Mud Factor So Cal I 2012

Really disorganized and we got there early… can’t imagine what other people wrote about sharing cups? Drinking out of same mug? That’s just wrong!
They made a lot of money on us and it was horribly run. Our backpack that we paid $ 5 to be «secured» — was literally out on the open that when we were done — no one even saw us take… never again…
I will stick to the WD …

Fun experience! Much more physical than their website mentions. Scraped my upper thighs on the slide because the mud pool had rocks at the bottom, not safe. My issue is they charge $ 7 for one 5×7 photo and $ 15 to download the photo so you can save it or print it. They email members saying if you bought a photo you can download it for free but there is no option on their website to download without buying. Mike from Mud Factor customer service was passive aggressive in his responses and not helpful. JUST TELL ME HOW TO DOWNLOAD MY PHOTO FOR FREE SINCE I PAID!!!

I wanted to do something fun and different for my birthday and found that MudFactor was going on the day of so I knew I had to do it! I got a group of friends together (Dirty Mother Dunkers) and were super psyched to do the race, none of us have ever done anything like this and I think only a few of us have even done a 5K.
It rained the night before so the course was extra muddy and made it even better, the course itself had its challenges but then again that’s why you signed up right? There weren’t as many obstacles as expected, so we definitely go our run in. The one thing I really liked and stood out to me was that no matter what group you were in everyone was helping each other out, whether it’s encouraging you to go up that wall or pulling you up over it, it was awesome that there was so much team work amongst everyone and no bad energy at all!
I will agree with everyone about the «death slide» however, you didn’t have to go down it if you didn’t want to. Our group of 5 went down it together and it was the funniest, messiest, most painful experience any of us have ever gone through but it was awesome. If we had to do it again, we probably would skip it just because it hurt so much going down, we also didn’t go down the last slide for the fear of the same thing happening as the first slide.
My friends and I were super happy we all challenged ourselves to do the run and we can’t wait to do it again.

This is my second mud factor run had tons of run lots of hard work but it was worth every minute!
Will do it again soon!
Parents! its a slip and slide on a muddy hill… what did you expect to happen little fairies helping your kids them down the slide then placing them in a bed of cotton? You signed up for a MUD RUN!!! Instead of getting mad and complaining maybe next time you should do a little more research before signing kids up.

my group of 14 kids (all first timers) were having a great time, all smiles! until they came across the first slide! total terror! all my kids were crying, screaming, bleeding! and no one to help! my poor babies (ages 5 – 11) were in pain! parents do not allow your kids in the first slide! it is poorly thought out! every kid coming down that slide was screaming, crying and bleeding!

KIDS MUD FACTOR SAN BERNADINO
I took my two boys on the «kids» Mud Factor run, 6 and 4 years old. My 6 year old got scared and wouldn’t run but the 4 year old and I ran and had a fun time, sort of. We were having a good time until I noticed how disorganized and surprisingly unconcerned about safety the organizers seemed to be. The «death slides» as another commenter named them were just as frightening and filled with sharp gravel in 2014 as they were in 2012. I wish I would have read the reviews before going on the run because it was like taking your 4 y.o. and sliding him down shards of glass covered by a thin piece of plastic. Poor kid has little scratches on his bum that scratched him through both the plastic and through his gym shorts.
It’s clear that the organizers do not train their young and inexperienced staff on safe practices. They were sending people down the slide before the previous sliders were off. So when my kid and I were collecting ourselves to get off the slide, another person came careening down and nearly slammed the hell out of my son. Head injury, anyone? My husband took him down the next side that ended in a pool of water. Thankfully he was strong enough to hold my son up out of the water but he was concerned for other kids that could get stuck in the very thick mud under the couple of feet of muddy water. So, long story short, slides = bad.
No liability forms could be strong enough to protect the organizers from the negligence that I saw yesterday. If they don’t take measures to run this event more professionally in the future, it’s just a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt and decides to go after them in the courts.

