CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The City of Charleston hopes to know by Tuesday morning if the popular Dirty Girl Mud Run is going to happen this Saturday as originally scheduled. Nearly 2,600 people signed up to participate in the 5k were left in limbo Monday with different messages from those involved.
It appears the company that owns the rights to the runs, 100, LLC, is in a financial dispute with the company, Human Movement, LLC, which actually conducts the events. Charleston Deputy Mayor Rod Blackstone said the Charleston event has gotten caught in the middle.
“The problem is it seems that 100, LLC hasn’t been paying Human Movement to cover their costs to produce these events and that sort of started this chain reaction,” Blackstone told MetroNews.
The Charleston Convention and Visitors Bureau announced early Monday the event had been canceled because of a dispute about who would pay what’s expected to be at least $12,000 to put on the event at the Cato Park golf course in Charleston. A short time later Dirty Girl Mud Run announced on its website the CVB was wrong and the race was still on. The city was continuing discussions with Human Movement Monday evening.
Blackstone called it a very fluid situation but the city needs to know how the costs are going to be handled.
“We have to worry about transportation to and from Cato Park. We have to worry about the site reclamation after 26-hundred people have run through a golf course that has mud pits in it and we also have to worry about the expenses we cover with personnel in the city of Charleston,” according to Blackstone.
The city wants to make the event happen if it can.
“We want to be able to accommodate folks who want to come to Charleston and have some fun,” he said. “As it was designed, contractually and envisioned, this was going to be a wonderful event. The problem is the financial realities have sort of muddied those waters.”
Blackstone places the blame squarely on the parent company 100, LLC.
“The biggest problem is the company that collected all that money from all those people seems to be leaving other folks holding the bag and that’s kind of frustrating because there are expenses that we have to worry about,” he said.
The participants have paid up to $95 to take part.