Warrior Dash

I am a Warrior !!! Today I completed Ohio's Warrior Dash with thousands of other crazies and loved every minute of it !!!

finisher's medal and beer token - due to the long drive i did not imbibe

post-race

My weekend started off quietly with time relaxing and attacking my apartment to get it cleaner than it has ever been (great success.) This was followed by some quality time at my complex's tiny pool with only 100+ of my closest friends (place was absolute crazy-town party scene. I was lucky to get a lounge chair only so I could wear SPF 50 and read Town and Country while others fried their skin and people-watched. Classic Saturday morning.) And then the real fun started when Barbie aka my mother arrived to visit for the night. She even made the trek despite the fact that my father is stuck on his sick bed at home having thrown out his back last week (get better soon!) Mother and daughter spent time eating a delicious dinner, shopping, getting caught in a torrential downpour rainstorm / the Mid West's version of a hurricane, having super yummy ice cream and trip planning (New York City and the Caribbean await these gals!) Today we awoke early to grab breakfast at the bagel shop and began the drive to historical [sarcasm] Logan Ohio.

my homemade race shirt

love to charlie s.

Upon reaching the site we were unsure want to think. The scene was full of anxious nerves and excitement - those who has just finished were jubilant and proud of their accomplishment - and the whole scene reeked of muddy sweat. It was glorious. And some crazy costumes to boot. We even got to ride on a real school bus. It doesn't get any better folks. We bused it over from the parking lot to the official race course, sneaked our contraband cooler past security and checked in. I bibbed-up and chipped-it-on and headed to the starting line.

still clean

pre-race

 We had a little bit of time before my heat started to watch others already tackling the course. The spectator viewing area gave great visibility to two of the obstacles and I began to feel a little bit daunted.

start line

cargo net climb

balance beam

my photographer - Barbie - strike a pose

As my start time approached I headed to the line and waited with hundreds of others. While in the herd I met another lone runner - Meredith - and we chatted about past races and the unexpectedness of what was to come.

with a new friend post-run

After a quick countdown, celebrated with huge bursts of flames shooting from the top of the starting banner, the runners were off. Well ... not runners exactly.

I was excited for this race because I thought it would be an easy 5K of running with some tough obstacles interspersed. No. Wrong. The obstacles were in fact tough. But the running was even tougher. Right from the get-go it was clear that there would be very little (if any) actually running going on during the race. First of all there were hills. Oh the hills. They were big and awful. Living in a flat city killed me during this one. And secondly you had ZERO traction because it was all trail running on nothing but mud. (See above for description of the downpour conditions we endured for hours the previous day.) Regardless of these facts - the race was was in fact totally AWESOME!

climbing down the cargo nets - i'm on the far right

moving to the next obstacle

on the balance beam - second from the left

After kicking my butt up and down woody trails and hills for quite some time we got to encounter some really cool and challenging obstacles. The race course I posted previously was a lie. The web-site lied. Some of those obstacles appeared on the course. Others did not. Plus there were others present that were not previously mentioned online. It was okay. I did not protest. I just did it anyway. Here's what I remember:

Running through hanging swinging tires - immersing in a lake deeper than I am tall and climbing over floating logs - climbing over and through a junkyard of cars while at the same time traversing tires covering the ground - crawling under and through a very long pitch black tunnel (plenty of scratches to prove my warrior-ness) - climbing up and over and back down a huge (20 foot ?) cargo net - balance beam running - dashing upstream in waist deep waters (of very questionable cleanliness - the guy in front of me asked if I had ever wanted to catch dysentery ... ) - going over and under a spider's web net of rope - navigating through raised cargo nets (here I developed the genius idea to simply roll across the nets which worked really well - others were soon following my lead!) - climbing up and down a flat wall that was easily 20+ feet tall - jumping over two rows of open flame fires - crawling through wet mud and sand under barbed wire in a race to the finish! (and that's just what I can remember ... )

When I finished I was EXHAUSTED and above all else ... MUDDY !!! They say a picture is worth a thousand words so ...

Let's just say that even hours later and post-multiple showers I am still finding mud in places in which it should never be.

I would recommend the Warrior Dash to others. Know that there is really no way to train for this race. I suggest being confident in your athletic abilities (there were a few competitors I worried about today but I am sure they finished.) Ensure that you are steady on your feet (I witnessed at least one man bite it and snap his ankle: scary stuff.) And you can't be afraid to get a little muddy. Okay - A LOT muddy. But it was super fun and I would definitely do it again!

official warrior helmet : VICTORY !!!

Congratulations to my friends Bethie and Jason who got ENGAGED today !!! 

Love you both and so excited for your happy future together !!!