7-15-2013 4:25pm

Mill Pond Park Mayhem Kicks Off Big Day at Celtic Festival

It wasn’t your father’s Celtic Festival 5K race.

Nope. The Mastodon Mayhem Challenge at the 18th Annual Saline Celtic Festival attracted a decidedly younger crowd. For three miles people ran up hills, wormed through mud, crawled through the Saline River, got caught in elevated nets and climbed over walls. Volunteers along the course were as likely to offer panting participants a can of Red Bull as a bottle of water.

The first annual Mastodon Mayhem Challenge, presented by Saline Recreation and Saline Main Street, earned good reviews from participants and spectators.

“Before today I had never done an obstacle course,” said Ann Arbor’s Christy Summers.

Summers had considered putting herself to the test in a “Tough Mudder” type of endurance event. But she wanted to try something just a little easier.

“(The Mastodon Mayhem Challenge) was just the right amount of obstacles. I knew that wasn’t as hardcore as Tough Mudder,” Summers said.

She ran the course with a friend who said that parts of the course were too easy. In particular, her friend believed that a muddy section of the course should have had barbed wire fencing to prevent people from getting off their bellies as they crawled.

“I was OK without barbed wire,” Summers said.

Detroit resident Chris Shonk, who works for the City of Saline, said he wanted to try one of the “extreme sports.”

“It was a lot more strenuous than I thought it would be. It was challenging. The ropes were the hardest part of the course and required a lot of upper body strength, and then to run up a hill after that just made it harder,” said Shonk, who said he planned to go home and take a long nap. “It was great to have this kind of event in Saline.”

Carla Scruggs, director of Saline Parks and Recreation, said the first event went well. About 140 people participated in the event, which was held to help raise money for Saline Main Street and for a new interpretative trail to be installed near a recently discovered salt flat on the south end of town.

Scruggs said she thought the course designers, Kip Richards and Emily Rogers, got the difficulty just right.

“We were going for a Tough Mudder-light, and I think we hit it just right. This wasn’t a light challenge. It was a grueling event,” Scruggs said.

She said the event was a great lead-in to the Celtic Festival and said many participants planned to stick around and enjoy the day at Mill Pond Park.

Improvements are already being considered for the next event.

“There are some things we could do to improve the course. We will probably put up more signs and flags and we could use more volunteers to help people get around the course,” Scruggs said.