Nancy Zsombor wanted to do something special to celebrate her son Austin's 19th birthday.
So she paid his entry fee for Saturday's inaugural Mudd, Sweat & Tears obstacle course challenge. Together they braved the elements to enter what became a two-hour rain-soaked romp through mud, hilly forested trails, and a dirty dozen man-made hazards in their path at Otway Nordic Centre.
They joined a crowd of about 1,300 other competitors who came in waves to tackle monkey bar ladders, wooden walls, rope climbs, tire drags, log carries, a swim through a swamp, and painful crawls on their bellies and elbows over gravel and mud under barbed wire.
And in the end, they got what they came for -- a finisher's medal, a T-shirt and a celebratory beer to toast their victory over adversity.
"It was really fun, it was intense but it was so much fun, I can't wait to do it again," said Nancy Zsombor, 39. "It didn't cost that much to enter and it bought memories and that's what matters. How many people get to do this with their mom? I was nervous before doing this and now I'm so jazzed to do the next one."
Austin was proud of his mom for finishing the grueling event and he's also hooked on the race. He's hoping the success of Saturday's eight-kilometre event will inspire longer races for Prince George like the 20km Tough Mudder in Whistler.
"It was unreal, the overall spirit of the entire thing is what brought it together, just the hype around it made me want to do it," said Austin. "When I got to the end of it I wanted to do it again. It gave me something to train for the last couple months. Me and my mom got out there a couple of times running the cutbanks. We teamed up to solve the obstacles -- I'd hoist her over the wall and when she finished crawling through the mud she'd drag me through. I wouldn't do it with anyone else but my mom."
After the first sloppy mud crawl, some competitors stripped off their shirts, pants and gloves rather than bear an extra 10 pounds of weight with most of the course ahead of them. Hip-hugging compression shorts worked well and those who wore conventional shorts and pants lived to regret it when they were forced to hold onto them while running to keep them from falling off their waists. Some competitors wrapped their gloves in Zip-lock plastic bags to get through the mud pits so they'd have dry hands and a bit of cushioning on the palms for pain-free hangs from the monkey bar scaffolds.
Ninja Turtles Adrian Dones, 36, and Megan Leppington, 28, were relieved to see the final wall at the finish, but had the time of their lives getting that far. Dones donated his right shoe to the cause, losing it in the deepest part of the knee-deep mud pit near the old biathlon range. Leppington jumped back in to the deep end to look for the shoe, but it was a goner. That meant a four-kilometre jog through the forest for Dones with only one rubber sole to cushion his two feet, and he still had the tire drag through a gravel pit ahead of him.
"Aside from a little bit of acupressure and a bit of acupuncture, I feel energized," said Dones, who flashed his Ninja Turtle underwear briefly when the weight of the mud pulled his pants down.
"I loved the mud pit the most and got to go in it a second time to try to rescue his shoe," said Leppington. "There's a lot of things in there that felt like shoes but none were his shoe."
A long line of runners caked in mud at the finish area waited for the hose at the wash station to clean off the grime. The water was chilly but it came as a relief to see and feel flesh again under all that dirt.
Volunteers from the Canadian Ski Patrol fanned out on foot, bikes and quads armed with radios in case anybody got hurt on the course. There were a couple of minor injuries and at least one case of mile hypothermia for an early starter who broke the ice crawling through a muddy quagmire chilled by an overnight low of 10 C.
Sherri Craig, 38, and her friend Meghan Pommer, 39, shed their pre-race jitters in a hurry once they started putting their bodies to the test in the military-style endurance course.
"It was a lot of fun, no pressure," said Craig. "I read a few things this morning about the race and got kind of freaked out but it was awesome. Everybody helped everybody out. The worst was the barbed wire you had to crawl under with the gravel. It killed my elbows. The funnest was probably the water. It was over our heads and we had to swim. I would do this again."
'The worst was the pond -- you had to swim through it and it was ice-cold and it took your breath away," said Pommer.
Because the runners were grouped in separate waves starting at different times, that made it possible to get 1,300 people through the course and avoid long waits at each obstacle. No other sporting event in the city's history has drawn that many competitors and Meaghan Wyatt, 37, was glad to be part of it, racing with her friend Angie Witso. They finished in one hour 50 minutes, although it was not a timed event and no winners were declared.
"I've always wanted to do one of these," said Wyatt. "I usually do marathons and this is just more fun to get down and dirty. Just finishing with Angie was the best part."
The Pilgrim Bandits, a group dedicated to helping military veterans overcome physical injuries and post traumatic stress disorder through participation in team events, gathered together conservation officers, fisheries biologists, B.C. Parks employees and RCMP officers to form a Mudd, Sweat & Tears team. The Bandits had planned to help a couple of veterans who had lost limbs on overseas missions get through the course, but to due scheduling conflicts and medical issues they couldn't attend the race. The Bandits, who opened a Prince George chapter in January, have a canoe trip on the Yukon River from Whitehorse to Dawson City planned for September and are hoping to have several veterans take part in next year's Mudd, Sweat & Tears.
John Reed of Rossland, who organized the race and founded the Mudd, Sweat & Tears series in 2013, said the Prince George race went way beyond expectations and promised next year's event will be even better.
"I think it was one of our most successful races to date," said Reed. "It was an awesome crew with Kevin Pettersen and his team from Otway, it was awesome venue and we had great support from the community.
"I think it will be one our flagship events in B.C. next year, numbers-wise. We'll have more photographers on course and in terms of the course changes, people will just have to wait and see."
