It’s official – I’m gonna do the Dirty Girl! Oh, get your mind out of the gutter – it’s a mud run!

Got Dirt?

Three days ago, my fabulous foodie romance author pal Amanda Usen sent me the link for the run – there are 9 Dirty Girl events this year, and the only one in New York happens to be about an hour’s drive from us. She asked, “So, do you wanna?” And I was like, “Bring it on!”  (Well, maybe we spoke a bit more eloquently than that. We are authors, after all.)

Needless to say, we were psyched to create a team and take on this challenge. Go Team Dirty Word Girls!

Dirty Girl is a non-competitive 5k course consisting of 11-15 insanely fun obstacles designed by an elite Ex-Army Ranger. The course will be a mix of off-road, trekking through forests, and whatever other interesting terrain the organizers can incorporate! Oh, and a portion of the fees and proceeds go to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Fun for a good cause? I’m all over that, like mud on a…um, Dirty Girl.

Amanda’s husband recently participated in the Tough Mudder, which inspired her quest to find a muddy mountain of her own to climb. She witnessed him conquer, as she put it, “twelve miles of mud, fire, monkey bars, walls, barbed wire, electrified wire, hills, dales, rusty pipes and a ton of other crazy shit.” Inspiring, indeed!

So now…we train. Both of us are yoga fans, which helps with our core, our balance, and our sanity. I spin 8-10K twice a week (when I’m not making up excuses as to why I can’t go) so that should benefit me as well. Hopefully we’ll find some time to run together when the nice weather hits.

But then there’s…the mud. I’m wondering if we should prepare for that. It’s a big part of the course, after all. Funny, some of our friends’ first reactions were “I don’t get dirty” or “I don’t like to get dirty”. The dirt factor hadn’t really phased me. I don’t intentionally seek out mud, but if I get a little on me, I’m usually OK. After all, I do moe.down every year – a 3-day music and camping festival in Upstate NY that sees its share of wet weather. But then again, I usually have my pretty rain boots and hotel! So OK, I guess I don’t really become “one with nature” there.

I did, however, put in several years of hands-on mud-training in my single digits…my mother tells me my favorite activity as a kid was making mud pies and basking in backyard mud in my bathing suit – just like Mary Ann in my favorite children’s book, Mary Ann’s Mud Day, by Janice May Udry . Sadly, the book is long out-of-print and hard to find. But in my mind’s eye, I remember the story, as well as the whimsical happy illustrations by Martha Alexander of Mary Ann and her mud creations. And I have a vague recollection of my mother getting in the mud and playing right along with me. (She tells me now the neighbors must’ve thought she was crazy!)

So yeah, this summer we will do some running, and some upper-body strengthening. And maybe…just maybe…we’ll find/make some mud (for the kids, of course). Got Dirt?