’m going to be on the look out for mud runs thanks to this adventure!

My first act as a Unilocal Elite: free tix for me and a friend to Pretty Muddy 5k. Nice! Two other Unilocal buds were also going, so we all planned to do the same heat.
This was my first mud run and it was exactly what I expected. Ok, maybe a little less muddy than I expected, but otherwise exactly what I had in mind. We started off by running until I realized the three fatal errors I had made that morning: I wore shorts instead of capris, which ride up when I run; I wore the WRONG sports bra for running; and I forgot to take my insulin (which causes a fair amount of chest pain and shortness of breath). These three factors pretty much ruled out any running for me– bummer. It was a good day for it. So instead, we walked. The course itself was located in a really pretty park and it was a great day for a nice walk with friends, so we were able to enjoy that part of it.
The color tunnel that started it off was anti-​climactic. If you’re gonna color me in powder, do that shit! I want to look like an Easter egg when I’m done! But instead I just had some yellow on my wrist and a blue spot on my boob that kept concerning me as it caught my eye throughout the race. Under a wall here, over a wall there, a bit of mud in your shoes… It wasn’t bad. The obstacles were easy and kinda fun. Climbing over the mesh rope hill was pretty fun, but still super easy. During one obstacle where you walk through a suspended rope grid, I went to imitate one of my friends to be funny, and immediately caught my foot and fell on my ass. Well, at least I was funny. Lol.
Best obstacle: Mud slide, far and away. What’s not to love?
Worst obstacle: Mud pit at the finish line. Aside from the a-​hole who blinded me with mud (who was that again, Jennifer???), the floor was all these tiny rocks, which you had to climb over on your knees. OWWWWW, my knees were TORE UP. There goes my social life.
Overall, good way to spend a Saturday with friends, and it was super awesome that they let us Unilocalers in for free! Thank you Pretty Muddy for breaking me into the mud, and thank you Unilocal and Alex for picking us to send in for free! Lots of fun and I would definitely do it again and recommend it to my friends. Not to mention I have a super cute finisher medal to show off. :)

You will get Muddy no way around that! Long lime to get unmuddy, and if you wanted your free beer a long line for that. I would say only downfalls. Staff and volunteers are helpful. The course was just right and not too hard.

Pretty Muddy Sacramento is a mud run which is designed specifically for women, much like Bic pens for Her.
Compared to other mud runs that I have done, I would say that this one was much easier, and much less muddy. Don’t get me wrong, you will get an opportunity to get completely soaked in mud and post a bunch of pictures on Instagram.
«Can you guys help me pick a filter? I don’t know if I should go with XX Pro or Valencia. I wanna look tan. What should my caption be? I want it to be clever. How about, ‘Livin with my bitches, #LIVE?’»
I came with a group of three other girls, and we decided to walk/​run the course. The course is just outside of Granite Park in Sacramento, so it is pretty flat, with just a few ups and downs. Honestly, if you can run three miles on a treadmill, you can easily run this course.
The run started off with running through a mister where enthusiastic-​ish teenage boys threw colored powder on us. I don’t really know the purpose of coloring clothes that are about to get covered in mud, but whatever. Throughout the course, there were lots more teenagers yelling cheesy phrases at us, like, «Yeah, you go girl!» Confession: that did make me feel pretty awesome.
The obstacles were pretty basic. There were maybe four or five walls to hop over, but I’m short and I zipped right over them. Okay, so maybe I was a hurdle jumper in high school, whatever. No big deal. Some of the walls were inside of mud pits, so you had to either jump into the mud knee-​deep, then climb the wall, then jump back into mud, or just slide under the wall through the mud.
The toughest obstacle was a rope wall which seemed to be designed more for photo ops than anything else. As I’m climbing over the top and complaining, «What ever happened to mud slides?» I’m informed that there will be one at the end of the course. There was also a little hill with ropes on it, but no mud was involved– all of us just held the rope around waist height while scaling up the hill (unlike some runs, where you aren’t allowed to use your legs at all).
There were a few tunnels to climb through (sans mud), a few mud pits to crawl through, and a sort of arbitrary 50 feet where you had to carry a 2×4 up and down a small hill. At the end, you climb a rope wall and slide down into a mud pit, and then crawl through a long mud pit at the finish line. Some jerk started a mud fight and started splashing mud all over everyone else.
Oh wait, that was me.
Overall I’d rate this course to be easy. Yes, even for a girl. Then again, there seemed to be a lot of teenage or very young women, and if this is your first mud run, I can see how it could seem pretty awesome.
I was a bit nauseated by the «girl power» signs all over the course. It didn’t take long to figure out that «pretty muddy» didn’t mean that you could get pretty muddy as much as it meant that you could get mud all over you while still looking pretty.
At the finish line, we were given medals and beers, and then took a pretty cool photo shoot before dumping water all over our faces. I was pretty disappointed that the next step was for someone to try to sell us all of the photos from the course. Most of the other courses I’ve done have had the photos available online, included in the price of the run, but of course people are always looking for a new way to make more money.
There were also a couple of food trucks around, which is obviously an excellent idea for the end of a workout. Hashtag: protein.