MUD FACTOR KIDS 2014
i took my 3 kids to this 4,6,9 and it was awesome… it had rained the night before making this the most awesome mud run ever. They had a blast jumping into water and ran through the mud.
everything was perfect until the slip and slide style slide HORRIBLE!!! DONT NOT GO DOWN EITHER SLIDES. Skip them and save yourself and your kids from this horrible experience. They still get the medal. The slip and slide is laid over rocks and there in NO way to control yourself or slow down. My back, tailbone and wrist are totally messed up. I crashed into my daughter while holding my son. I was very scared going down. My daughter come up screaming. There were kid with horribly bloody noses and totally scratched up. There is NO medical help at all. i have done other mud runs and they have an ambulance there just in case someone gets hurt on a obstacle. there is nothing here.
the inflatable slide is better but you go into a deep pool of muddy water that is super sticky at the bottom. Im actually surprised none of the kids didn’t get kicked in the head or sucked down and drown.
Like i said, the entire thing was perfect until the very end. if i had read these reviews before the race i would have skipped the slide and my kids would have had the best memories of their first mud run. Instead its tainted be the very end of the race where they got hurt and scared.

As an update I injured both my shoulder and knee at this event. I tore my mcl which still feels awful a year+ later and I’m 9 months out from shoulder surgery thanks to the rushed slide when we were sent down several at a time (slammed into others and the rocks at the base if the slide) I will never do another mud run again!!! 10k later… The $ 30 event was so not worth it!!!

I’m not going to say I didn’t have fun, I did. I had a blast with my teammates during this year’s 2013 Mud Factor. But there were a few things that I thought they could’ve dealt with better so that we didn’t leave all dehydrated and bleeding like we just fought with wolves in the wild. Most of the team bought bought the tickets through Groupon so we didn’t pay that much for this event (Thank god), I definitely wasn’t going to shell over $ 80 for a run that so disorganized.
First of all, nowhere on the paper says that we had to pay for parking so I was really surprised when they charged us $ 10 for parking. I mean, come on… I thought it came with the event where people were basically spending $ 100 on this event and they couldn’t even give us free parking? Okay. Sucks, and couldn’t really do anything about it.
Secondly, the run itself wasn’t that bad but super gravelly that many of the runners ended getting scraped like hell crawling through the tiny tunnels, not to mention the fact that one of the under water tunnels had a broken glass bottle in it. I opted to run around it than through it. Then we come to the water slide… It. Hurt. A lot. The slide was basically a tarp on the ground sprayed with water and dish soap, but it was the fact that the ground beneath it was filled with sharp gravel so the whole time it felt like my ass was being punctured the whole way down anddd to add onto the pain the bottom didn’t have a pool of water or anything so people were ramming and skidding from wet water to dry ground and scraping the whole of their backs and chests. Half my team came out bloody from the slide taking a chunk of their back, shoulders, and chest. I almost lost my arm ramming into a lady that couldn’t get up right if it wasn’t for the fact that my boyfriend steered me away after.
Third, there was almost NO WATER STATION within the whole journey of the run! We ran and ran and ran hoping the next hill over would have a water station, the only one they provided was at the finish line and about ten minutes into the run. It was terrible last stretch of the run, I was dehydrated and having headaches from it. :(
Lastly, no free beer, no t-​shirt, not even pictures. We had to pay for everything this time around. The only thing we got was a bandana and a finishing medal… I guess I was expecting more seeing as last year the beer was free and so were the pictures. :(Got over-​hyped for them free swag. But it’s got me hyped to try different mud runs in the future! :)

Maybe, I give it 3 stars because it was my first event like this, and everything went great, I loved the medal (that doubles as bottle opener) and had a great time.
The downer was the wait line for the big slide, the whole racing feel goes down the drain if u have to wait in line for like half an hour, I noticed that they had to close it right after my and my friends went on it, cuz’ of some accident.
Had a good time, but I’ll try a different organizer just to compare

