Muck it for MS

Last Saturday I joined my brother, my sister, her boyfriend, and two of his friends to form the Filthy Mudbloods team to participate in the NJ Muck Fest, which is organized by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.  This has become sort of an annual thing for my sister and me - it's a fun way to raise awareness for MS and pretend that we're kids again for a few hours.  Plus, my nickname growing up was Muddy Megan, so it's clearly right up my alley. 

We usually try to get in one of the earlier waves, but this year, due to a change in how the organizers allocated the start times, we ended up with a 1 p.m. wave. Which could have been bad, but it wasn't too hot that day, so it turned out just fine. 

We started off all nice and clean: 

And ended up not so much: 

In between, there were about 20 or so obstacles filled with water and mud.  they included cargo nets, various methods of traversing pools of water, and numerous was to get from one side of a muddy pit to the other.  

The only obstacle that I skipped was the one where you jump form a platform about eight feet high into a pool of water.  I don't like jumping off of things of any height.  

I had no problems jumping from the swing. Source

This is clearly a very serious endeavor. Source

Truth be told, it's a charity event, so the obstacles weren't the hardest.  There weren't any walls to scale or fire to jump over or electricity to run through.  No ice cold water or precarious slippery slopes to run up.  But that's fine.  It's meant to be more all-inclusive and fun.  Which it definitely was. 

Source

Plus, there was about three and a half miles of running through the woods and up and down hills.  Oh, the hills.  But I like hills and woods, so it's ok. 
 

Spirit fingers were in abundance.

Muddy sisters at the finish. Source

After the the run, we rinsed off and then headed over to McLoone's Boathouse to cash in on our free beers and enjoy the music and sun.

All in, the event raised over $375,000 to support the National MS Society.  Not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon.