Mud marathon of Schermerhorn 2001
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Last week I was in Schermerhorn. Just before my holyday an impression for the real mud lovers. At About 180 photo's are the result. Many of these are quiet reasonable. But it isn't easy to show the complete story, because the start, when the participants enter the water, is fast and confusing. There were four heads. Ladies + veterans, seniors and twice groups of four gentlemen and a boat with one lady, who should be clean on the finish. In the first year there was a lady with clothes of a bride as clean as before after 46 muddy ditches. At the moment that isn't anymore. Most of the ladies are afterwards as dirty as their companions.
The obligation to wear a long trouser makes the marathon Schermerhorn much nicer as most of similar ones in the surrounding, where normal clothed participants are very rare. Here nobody looks strange, when you put your players number over your normal clothes. First you have to cross two times a wide canal. You have no choice then to swim. Afterwards your are still quiet recognizable. But that doesn't last for long. One very muddy ditch should be passed five times. Besides more then a meter of mud there is hardly any real water in it. The best technique is a horizontal plunge. Otherwise you become stuck in the mud and have to struggle to the other side. But the mud is all over after such a plunge...
Every round you have to pass at least twenty ditches. Sometimes is climbing out the
ditch almost impossible. Some ditches are transferred in one big muddy mass.
After one round I stopped. Others completed all three rounds. Spectators aren't
really safe. Standing close to the edge gives a spray of spatter with mud.
Besides it can happen, that standing on the muddy edge of a ditch you will be
pushed in by another spectator. That's what happened with me, just after
I put on clean clothes to go home. It is a special
experience, when your last and nicest clothes are completely trashed. But I toke
the pushing spectator with me and was happy with it...
It wasn't very good whether. Even when dry there was a fog of small drops through the air. Whole of the day I had to take pictures with the back to the wind and with a umbrella. I shoot a enormous amount of pictures, most interested for mud lovers only. Because everyone was totally unrecognizable after the first ditches. In some way it was the ideal location for taking pictures. Around the central ground the participants have to cross for more then half a dozen times the ditches.
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In reality you can participate in almost every group on the day. They started
with the ladies and veterans, followed by the seniors and the groups. The
seniors do a real Dutch championship, but participating with the
veterans wasn't a problem. Within half an hour after arriving I could start
in my normal clothes. Afterwards there
is time enough to take pictures from the
other groups. There were
veterans, who did in 9 minutes a round. I did it in 25 minutes.
It was very cold. So one round was enough. The warm fully clothed shower
afterwards was nice as start for a afternoon of taking pictures and some extra fully clothed
swims.
After the first
canal you have to pass five times the same very muddy ditch. We were the first
participants. It was heavy.
You have to go trough more then one meter of mud with only some cm of water.
Then you have to run through the meadow with so now and then a ditch. To the end
comes the deepest and muddiest ditches. You have to climb out by pulling on the
grass, while the thin mud is floating out of your clothes. One round Schermerhorn is worse and more muddy then every other marathon.
The advantage of stopping early is that your are the first by the
showers. To the end of afternoon there was a thick layer of mud
in the chancing room and wasn't easy to put on clean clothes (or to keep them
so).
Plenty of time for the start of the seniors I was back in clean
clothes. So there was time to take pictures of the nice and clean participants,
before the trashing of them. Together
there were at about thirty participants in jeans. Others were in tight workout
clothes. When you like these, that is nice too. Participate in shorts gives
disqualification. So there weren't much of them. Unfortunately it wasn't good possible to go
to the other side of the big canal to see the participants entering fully
clothed the water. So the exact moment of
wetness got lost because of the crowd and bad camera position. But returning
from the canal you have a nice opportunity to see an enormous amount of soaked
people. After that everyone becomes within one passing unrecognizable.
In the next rounds you have a nice opportunity to take pictures of single
participants. You can takes pictures when they jump in the water and the mud,
clean or trashed and climbing to the shore. You can go as nearby as you like. Besides there
is
a lot of repetition, because everyone has to pass the same ditch five times.
Several mud lovers known from the web were there too. Some as
spectator only. Others try to help the participants by climbing out the most deep and
muddy ditches and become quiet muddy of the spatter. Especially participants how did the
horizontal plunge make a lot of spatter...
There was a nice guy with the spectators in white trouser. I told him before, that I
want to be pushed in the mud again.
After three hours the last participants were on there way through the meadow.
So I go to the muddiest ditch and the white guy. He was still quiet
clean. When I choose a position near the ditch,
indeed he tries to push me in the mud unexpectedly. When I try to take him with me, he
escaped and I had a muddy back only. A next attempt later on was
more successful. Again he escaped with a muddy trouser only. Then he did a third attempt
for a complete soaking and both we ended completely covered with mud...
