Dirty Girl Mud Run-April 28, 2012- (Aaron’s) Lakewood Amphitheater-Atlanta, GA.
**This review was from 2012, The Dirty Girl Mud Run is now under new management. A more recent review can be found here.
The Dirty Girl Mud Run was mediocre. I had fun because I was with my friends but the race itself was less than average. We even got into the spirit of things and had t-shirts made and carpooled down together. The traffic was horrible once we reached the parking lot and the parking was a cluster fuck.
We arrived at the registration, which had literally one-hour lines, and it was only 8:00am. These lines were theoretically alphabetical Our wave was at 9:00am. We all waited for a while until we realized we could sneak into a shorter line.
It was ridiculous. The woman who checked me in was using a legal pad and a green sharpie (real professional). There was no “race packet” as promised, they just handed me the next bib number in a pile. It felt very disorganized and literally thrown together. There was no actual checklist of racers or names. So technically, anyone (ok, any female) could have walked into the registration line and been given a number.
The music was blasting and there were pink blow up things flying everywhere. I just thought it was super cheesy, but I’m not into girly girl stuff. Obviously, it’s a GIRL mud run so that is something I can’t truly criticize. I can tell you this: If you don’t like “cheesy-pink-girls-can-do-it-all” songs, you won’t like this race.
The actual race itself was fun. The obstacles were pretty easy and the mileage was reasonable. It was 3 miles, and flat. I liked that because they made it accessible for everyone. It was my first obstacle race so I had nothing to compare it to. I had run some races, but I hadn’t done obstacles before.
The climbing wall was cool, it was a little challenging, but I’m not that strong. However, the lack of any nearby volunteers meant total chaos-long lines at that obstacles, and no breathing room on the climbing wall. (this was a theme as there were long lines at each obstacle)
I really liked the rope wall and I did think that was the only challenging obstacle.
There was a hanging tire obstacle that everyone was literally running through, doing nothing.
I wanted to challenge myself and so did my friends, so we tried to climb the tires and swing to each one until the end. However, once we got on them, they was very unstable and at one point I felt one may break. Again, no staff or volunteers nearby to correct us or notify anyone to fix anything.
The ending obstacle was fun. It was a group climb down a good size hill. the idea in itself was cool, but again, it was overcrowded and not well organized. My husband and kids came and they had a shitty view. You couldn’t watch anything but the rope climb at the end. The website promoted this great spectator area that didn’t exist.
This was the one obstacle that could be viewed by my family. Note the long line at the top.
The end of the race was cheesy with a little mud water, pretty shallow and anti-climatic.
Thank God I didn’t check my bags because it took some of the women one hour to claim their stuff. I caught a glimpse of the bag check and it was a nightmare, bags were everywhere.
I don’t drink, but there was a free beer at the end. Additional beers were 10 dollars because they didn’t bother to get a decent vendor.
The website also promised a really nice shower area where you could get “Clean”. Ummm, there was a hose, maybe two.
Overall, I give this race a 3 out of 10.
***Editors note- I am that husband who came this race with our kids. I was there with two other dads and their kids, and we were all disappointed as spectators. We only saw the women once, on that rope wall mentioned above. I tried to walk onto the course to watch some more, but I was stopped by someone who said “You can’t go down there, women are changing”.
You know the bad overpriced food you get at a concert venue-Pizza slice for $7,00, hamburger for $8.00, beer for $10.00.-that was the food offered.
The only thing we could see as spectators was the one rope climb which lasted all of 30 seconds.
Also, please don’t give me the “We are new, so we are working out the kinks” excuse. I saw the “registration”. If you can not be bothered to print out a list of registrants names and/or numbers prior to the event, than producing a race might not be the business for you. I mean a local neighborhood 5k can bother to do that, so why couldn’t you?
I really hate to be so negative about the experience, but it was pretty weak sauce. Having said all that, most of my wife’s friends just wanted to run around and have some fun and didn’t seem to mind all of the lack of preparation or professionalism.
Stacie Davis
Stacie Davis lives in Atlanta with her husband Matt and their 3 children . Her husband occasionally drags her to an OCR. In the last 3 years, she has transformed herself from "Treadmill Mom" to bodybuilder. She probably squats more than your mom.
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