Got stuck going with a 10 am run time, they do waves every 30 minutes starting at 9 into the afternoon. Bought my ticket on Living Social for $ 29, which included a free beer… good times, the regular cost is $ 65, which I would never pay to run a 5k. I believe parking was $ 10 bucks and they have a place to check in your bag, which was $ 5, definitely a must do bring a large back pack its the same price as a little bag. The run was fun, our group ran it pretty slow, but it gave me more time to enjoy the views and the run. What was really fun was all the groups of people dressed up, really a great place to do some people watching. The obstacles were all really fun, had to face some of my fears of heights which is always good to get the heart racing. If you are running this for time some of the obstacles and especially the slide are huge bottle necks which would hurt your time.
The way the run is laid out is great, you really don’t start getting really muddy until the last half of the run and at the end you’re crawling through mud so you look like a baby sasquatch. They have showers kind of, mainly dudes spraying you with hoses and then you go into a big shower with about 30 other people and they soap you up and spray you down. Definitely bring a towel, change of clothes and trash bags for all your clothes and shoes. After the race we got our free beer and noticed everyone was drinking it up before their run, which sounds like way more fun. So next year will definitely need a team costume, later run time and more beer.
BE PREPARED TO GET SOME SCRAPES AND CUTS, MUD HAS ROCKS IN IT.

This is the first mud run that I’ve ever done, so I’ll spare the comparisons that so many people seem to be making (pricing, no free t-​shirts? oh, WHAT A TRAVESTY! o_​o!) to experiences with other mud runs. I’ll just judge my time at Mud Factor purely on my own experience.
Would I do it again? Probably not
Was it a fun experience? Yes!
Did it make me want to participate in other mud runs? Yes!
Was it worth the cost? I paid ~30 $ but definitely would not have forked out the 80 $ that some others paid.
Sure, the mud-​run was dangerous. But what do you expect from an obstacle course? Did you expect it to be a walk in the park? Did you expect the mud to be rock-​free and of spa-​quality?
I will say, though, that the run was very congested, so it prevented people from going through the course as quickly as they would have liked. There are portions of the course that you can get through very quickly, and other portions (before you go on the obstacles) where you have to wait 15+ minutes for, as there are only so many people that each obstacle can hold at one time.
I left the mud run with a body covered in bruises and scars, but hey… it’s what I expected and what I knew I was signing up for!

This is my first obstacles run so I don’t have anything else to compare it to. So, I had a lot of fun!!! Yes, you had to pay $ 10 for parking but you have to pay for parking every where else. My waive was at 10am so I didn’t experience a lot of the things that everyone else came across. I also had friend that has done runs like this before so I got a heads up. I totally agree with the other Unilocalers about how disorganize it was. I didn’t have to wait too long for the slide like everyone else. I actually got to slide down. I think sometime after I finish someone got injury so they stop the slide. Everyone else just walked down. It was reallllllly cold that day and it was lame that you had to wait in line for a stupid picture which I don’t even know where to find it online. And yes there was no place to change your clothes. I wasn’t expecting any place to change so I just did it outside the car with a towel. Yes, I got scraped up. Big deal, it’s a obstacle run. If you don’t want to get hurt then just do a reg run.
Overall, I had a lot of fun and I can’t wait to the next one!!!

