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Dirty Kicks
About an hour later, after she and Coyne had completed the course, she was barely recognizable. With rain-slicked mud covering almost every inch of her body so that her red nail polish was barely visible, she proclaimed: "I've never felt so refreshed."
Ali Brewer, 30, of Springfield, Mass., who crossed the finish line a few moments later, had gotten so muddy it covered her eyes. As she trudged toward the finish line in knee-deep mud, she yelled: "I can't see! I can't see!"
"The mud," she said, "sucks you in." Several racers lost their shoes in the muck. But Brewer had managed to keep hers. "You can't see where the deep spots are," she said.
She stopped talking for a moment and wiped her teeth with her finger. "I have mud in my mouth," she said. "I'm chewing it."
After the race, Zeiler was a far cry from her normal, well-scrubbed self. Her shoes were filled with mud. Gook was in her hair, her eyes, her ears. Even some of her teeth were covered.
"This is not for the faint of heart," she said.
She hit the showers -- a series of hoses event organizers had put out for racers. She rinsed for several minutes, dousing every part of her body.
She sprayed and sprayed and finally put the hose down. But no matter how hard she scrubbed, there were still several hunks of mud stubbornly clinging to her.
"This is really disgusting," she said with a smile.
MUDDY BUDDY Sunday; race starts at 8:30. Pocahontas State Park, 10301 State Park Rd., Chesterfield, Va. 818-707-8867. E-mail muddybuddy@mesp.com. http:/
Christian Davenport is a reporter on The Post's Metro staff.
