* See the video *

The race course is a slimy, squishy, black bay of mud that can slow and even stop runners in their tracks. The race attire usually includes trendy duct-tape ankle wraps to keep runners from losing their shoes in the mud.

And at the end, the racers get to wear part of the track home.

For one, there is bragging rights. This year, it was first-place finisher Matt Roetcisoender of Mount Vernon.

The training regimen needed to win the Mud Run in Samish Bay?

“I try to eat oysters every day,” he said.

As for the race itself:  “I tried to save my energy at the beginning of the race, so I had some for the end,” he said. “But I almost passed out.”

Roetcisoender, 21, said the only athletics he did to train for this year’s run was water-skiing.

More than 100 racers ran the 250-yard U-shaped course at Taylor Shellfish Farm’s sixth annual Samish Bay Bivalve Bash & Low Tide Mud Run in Bow on Saturday.

There were races for both adults and youngsters.

“I was advised to tape up by my 9-year-old son,” Steve Hnatiuk of Vancouver, B.C., said of the duct-tape wraps.

“He also said I am going to have a hard time because I have to run a course 21⁄2 times longer than he did,” he said with a laugh.

The kids ran a shorter 100-yard course.

After the run, participants enjoyed the many shellfish-themed events, foods and beer garden featured at the Bash.

Down the beach, 17 teams of two or three people each arranged white oyster shells into art.

“Oysterhenge,” a shellfish representation of Stonehenge was the creation of Keri Bennett of Portland and Ericka Newman of Seattle.

The two had worked on the creation for more than two hours, trying to win the $350 first-place prize.

“This is a rough copy. We are working from our memory,” Bennett said.

All sorts of shellfish prepared in all sorts of ways were served at the Bivalve Bash.

Oyster shuckers could barely keep up with the demand for raw oysters as patrons purchased plate after plate of the half-shells.

Chefs from area restaurants prepared various shellfish recipes.

Alberto Candivi, owner of Il Granio in downtown Mount Vernon, served Italian-style steamed mussels.

“I cleaned hundreds of mussels to serve; they are beautiful mussels,” he said.

Unlike the cleaned mussels, many racers proudly displayed splattered mud from the race for the rest of the day.

As for competing in the Mud Run next year, Roetcisoender isn’t sure he’ll try to keep his title.

“I’m probably not going to run it again. I’m retired,” he said.

* Keith Chaplin can be reached at 360-416-2148 or .