This is hands down the worst race/​obstacle course EVER! One star is kind.
We purchased this as a Living Social Deal. Even though we got a discount I would have paid double to have had the race be a decent experience. Honestly I really wish I would have seen the reviews here on Unilocal– they are really ominous and realistic.
Here is some of my feedback
1) No course helpers anywhere on the course– seriously. Our wave time began at 11:30– there were hundreads of people wverywhere and then they started our race and everyone ran through the1st tunnel’s and then dispersed everywhere. We then ran to the end of the race??? No staff, no markers, hundreads of people confused everywhere. This should have been a sign to GO HOME! But we didn’t.
2) The wood structures to hop over were ricketly and really repetetive. With no staff there to assist the people were hopping over stepping on hands– it was chaos. I had three big guys in my group the guys made sure us girls were safe– but it’s ridiculous to think that thousands of people are left unmanned with every intention to have a «tough experience” — bad management on Mud Factor’s part
3) SO dangerous. So perhaps 1 – 2 miles into the race (who knows cause there is NO organization = no clearly marked mile markers so this looked like the end– but there was SO much more left to the race. There was this enormous slip & slide like slide obstacle. When we ran to the top of a mountain we were confronted with a wicked crowd of people (NO EMPLOYEES AGAIN). This is where your patience is really tested becuase people come out of the wood work and cut in line. It’s HORRIBLE. Picture this you are at the top of a very steep mountain, on a rainy day, with an unruly crowd while you all stand together for an hour watching people go down a slip & slide and SLAM into one another loose their pants/​shorts etc and grab a body part and walk away. The crowd yelled (whoo, owe, wooooo… etc.)
4) Introducing the «Death“slide– Okay… as I began to discuss the wait and unruly nature of this slide I feel that this wicked slide deserves it’s own section. This slide appeared to be managed by a youngster (perhaps a 10 – 12 year old boy. Because the line was so long right before us they decided that they needed to start sending multiple people down at once. I am serious a 50+ ft drop slams you straight down into a pool of mud. The real kicker here is that they did not properly clear the dirt before they sent thousands of people down the slide. Out of the 6 people in our party all the girls have wicked bruises on our tailbone/​buttocks area (including welts the size of ping pongs). Halfway down I thought to my self «why the heck did I go down?». No part of me ever thought it would have been that bad. My knee was gashed, my friends arm was slit, my sister had cuts all over her. And after we got out and tried to regain composure I realized there was an unconcious woman laying on the side of the mud pool with her friends around her all stunned with blood surrounding her head. NO MEDICS or STAFF anywhere.
4) No visible or real 1^st Aid– My friends arm was bleeding and we were worried about infection so we aimlessly ran around asking anyone where a medic was, which is ridiculous given the nature of the slide and the magnitude of the fall. We never saw any ambulance or anything for the poor woman with the head injury. Seriously this deserves a big WTF!
So after the slide from hell there are more climbing, more crawling and more humility and now… go figure– you are done with the race… but you are filthy and COLD and guess what… there is…
5) No where to change :(There is an open tent for girls I suppose; however, I opted for my car since my husband had no where to change.
Another tid-​bit…
They charge for everything (parking, bag-​check etc.) In CA It;‘s kinda normal; however, it’s still annoyine.
Word of advice, do any other race. This one is AWFUL!

I thought it was fun and would do it again. No wait to check in, parking was $ 10, what ya gonna do. Yeah there wasn’t much supervision really but if ppl read their waivers they should know what to expect. The course was fun, muddy and worth it. Bag check of course is optional and the parking lot was not too far so you could easily walk back to your car and change there or go back to the tents. The did have two water stations, one in the middle of the race the other at the very end, plenty of water for all.
There was a long wait for the slide but there were a lot of ppl too so you would expect it, it was rocky and it hurt but its not like I was expecting to slide down some fluffy clouds lol. And that 10 yr. old did an ok job, there were 3 adults there too.
There were donation boxes everywhere too so those who could not find them…
I think ppl just like to complain, get over it and have fun.

Reading reviews from negative Nancy’s make me hate life… or just people.
COME ON, people. I don’t care if you’re always miserable and unloved, but DON’T try and ruin my good time.
Granted, the Mud Run had it’s flaws, but it was AWESOME.
SO MUCH FUN! How can you not comment on all the fun you had? Just go to bed, negative reviewers.
All right. Let’s chat.
I have tons of good things to say about this, but I’ll just get the negatives out of the way.
For some reason you have to pay to park. I don’t understand that. If you want to make us pay to park, charge us in the admission to the race. What if I wouldn’t have had cash? Just add it on initially.
Secondly, this thing IS organized horribly. This 5k is organized worse than your 10 year high school reunion that takes place at a VFW. They had a 12 year old kid running the slip and slide. The slip and slide had a 45 minute wait. Unacceptable for a 5k. Also, start and finish were a disaster. Waiting game. Although this 5k had it’s flaws, it is NOT ENOUGH to make me give this less than 4 stars!
This was FUN AS HELL.
Rope swings. Mud pools. Giant walls to climb over. Tires. Bridges. 100 foot slip n’ slide. MOUNTAINS. HILLS. Insanely fun things to complete.
You don’t even feel like you’re running a 5k because of all the obstacles. I am definitely hurting today… and this is a good thing. GREAT WORKOUT. GREAT time.
So…
PROS: Super fun
–Exhausting
–Lots of obstacles
–Dirty, filthy fun
–CRAZY
–Lots of cute girls
–Free beer at the end
CONS: Organized by toddlers
–Toddlers working the course
–Pay to park? Get out of here.
–Gear check also costs? Stop it.
–Kind of hard to find.
If they took out some of these unnecessary fees and this race was in the Valley rather than SAN BERNADINO, I would give it 5. SO MUCH FUN.
Check it next year!
Sean

