Dirty Kicks

Kathy Zeiler is a serious person -- ambitious, successful, with a curriculum vitae four pages long that boasts a PhD in economics, a law degree, two master's (social sciences and taxation) and a bachelor's in business.

So what in the world was the 37-year-old Georgetown University law professor doing diving face first into a mud pit and crawling on her hands and knees until she was covered in a thick film of sloppy, sticky muck?

The short answer is she was loving it.

Yes, it was, as she said, "disgusting." But there's bad disgusting and there's good disgusting, and this was clearly the good kind -- the sort that allowed her to shed her professional persona and left her reveling in grime after completing the Muddy Buddy race in a state forest outside Boston last month.

Grime, in all its disgusting degrees, is what the Muddy Buddy, a six-mile mountain bike and trail-running race, is all about. On Sunday the eight-race series comes to Pocahontas State Park outside Richmond, where 1,600 people are expected to participate.

One of a number of outdoor adventure-type races popping up across the country, the event -- part competition, part carnival -- has become increasingly popular with people tired of workouts confined to the treadmill and traditional road races. Muddy Buddy is an escape from ordinary duathlons but also the workaday world, adulthood and stress, said Bob Babbitt, who helped found the event seven years ago. It's mud therapy, he said, a primal and cathartic retreat that can be found only by crawling through a dirt and water bisque.

"No one is going to the Olympics in Muddy Buddy," Babbitt said. "The whole idea is run three miles, ride three miles, have a great time. . . . How often do you have a chance to just act like a kid again?"

This year, about 12,000 people will participate in Muddy Buddy events in eight cities across the country. As such races go, the Muddy Buddy is relatively easy. There's even a Mini Muddy Buddy for kids that features a truncated version of the course where they run through a few obstacles -- tires, a balance beam and a small wall -- and then splash in the mud pit as well.

In the adult version, teams of two -- many of which are coed -- run and mountain-bike. Teammates trade off about every mile or so, when they reach a boot-camp-like obstacle: rope ladders, monkey bars, a wall. The last challenge is the mud pit, a 60-by-60-foot man-made trench filled with about 60 tons of soil, devoid of rocks, glass or twigs that could injure racers, and 6,000 gallons of water, according to race director Michael Epstein. About a dozen racers crawl through the pit at a time, often to raucous applause, before they hit the final sprint through more knee-deep muck. It takes most teams no more than an hour to finish the race. And then there's a keg party.

Winners are awarded medals. But most participants, many of whom are cloaked in costume, are more interested in having a good time than posting one.

If you want something a bit more serious, there are plenty of off-road events in the area. The Nissan Xterra USA Championship Series is sponsoring a grueling off-road triathlon in Charlottesville next month. EX2 Adventures is also sponsoring several outdoor adventure events in the area, including a race called VentureQuest in September that takes five to nine hours to complete.

Participants don't learn the details of the VentureQuest course -- which is composed of a series of checkpoints they have to find in Fountainhead Regional Park in Fairfax Station -- until shortly before the race. They could be called on to paddle, bike, run or even traverse a gully while strapped into a climbing rope.