With the aim of keeping Dirty Northern Trail Running innovative and fun and following on from Adventure Sport NQ coining the logo ‘Get Fit, Be Dirty, Have Fun’ the Dirty 30 Sweaty 60 Mud Run was born. An event that would challenge the fitness of all entrants, allow grown adults (and keen kids) an excuse to get filthy dirty and most importantly have a heap of fun.
A record breaking la nina wet season initially did its bit to create kilometres of muddy trail through the Smithfield Mountain Bike Park before uncooperatively drying up in the fortnight leading up to the Mud Run. In an effort to satisfy those entrants joining in purely for the promise of mud action and to compensate for the sudden disappearance of mud, 2 cargo net covered mud crawls were included. A Hay Bale Hill, 2 Hay Bale Hurdles (one nastily placed on a slight uphill gradient), a 40m creek rock hop, a rope assisted scramble up a vertical mud bank and some of the sweetest flowing single track in NQ added greatly to the fun and challenge factor.
To limit the bottlenecks at the slower sections of the course Dirty 30 runners left 30 seconds after those tackling the Sweaty 60. Between 12 and 22 minutes later they all returned to complete their first lap, some in hard running packs, some displaying the mud adhesion qualities of Teflon and many surprised at how much fun could be had when coated in a slurry of mud and sweat.
After 30 minutes, Dan Anderson (2 laps, 28:32, Dirty 30 Male Winner) and Danielle Bevan (2 laps, 29:49, Dirty 30 Female Winner) made sorting out the Dirty 30 winners easy by being the only runners in the shorter event to complete the second lap within the 30 minute cut off. Meanwhile in the Male Sweaty 60, Steve Cunningham (4 laps, 51:21, Open and Masters Male Winner) was opening up what would prove to be an unassailable lead over Ryan Hoskins (4 laps, 53:52, 2nd Place Male) and Matt Dewar (4 laps, 54:16, 3rd Place Male) to add Mud Run Overall Winner to his list of impressive endurance feats (Steve’s lap times were 12:03, 12:52, 13:25, 13:01).
Female Sweaty 60 leaders Melissa Gloger (3 laps, 52:25, Open Female Winner) and Marni Liddell (3 laps, 54:16, 2nd Open Female) exchanged the lead with Marni leading after the first and second laps but Melissa finished strongly to lead after the third and final lap.
The event finished without the traditional ribbons, medals or trophies which had been popularly replaced by individually labelled bottles of the first ever brew of the deliciously described ‘Mud Run Ale’. Bottles leftover after placegetters presentations were randomly drawn and despite the dubious promises on the label, snapped up far more readily than the couple of hay bales on offer which did eventually go to good homes.
Following the event experienced runners described it as the ‘funnest’ they could remember, many departed looking forward to more trail running experiences (enter online here – limited places currently remain in all 2011 Dirty Northern Trail Running Events) while some are already enquiring about the 2012 Mud Run. For those interested, a far muddier site has already been inspected and draft dates have been put forward.
Get Fit, Be Dirty, Have Fun!