I’d probably give it no stars if that was an option — but it’s not, so here goes:
— Disorganized on every level — from the parking to the actual race. We go separated from the pack and had no idea which way to go. Would it kill them to have a few people to let you know which way to go? Does anyone even work here? Hello? Bueller, Bueller?
— Charge for everything. Parking $ 10. Bag check $ 5. T-​shirt (don’t know didn’t buy it), Etc. Etc. — This stuff all comes FREE at other races. Why, because these races all charge you like 80 BUCKS! for a 5K race — the least they could do is throw in a few niceties.
— Dangerous. Not in a good way. Case in point: We waited an hour (yes, an hour wait, in the middle of a 5k race. Sweet) for a giant Slip ‘N Slide and simultaneously had to fend of people cutting the line, because remember — they don’t have anyone staffed here to do it… So, when we finally got to the front we discovered it was being overseen by a 10-​year-​old boy with a garden hose — I’m not even kidding.
We finally went down the slide and got totally jacked up by rocks — everywhere rocks! The girls in our group were all bleeding, one had a gash all the way down her forearm. We saw another person knocked unconscious and a string of other injuries on this one ‘obstacle’. AVOID.
— First Aid, or lack thereof. So, after the Slip ‘N Slide diaster we went looking for the ambulance to see if our friend needed stitches — the ambulance was sitting empty. We waited for 10 minutes for them to come back and patch her up.
Me: Do you think she needs stitches?
EMT: I don’t know. Maybe? I don’t know.
Me: Awesome, thanks.
— Drunk hecklers. A bunch of tools hanging over the barriers, yelling at runners. I do stand up comedy, and get heckled less by drunk assholes while on stage, than we did while limping to the finish line. I actually got into a yelling match with one of these jerks (I’m from Boston, I just can’t help myself).
— Nowhere to change! But only if you’re a boy. Seriously, my wife went into the changing tent to put on her dry clothes, I went looking for my changing tent — but was told it didn’t exist. Guys don’t need privacy, just air your muddy balls out in public. How’s that for sexist? It’s awesome.
— Nowhere to donate shoes. That’s pretty standard at these sort of things, but not here of course. People were just discarding their mud-​shoes in the parking lot. So much for Goodwill.
They make money hand-​over-​fist at these races, so it’s not like they don’t have the budget to fix these things — they just don’t give a shit.
SAVE YOUR MONEY — or — PICK ANOTHER RACE
I did the zombie 5k in October and although it had its problems, it was head and shoulders above this half-​assed race.

So poorly organized not to mention the fact that they almost wouldn’t give me my finishers medal or tshirt or bandana, claiming they were running out. Excuse me? I paid my fee like everyone else thank you very much. What a disaster!!!
Also, I was never even able to retrieve our times or photos from the race. I felt completely cheated!!!

