BUT...The weekend finally came and Red Frog Events pulled it all off nicely. Actually, "nicely" is an understatement. The event was great and besides all the hoopla caused by County permits during the week, everything was just the way it should have been, maybe even better.
My group signed up for the 9:30am wave. It was unusually cold this morning due to the heavy rain we had the night before. Anything that wasn't wet and muddy on the course definitely was now. All 500 people who signed up for our wave were patiently waiting under the "START" sign. When two massive rows of flames blew up into the sky, we knew it was time to start!
The first of the 14 obstacles was a massive 10 foot fan that blew 100 mph winds. Every person who had to run past this fan was either running at a crazy slant or had shifted about 5 feet to the right as they ran. They called this, "Tornado Alley". The course was extremely slippery due to the rain the night before. Honestly, if I didn't practice yoga, I most likely would have busted my bottom. Note to self: regular running shoes are a NO-NO. Trail shoes area must! As we continued on our run, we came across a 20 foot embankment. The butt marks were already engraved into the muddy sides of the river wall. All we needed to do was plop down and slide down into a river bed. Do you get mud up your crack? You sure do! Thank God there's a river you're falling into so you can dunk your rear end a few times to get those extra Hersey Kisses out ;) The water is nice and cool and you run about another quarter mile up river to another 20 foot muddy embankment. This time, it's to crawl out of the river. People were slipping and sliding everywhere. Some people even decided to run this thing drunk. INSANE.
Lucas, my husband, had long passed me by this point. I had a nasty cramp under my right lung and decided to take it slow. No need to kill myself. I was just enjoying being able to get extremely dirty. I had never been this muddy in my life! After a couple of more muddy pits where many people lost their shoes due to the suction of the mud, we turned a corner to see many Warrior heads bobbing up and down in a pond. Our next obstacle! We dove right into the pond, which happened to be pretty deep. We had to swim 10 feet to a floating log, push the log down and roll over it to the other side. We then had to swim another 10 feet to the next log. All of us did this about five times until we reached the end. This is where Joy and I took our very first Warrior Dash photo:
This is where things get blurry. I vaguely remember a hay mound we ran over that wasn't too hard. I also took on a spider web thing that I wished was a little more challenging. Joy and I jogged and walked the rest of the way through with our friend Eric. Our next obstacle was a big line of wooden spools. You know, the types of spools that holds threads that are the size of human arms? I picked the lowest one and hopped right over. The photographers got a pretty good pic of our friend, Mike Gary, at the spools as well as some pics of Warriors in their costumes:
The Spools were quick and entertaining. We continued on our way on the very last stretch of the race. This obstacle was, to me, the most intimidating one of them all. Two rows of 3 feet tall flames that licked at your @ss and heels as you ran and jumped over them. I could imagine some poor, drunk person making the mistake of falling back into the flames. (I actually heard that this happened and hope the woman who fell is well and on her way to a full recovery). The photographers managed to get a real sexy picture of my husband running this. Yes, I said "sexy". Go barf if you need to. He's MY husband, what do you expect?
The next and final obstacle was a muddy bog with barbed wire that ran across it. All Warriors flopped onto their bellies and crawled on hands and knees to the finish line. As Joy says, it was "outta control!!" I never had so much mud and dirty in my face, between my hands and fingers.
It was really liberating actually. In a society where people expect you to shower every day and girls are expected to be clean and prissy, I thoroughly enjoying this chance to let my hair down and really not give a flying f*ck. It was awesome! Here's a picture of me frolicking over the finish line at the end:
All in all, Warrior Dash was an incredible race. My husband and I totally bonded over the experience. We're both really competitive so this was a nice chance for us to sling some mud around and push ourselves. Training for Warrior Dash together was a whole different experience all together. Running with my husband is something that I'll forever cherish. If you think you'd like to get the chance to get down and dirty, I encourage you to sign up for this race next year! Free beers, turkey legs, and warrior hats provided! Until next year...
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