Who says playing in the mud is a thing for the young?

  Mechanicsville’s Tom Bishop and Billy Wells certainly don’t. This past Sunday, the pair joined together as one of the oldest teams in the Muddy Buddy competition at Pocahontas State Park with a combined age of 118 years.

  The two McDonalds’ franchisees found themselves in Chesterfield not out of any true desire for adventure but rather because of a lost business bet. “Last year in August, they wanted to bet about sales,” Bishop said. His co-workers wanted to place a wager on meeting an end of year sales mark.

  “I bet that we would and I bet them money,” he said. “They came back and said, ‘No, we want to bet this. If we do, do a 10 percent increase in sales for the year, you’ve got to do the Muddy Buddy.’ And I went, ‘Yeah, no problem.’”

  Of course, Bishop may have thought differently if he’d actually known what the Muddy Buddy competition was. 

  Wells quickly summed up the pair’s prior knowledge of the event. “Nothing,” he said. “I’d never heard of it.”

  On December 28 of last year Bishop lost the bet, so on Sunday he and Wells found themselves among the strangely decorated hats, wild costumes and an acre of mud.

  But the two men took the loss in stride and Bishop said that it in fact changed his life. After undergoing a liver transplant 13 years ago, Bishop said he had reached a point of being badly out of shape when he lost the bet. “At the time I was smoking cigarettes, getting all fat and everything,” he said.

  So Bishop along with his son started training for the event. “We just rode and ran and rode and ran so I could make it to this,” he said.

  Though having never done anything to the extreme of Muddy Buddy, Wells, whose son is an iron man competitor, was in shape having run marathons since he turned 57.

  The two men underwent their final training session on Saturday, taking an advance ride over the competition course. “We know we can make it,” Bishop said. “We’re not going to compete or anything but we know we can make it and that’s the big thing.”

  The two men finished the Muddy Buddy competition in fine fashion, covered in muck, crossing the finish line arm in arm with smiles on their faces.