Texas Tough Mudder - 1/29/2011 - Part 4

This is Part 4 of the Tough Mudder series. If you haven't read Part 1, 2, or 3 yet, go down and start from there.

Part 4 - After the Tough Mudder

Now, I know what you're thinking. After everything we've been through, what more could there possibly be to tell.

Well, let me tell you.

After we had gotten our victory beers, shirts, bars, and headbands, we headed back to the car. And by that, I mean, Jeremy walked and I limped. Up until this point, I had only been cold in the water, but once I hit land I was fine. Only now, the challenge was over, the clouds were coming in, and I was getting cold.

So we hurried back to the car, and I handed Jeremy the running belt that I was wearing. It's basically a belt with an expandable pouch in the back to hold stuff, such as food... and a car key.

Ah ha. And now you understand why there needs to be a Part 4 to this story.

So Jeremy opens the pouch then looks at me point blank and says "there's no key in here." At first I thought it was some sort of sick joke. There's no way he could be serious.

He was.

At this point we started going through all the possible options. How we'd get back to Austin. How we'd get the spare key from his house in Houston. And what we were going to do about the fact we were cold, hungry, and wet. After all, everything we owned was in the car, and the key was... well, it was somewhere between mile 5 (first food stop) and mile 10.

Well, at this point, there was only one option, and that was to walk back to the three spots where we had taken a food break. I mentally prepared myself for the hobble. Both my knees were screaming.

Fortunately, the course is very spectator friendly. So, although it is 3 course miles between the smoke house and the monkey bars, it's only about 1/8th mile walk for spectators.

We started at the monkey bars. In my mind, this is where the key would have gotten lost. It was almost the end of the run and I was so tired at that point, I knew that I probably grabbed the shot blocks out of the pouch without thinking about the key. So we searched for a while, looking all over the muddy, muddy ground, but to no avail.

So we headed back to the smokehouse. If it wasn't there, then someone else would have to walk to the mile 5 rest stop, because that was pretty far away. On the way to the smokehouse we found $2 lying on the ground. It wasn't exactly a key, but hey, still not a bad find.

At the smokehouse water station we looked around the ground, then Jeremy went over and asked the volunteer if anyone had found a key. She said that yes, in fact someone did find one at the monkey bar area and it was now at Lost and Found.

Ah! I was so sure at this point that it was our key, that I hadn't really considered what we would do if it wasn't our key. Surely two idiots wouldn't have dropped keys on the course. Don't ask me why we didn't try going to the information desk before we started our jaunt around the course, I don't know. In retrospect, that would have been a good starting place.

We got to information and the woman held up the key. It was ours! I handed her my $2. I told her I found it on the course and I was turning it into Lost and Found. She said "no, you found that, it's yours." I said "No, karma is a bitch, you keep it."