We arrived to Clermont on Friday afternoon just in time to relax and sit by the pool before heading out for our ride. Today was the “easy” ride of the weekend where we were only going to go 20 miles. Since Mom and I already had plans to run a race on Saturday morning, this was our only shot to conquer the hills.
The ride was a lot tougher than I imagined. The combination of heat, new pedals, figuring out how to climb (it was longer than the bridges I’m used to) and dealing with the throbbing from my knee was killer but I trudged through. Sadly, mom couldn’t. After about 4 miles, the heat got to her and she Bonked. We bid the rest of the team adieu and turned around to head back to the hotel. Mom being in her weakened state; we could only ride part of the way back and walked the rest. It was hard on her ego to admit that she had to walk part of the way back; especially, when we realized that our total ride for the day had only been 8 miles! However, that wasn’t going to stop her because the next day we were signed up for the Muddy Buddy Run.
Muddy Buddy is a 6-mile run where you encounter obstacles along the way. There were 5 obstacles during the race – a rock wall, 30’ inflatable slide, muddy hurdles, an inflatable crawl thru then climb thing (it’s hard to describe) and a maze. The final hurrah is the Mud Pit that stands between you and the finish line. I have done this race in the past and it was tons of fun. It came as no surprise that Mom wanted this to be her 1st race after I had talked to up for years. She even agreed that the Mud Pit would be fun.
Being that this was her 1st race EVER, our goal was to get her to cross the finish line. Muddy Buddy has a team aspect to it where you can bike and run with a partner, but then you don’t spend anytime with your buddy. So we opted for the run only aspect, which made us the last wave to leave the start line. It was already 8:30am and the sun was on full blast. As we jogged to the 1st obstacle, Mom was in good spirits. She kept up like a champ – averaging a 14-minute mile. Completing the obstacles caused our time to slow and after having to wade thru mud at mile 3, we got even slower. Have you ever tried to jog in muddy sneakers? It’s not easy. But each obstacle caused us to laugh a little more and propel us to the end goal of finishing.
As we approached the Mud Pit and the finish line, we saw Emily with her amazing camera snapping away and we got a boost of energy. Mom was apprehensive about the mud at first, but knew that it was all that stood between her and the finish line. She crawled thru like a champ. Even more impressive is not a splatter of mud made it on the all-white hat she was wearing. Crossing the finish line with Mom was amazing
and her smile didn’t fade for hours afterwards. I’m so proud of her!
After the race, we went our separate ways. Mom headed to Tampa for a few days of training rides with Pepe (our only cycling friend outside of Team in Training) while I headed back home for a Team in Training Comedy Show fundraiser. The performers were hilarious and it was nice to spend evening out with friends for a great cause!
Next week is our Ride for the Cure event where Emily is going to use her professional photography skills to help us raise funds for the cause by capturing fun moments during the ride and then donating ALL the proceeds from the sales of those photos to LLS. It’s going to be a great day!