Yikes!!! Talk about pure disaster! I completed this mud run with my friends today and I agree 150% with the other reviewer! It was a hot mess, literally. We were told to arrive 1 hour before our wave time, so my friends and I came an 1 ½ hr early to avoid the rush. Tell me why we sat in line just to park for over 30 minutes? Then they have the nerve to charge us $ 10 bucks to park on dirt? Really people? Oh but wait it gets better, Registration line was about a mile long. It was an angry mob. This «line» was for people who took the time to handle their business online over a week ago, yet we waited for over an hour to get a T-​shirt and smelly bandanna! It was really unorganized, hardly any staff or security! Oh and the Gear Check! Why were they charging to put peoples items in a huge pile on the ground so it can get all dirty? That should have been FREE, yet they took advantage of people to make more $$$. So we just ran to our cars dropped off our stuff and put our car key around my friends necklace. So naturally we were late to our original wave time thus meaning we were running in dead bone dry heat, We also could not find the starting line nor could find anyone to ask, we actually had to ask another runner where the race began. We were not happy campers.
The obstacle course was okay, tad boring to me compared to warrior dash, lots of hills, I don’t think it would have been so awful if i wasn’t over 90 degrees out. I was DYING by the time we got to a water station that had NO CUPS! Ummmm for reals? GO GET SOME CUPS MAN! Everyone was just drinking straight out the same jug of water, if one person had Mono, congrats you all have it now, you can thank Mud Factor for that! :)
I also didn’t like the fact that there weren’t any medical staff… wait…I saw 1 ambulance vehicle but the guys were chomping down on their food and rocking out to the music… I felt oh so safe… good thing I didn’t have a heat stroke due to the LACK OF WATER.
Bottom line, My friends and I will never return to mud factor. Save your money guys, there are way better Mud Runs out there!

I really wanted to like this event but you could tell that the event organizers were quite disorganized. This was their first event of the season and perhaps ever since this was the first I had ever heard about this event. How I know they were disorganized is that I have ran the Warrior Dash which is well organized in comparison.
Let’s start off with parking. Why is it that every mud event I have been to charges parking? Why don’t they charge for parking beforehand so there is not a ginormous line to get into the venue? Why even charge parking at all? You already have to pay $ 65, if you paid full price that is. Parking was $ 10.
Next, the queue to the registration area was ridiculous. Many people missed their scheduled wave time because the line was backed up. I heard some excuses from the workers saying that there was more people than expected. I don’t think that is a true statement. They closed online registration a week before so why would it be a surprise. I registered online already so there was no reason for the long line. I think I had to wait at least an hour for my bib, t-​shirt, time tracker, etc. At Warrior Dash, it took less 2 minutes to get my items because they had the manpower to accommodate the number of people. Also, waiting in line in the scorching heat did not help things either.
I felt completely rushed at this point and went to my car to drop off the items. Then, I rushed to the start line which was not clearly marked. I actually had to ask someone where the start line was. Finally, I started the race. One thing that Mud Factor does better are the obstacles and terrain. It is a 5K with obstacles on steroids. There is music all over the course so that was a nice touch. The 5K was particularly difficult for me, but I did enjoy the challenge. There were several obstacles that were memorable including the slip and slide down a steep hill, traversing a steep hill downwards without sliding down, and the best obstacle was the steep board at an incline of at least 60 degrees. If you were not fit, you would not have made it past the steep board. I liked that. The terrain was completely full of steep hills which took the wind out of me and everyone else.
Things that need to be improved are the water stations. They ran out of cups on the 1^st stop. Honestly, I was so parched by the time I reached the 1^st station because it was almost 90 degrees outside only to be told that they ran out of cups. I just reused a cup on the table. I didn’t care at that point. When I finished, there was another water station, but they ran of cups and ran out of water. After running an exhaustive race like that, I do not like to be told that they ran out of water.
Also, when we finished the race, where was my medal? Apparently, some slacker didn’t give it to many people. So, I had to go back to get it. Then some worker had the nerve to ask me if I got one earlier. If I got one earlier, would I be asking? It was really lame. They were completely disorganized. Honestly, I wanted to give Mud Factor a 1 star, but the obstacles were actually good along with music. Now if they could just fix everything else.
I did not stick around for the beer festivities because I was drenched in mud and fed up with all their disorganization. Mud Factor better shape up as many people experienced the same thing that occurred to me today.