Mountain Biking in Southern California: Muddy Buddy

This was my first race of 2008 and my first Muddy Buddy ever. The concept is pretty simple and really fun: There are teams of 2 with 1 mountain bike. One person starts on the bike and the other starts off running. There are 4 transition zones. At each transition, the person on the bike gets off and runs and then the runner will get on the bike and ride when they get to the transition zone. There's also an obstacle of some kind at each transition, plus there's a mud pit to crawl through just before the finish.

http://www.www.muddybuddy.com/results.php

The Race Bike

The race itself is a little under 6 miles. I did the race with Aaron who routinely runs 16 minute 5Ks. Clearly, I was the weak link here. Aaron had done the race twice before with Mike and they finished fairly well. Last time they did it Aaron had a lot of trouble finding the bike at the first transition zone...thus the inspiration for our team name - Dudwhrmybik? (Dude, where's my bike?)

The Race
My leg started on the bike with a steady uphill followed by a short steep downhill into the transition zone.

My next leg was a run which was mostly uphill (at least it seemed like it). This was probably the toughest leg for me. I was even hurting on the flat sections. Luckily, Aaron only beat me to the transition zone by about 10 seconds, so even if I'd been able to go much faster here, I would have beaten him to the transition and would have had to wait there for the bike.

The 3rd leg I was on the bike again for what again seemed like mostly uphill. Aaron passed me here along with another runner, but not a single biker passed. There was then a short downhill into the transition zone which allowed me to get back in front of Aaron.

The 4th leg was nearly all downhill. I felt pretty good running here, but it was the last of Aaron I saw until the finish. This led to the funnest transition zone which was a climb up a cargo net and then down a giant inflatable slide.

This picture is from a different race, but it's just like the slide we had.

The final leg had the steepest climb of the day. It was followed by some semi-steep downhills. It was then into the bike drop area where Aaron was waiting for me (and had been for a few minutes). From there it was a short run into the mud pit and then to the finish line. I was pretty clueless about what place we were in, but Aaron knew exactly where we were. We were in a battle for 2nd place in our division with 3rd place literally right behind me coming in on the bike. We crawled through the mud pit pretty much neck and neck. Then the final sprint to the finish and we got them by 0.2 of a second.

We finished in 43:33.4. This was good for 2nd place in our division out of 95 teams and 20th overall out of 1100 teams. If they kept track of fastest individuals Aaron probably would have won the whole thing.