First mud run provides dirty, good fun

The first Maricopa Mud Run kicked off on Saturday, giving participants and spectators dirty delight and some unexpected challenges that proved difficult to the most seasoned runner.

The 2 ½-mile course incorporated 22 obstacles littered with challenges. Exhausting and sloppy.

The event was sponsored by the city youth programs and the M.A.S.H. (Maricopa, Ak-Chin, Stanfied, Hidden Valley) Coalition. All proceeds of the event will be recycled back into the city’s youth programs. The event cost $5,000 to put on.

“The Temple of Doom obstacle was so small you couldn’t get through,” said Ben Harding, who ran the race with co-workers. “It was harder than we expected, the two crawls were tough.”

The obstacles varied in difficulty from simple hill climbs to sprints through waist-high pits of mud.

Jimmy Huerta, a mud run volunteer and engineer at Fire Station 575, said, “It took us three nights to fill all those holes with water because of saturation.” The unused desert land adjacent to the fire station provided the perfect terrain for the course, as well as the ideal candidates to volunteer.

“It was a pretty darn good event,” said Huerta, who was manning the fire hose nozzle near the starting line to keep the initial obstacles slimy throughout the day.

The runners ran in four separate heats dividing racers based on competitiveness and age. As expected, there were some cuts and bruises, and an incident of heat exhaustion.

However, the group of firefighters who volunteered as medical staff didn’t encounter any emergencies or issues that couldn’t be solved with bandages and water.