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Muddy cross-country run.

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Posted by Kayne on January 08, 2020 at 18:41:51

Today is dull and wet, not continuous rain, but heavy showers and blustery winds. Just the weather to go outside and complete a cross-country run instead of cutting up an already muddy rugby pitch, or so said our games teacher. So, instead of wearing relatively warm rugby shorts, shirts and long socks we were told to get into PE kit - short, flimsy cotton shorts and vests - ready to do a run. I usually wear my swimming trunks under my PE shorts as they are most comfortable if we get wet on the run, which is really inevitable as the course takes us along a small stream for twenty yards or so and then later on across the same stream when returning where it is a bit deeper. We also run along the muddy margins of some fields which are often flooded.

Everyone was moaning as we changed and someone said his older brother had done the run yesterday and that they have changed the last twenty yards or so into a mud pit that everyone has to crawl through. His brother had been told by a teacher that it was changed so that every runner was obliged to have a shower and not just change before going home, apparently some fussy parent or other had complained to the Head about her son arriving home muddy, wet and smelly in his uniform, and "surely the boys are expected to shower? I don't pay all these fees for my boy to be sent home filthy." So, it's a good job that our PE kit was changed last year from all-white kit to dark blue shorts and a vest in our House colour, bright yellow in my case. Ah well, it is what it is, but I'd far rather have played rugby in the mud, at least that can be fun.

It started raining again after we had run about half-a-mile and it didn't really cease after that, just eased up a bit every so often. Charlie and I are quite good runners once we get into our stride and usually finish among the first half-dozen runners out of about forty boys, I guess, I've never really counted but it's a few more than the numbers needed for two rugby teams as we are two classes of twenty boys maxium.

It didn't take very long for us all to get soaked through and those that weren't wet enough soon were after we had run along the stream and out along a very muddy field margin. The muddy bit was just slippery rather than deep and a few of the guys slipped and fell as they negotiated the puddles and the uneven ground, much to everyone's amusement. The muddiest bit is where we go from one field to another. There is a metal five-bar gate to clamber over (it is always padlocked shut) and deep mud on both side where farm machinery has been driven through. If you land in the deepest bits it will be over your ankles and sometimes mid-calf. Charlie clambered over first and as he jumped down his foot slipped off the second-from-top bar and he crashed face first into the mud to a huge cheer from everyone waiting behind him - there's always one runner who does this, at least in the mud and water it is a soft landing. He was properly muddy, covered across his front from chest to toes and half his face covered as well.

Charlie just grinned at me as we carried on running together, and said that there was little point in trying to get clean if we all had to crawl through a mud pit at the end. He had a point.

The end of the run had indeed been turned into a mud crawl. As we approachedthe finish, the running area was cordoned off with poles and tape into a funnel shape that lead us to a very wet and muddy shallow pit about twenty feet wide and fifty feet long. A plastic sheet marked the start and as we approached we noticed wires strung across the pit in a criss-cross pattern just high enough to allow you to crawl under whilst keeping you on your belly. The first few guys lay down and crawled forward across the plastic sheeting and then dropped into the mud pit proper. It didn't look terribly deep, not enough to cover you completely. Some of the guys ahead of us hesitated but at a shouted instruction of "Get on with it, Ladies, it's only a bit of mud and water." from our PE teacher watching from the side, they did as told. Charlie and I are, of course, masters at crawling through mud, so didn't hesitate at all and even managed to crawl quickly enough to pass all but two of the guys in front. It was chilly but good fun and we both agreed as we ran back to the changing rooms and showers that we wouldn't mind doing it again. Several guys came in looking spectacularly muddy as they had obviously rolled around as well as crawled through the pit.

The showers are pretty good at school, always plenty of very warm, if not hot, water and they don't mind how long you take if it is the end of the school day. No-one comes to check-up after doing an initial count of boys entering, just to ensure nobody has been lost etc, and it is the last-boy-out's responsibility to ensure all the showers and so on are turned off properly. There is one big communal shower area as well as individual cubicles, so everyone tends to gather in the communal shower first, still wearing kit, to get the worst of any mud washed out of clothes and off bodies, and then retire to the individual cubicles for a proper shower whilst stripping off wet kit, having grabbed towels and underwear from lockers on the way.

Charlie was telling me on the way home that his dad has said they found a rather special car locked in the garage of his uncle's old house over the weekend and that he had arranged for it to be serviced and cleaned up before being delivered to their house. The annoying thing is that his dad won't tell him what it is, just that he used to have a poster of one on his bedroom wall when he was Charlie's age. Our only conversation on the way home was him speculating on what sort of car it might be, interesting for five minutes but boring after he had mentioned fifty cars, most of which I have never heard of; please, please God, put me out of his misery and let it be delivered soon, I can't stand listening to Charlie talking about cars for weeks on end.



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