In which we ALL get wet and muddy!

I have very dear friends who like to do crazy things, and last weekend was an event called Mud Sweat and Tears. Choice of a 5km or 10km option of an obstacle course -climbing over big round plastic wrapped hay bales, crawling under barbed wire, wading through waist deep water. You get the idea 🙂

Now the weather on the day was *perfect* – it rained and rained and rained. Since it had been doing the same the day before I went prepared, or so I thought.

Here are some pix to give you an idea of what the event was like

Surprisingly Clean

Splish Splash

Lots of people dressed up in costume

More are up on my Flickr site

Now due to the heavy rain and conditions I was quite concerned about my camera, as you can imagine. While I was able to take cover under a tent of a pro shooter who was setup at the barbed wire crawl, there was not a lot of cover otherwise.

So it was an EXCELLENT learning experience:

– I went prepared with two layers of pants on and took spare pants and socks, but forgot to take a spare dry pair of shoes 😦
– need to buy gumboots
– need to buy waterproof pants
– need to buy waterproof jacket but one a few sizes too big so that it puffs open enough at the front so I can shelter the camera in it (I actually wore my biking jacket but it was too tight to do the job well)
– my plan for gloves with a finger cut open for the shutter button works well, tho that fingertip got really cold LOL
– need to spray something on the surface of the gloves to give them some ‘stick’ they are a bit smooth and don’t grip securely
– my hat is nicely waterproof and warm
– putting the lens hood on keeps rain off the front of the lens
– I should have shot with a faster shutterspeed. People were moving faster than I realised
– the rain was so heavy the camera often focussed on it instead of the person which was a bit frustrating.

So yesterday I went and bought a nice long (mid thigh) waterproof jacket, has flaps over the pockets, a flap down the front zip and velcro so you can do the cuffs up tightly. And its several sizes too big and just right for tucking a camera down the front of 🙂

I priced up waterproof pants as well and will get them another time – good gear was expensive. I also got a small cushion in waterproof fabric to kneel on. Some kind of knee protection was something I should have got a while ago, my knees keep telling me.

I did also see a couple of options of those pop open tents – one was a pyramid shape sunshade option and one was a long bivouac option – something like those would be a good portable option for the one person photographer. Hadn’t occured to me til I saw the pro guy with his tent up (with a flash under an umbrella off to the side).

Overall the day was a blast. Except for having cold feet at the end of the day due to lack of dry shoes I was quite warm the entire time and my camera seems to have suffered no lasting harm. I did have my weathersealed 70-200 F4 IS on. I left both out on the lounge floor that night while the fire was on to properly dry out.

I was sad that I didn’t have better quality images of my friends (mine were a bit motionblurred) but they were happy to have some record of the event.

One thing that I didn’t think about was the fact it was a public event. Imagine my dismay when I opened the paper on Monday morning to find a WHOLE PAGE of photos from the event!!! It never even occured to me to send any pix in to the media, but it will now 🙂 Maybe one day they will use one LOL