Cathleen Armstrong says she doesn’t mind getting down and dirty when it’s for a good cause.
Dressed as Wonder Woman, she along with her five other teammates dressed as superheroes for the inaugural Dirty Girls Mud Run held at This Old Barn in Murillo Saturday. The event was in support of the Canadian Cancer Society.
Seeing other teams wearing tutus, Armstrong wanted to dress as superheroes because it represented strength and endurance.
Her team, along with more than 750 other women, had to do a five-kilometre obstacle course that required the teams to climb walls, crawl through thick cold mud, dark tunnels and slide down greasy polls.
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Armstrong said she’s lost many family members to cancer including her father and uncles so that’s why she feels it’s important to support events that raise money for research.
“This is by far the biggest, most extravagant, well participated and energetic event I’ve seen,” she said. “Most of our team is physically fit to begin with. We stepped up our training a little bit but not a whole lot. We’re here to make memories with friends and get dirty and raise funds.”
Julie Yurick, who had completed the obstacle course in the morning, said the hardest part was getting the courage to sign up for the physically challenging event.
“The obstacles are pretty challenging but it made you work together as a team and I think it brought us closer together,” she said. “(The mud) was absolutely freezing. I thought my heart was going to stop. I saw my parents at the 13th obstacle and I thought ‘I just have to finish’ and I did it.”
Some of Yurick’s teammates had relatives that battled cancer so they wanted to show their support by participating, she said.
Lindsay Baraskewich, a member of the Rack Pack team, called the obstacle course a unique way to raise money for cancer research.
“It was a lot of fun,” she said. “We were working together, encouraging each other and getting absolutely filthy. I didn’t like climbing the wall. We gave each other heads up if there was a rock ahead or mud pit. We also gave each other a hand up.”
By Saturday morning, the event had raised more than $178,000 for cancer research.
Sharla Brown, the director of Keynote events, said the first Dirty Girls event has exceeded her expectations.
“Amazing things happen when you get a group of women together for an amazing cause,” she said. “Originally when I set out it was $100,000 and we’re way passed that. I’m just overwhelmed. There’s no words for it. I just hoped that it would be successful.”
She added that the event could come back next year but only if the Lake Superior Scottish Regiment, who built the course and This Old Barn were onboard as well.
