Registration:
Disorganized! Looked to be that there was only one person from Mud Factor that knew what she was doing. Some of the volunteers knew what was going on but most of them were not trained or not informed of what and where everything was.
They made one announcement at 8 AM and said that there are 3 lines for registration. Parents/Kids and Adult Runners were all going in these 3 lines even though there were letter lines designated by the signs on the tent. Which they did not use for the kids registration.
Parents and Kids were really getting frustrated because no one knew what was going on and there were no Mud Factor personnel that were directing people to the right lines and at least trying to make this a smoother transition before they got up to the registration tent.
Another thing i observed was that parents running the race after their kids could not pick up their registration at the same time. Mud Factor volunteers were telling parents that they had to come back an hour before their race to get their race packet since they were only doing MF Kids registration at the time.
Pre Race:
.I know that this race was called MF Kidz or Lil' MFers. Really. there were some comments during the kids race that turned some parents heads. Also the DJ should have watched his playlist to make sure that during that time of the kids race it that some inappropriate language came out from the songs.
Race:
Overall i loved all the obstacles. I was injured prior to the event but decided to walk the route and skip the ones my knee couldn't handle. All the climbing obstacles looked very challenging (i guess it caused some backlog on a few of the obstacles, up to 30 to 45 min wait). There were a couple of the obstacles that there was only one person there to monitor the obstacle (specifically the pallet climb over the bridge to the tire ladder), as far as we saw.
The course was great also, that last mile or so of the weaving in and out and the moguls really wore people down since it was hot and there were no man made obstacles till the rope swing and army crawl.
Post Race:
I don't know why but the organizers had 3 different types of metals. According to one of my friends they got one that said 2013 and then they returned it to get the second design, the bandanna metal. The third metal was one with a bottle opener. I don't know why they would have 3 different ones. Who knows, overstock from past races.
Side notes:
Many people did complain about the nickel and diming of getting charged for every little thing. I understand the parking, I also understand of the wave time change fee (which i did take advantage of, and most runs don't let you do that). but $5 for bag check, no t-shirt, and no beer at the end. (this is based on other mud runs and even regular runs).
Yes they give you a bandanna, a tattoo, and the metal.
Final notes:
Overall this was a nice mud run, but there are better mud fun runs out there and more organized (registration and obstacle personnel). If they do come back i would hope they do a better job of organization. Even a race packet pickup at a central location so you didn't have these long lines the day of. And for the issue of obstacle backup, a group of people who could can try to make sure the flow of people is moving. read more
