What do you get when you cross Monkey Bars, Large Culvert Pipes (4-5 ft tall), Mud, Coors Light, NH Food Bank, a School Bus, NH Motor Speedway and did I mention mud? The inaugural Renegade Playground Challenge of course behind the NH Motor Speedway in Loudon!

The Start Line

Yesterday, marked the completion of a stepping stone to the World’s Toughest Mudder. This was a fun event and the organizers did a great job at their first attempt at this event and the weather could not have been better. The distance for this race was 5-6k with 25 obstacles along the way. Most of the obstacles were natural features; swamps, streams, a few hills, and some were manmade; monkey bars, Everest (climbing bars up, cargo net down), mud crawl, running through a school bus into a mud pit to highlight a few. I was still on a high coming off the Tough Mudder so the training leading up to this even was well lackluster to say the least.

Photo from Renegade Playground

This event was geared much more to the general population than some past races. It had something for everyone. The atmosphere leading up to the start was one of families gathered around their loved ones before they approached the starting line. All the staff members were donned in tie dye t-shirts to make themselves visible. In talking to two women before the race who were volunteers it seemed that most were closely related to the race organizers, making it a family event on all accounts. I approached the start line determined to give it a go, positioned myself in the front to not get stuck in lines at obstacles. Before the race went off I spoke with one of my fellow competitors who was nervous about this being her first race. I assured her its about going at your pace and just enjoy the experience. The recess bell went off at 10:00AM and so did myself and about 100 competitors in the first heat. I took off and made my way into the front of the pack. Part of the race, I ran with a 14 year old kid who was a bit surprised to find out I was twice his age as I passed him in the woods. This course overall wasn’t too challenging and would rank on one of the easier races I have completed, but it was definitely fun! The atmosphere was great. Just enough mud, streams, and swamps to make it interesting but not too challenging that your weekend warrior could not finish.  I emerged the second woman to finish my heat and about the 6th to finish the heat overall. After the race spoke with many people about this race and others. Everyone I spoke to had a great time on the course. The most interesting thing was the number of women at this event actually beat out men when looking at the results. Great to see so many women getting involved in this sport! Hope to see more at races in the future. The organizers had music all day, food from local vendors, free massages, and even a tug of war contest for the kids. Video from the local television station WMUR —-HERE—-.

Kids got into the action

Last night the official results were posted:
Official Finish Time: 36:33
Overall Result M&W: 57 out of 906
Women’s Overall: 7 of 545
Age Class: 4 of 140