This Race’s Allure Is Clear as Mud

It was more mud and guts than blood and guts at the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station Friday, as an annual bit of February madness called the Volkslauf --German for “people’s run”--led nearly 1,000 participants over 10 kilometers of hill, dale, mud, mud and mud.

The fifth running of Orange County’s dirtiest footrace was, by design, even muddier than its predecessors.

But two things didn’t change: The defending champion team from Camp Pendleton’s Marine Aircraft Group 39 was again the first to cross the finish line, and a local charity was the biggest winner.

The Marines weren’t promising a rose garden to the 158 six-person teams that came from regional military bases and 14 civilian groups. “ Volkslauf --The Worst Day of Your Life,” proclaimed the marquee inside the main gate of the air station.

The idea was to make the course, all of which was inside the base, “as challenging as possible,” said Master Sgt. Ronald Dikes, one of its designers this year.

Dikes, a portly Marine veteran who delighted in bicycling from mudhole to mudhole during the race to make sure everyone was really getting filthy, apparently equated miles of wet dirt with challenge. He admitted having searched for new muddy areas when designing this year’s course.

The start was a deceptively simple run over paved roads for about two kilometers (more than a mile), but from there it got meaner and meaner.

Veering off into the unpaved area bordering a farm field, the runners were greeted by about a quarter-mile of ankle-deep muck that had been specially soaked for the occasion.

Then there was a plunge into a mud-filled trench that was chest-deep for some of the shorter runners, followed by a run through a muddy stream bed, then it was back to the original quarter-mile of muck--except this time all had to crawl on their bellies under ropes and wooden horses through a 50-yard stretch that had been flooded after they passed it the first time.

None of it deterred the teams, all of which paid to take part and most of which finished the course. After expenses, there was $1,500 left for a donation to the Albert Sitton Home for dependent children. The donation was matched by a private developer, so the home netted $3,000.

Individual performances counted for little. The winners were the first teams in each of several categories to get five members across the finish line, so that a team was only as good as its fifth-fastest runner.

Why would anyone do it? Asked before the race, participants gave reasons ranging from Marine pride to feigned fear of their superiors.

“Our colonel says if we don’t finish, don’t come back,” said one team member from the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. Another Marine said he was taking part because “it’s real motivating,” and a third said he joined in because “Marines are competitive.”

Along with the Marine Aircraft Group 39 team that was again the overall winner, clocking in at 52 1/2 minutes, the Newport Beach Police Department SWAT Team runners again won in the civilian division with a time of 64 minutes, 35 seconds, finishing 21st overall.

The women’s division winner was the Mud Hens of Camp Pendleton, which brought its six team members across the line together in 85 minutes, 27 seconds.

Capt. Richard Antablin, who headed the winning team, called the race “a pure endurance test.” The winning time was seven minutes slower than last year’s, but Antablin attributed that to “a much tougher course. There were longer stretches of mud.”

Sgt. Major Joan Collins, who led the Mud Hens, agreed. “They added three or four different obstacles. It was much harder,” she said.