Picking up from last time –
After the race, I got my canvas bag out of the trunk of the car and brought it over to the showers.
I’ve learned that it might be best to have a canvas bag inside your canvas bag! (Or maybe put some stuff in a paper bag if you can…) No matter how much I kept trying to keep my canvas bag clean, somehow mud just kept getting on the outside.
I got as little mud on it as possible, but I definitely brought my favorite canvas bag and that was not a smart idea!
I also only brought one towel! One? Try a million. (Okay, you don’t really need a million.) But the one I brought, I left in the car! My plan was to leave it on the seat in case I was wet or muddy. But if I only had one towel and that was on the seat, what exactly did I think I was going to wipe off with as I changed clothes? There was mud *everywhere*
So, my advice is to bring at least two towels – at least. And make ’em ones you don’t care about.
So, first, I walked over to the open showers where you go with your clothes on to try to get as much mud out as you could. Everyone seemed to have a different strategy. Some people got down to their underwear. Some didn’t. Some tried hard to wash out everything as much as they could – using shampoo, washing their hair, really trying to leave clean.
I basically tried to be somewhat generally clean, getting all falling mud off me and such. I washed off my blindfold, vest, and outer shirt (and took all that off.) Then I pretty much tried to get the mud out of the rest of the clothes I was wearing – undershirt, pants, all that. But there was no truly getting that mud out in my low-flow shower… maybe if I stayed there all day, but no likely scenario of getting actually clean.
So, I went over to the women’s changing room. I left my shirt and vest outside the tent, ’cause I dunno… I didn’t want to keep carrying my semi-clean things, I guess. I just wanted to change clothes and grab those on the way out.
This was an awful idea for multiple reasons – which we’ll get into next time.