Monday, September 10, 2012

Warrior Dash...or Did I Bust!

I have lots to say about the Warrior Dash...oh, so much!  And pictures are below.

Here are some answers to a few questions though that I had that I wish someone would have answered honestly.

Was it gross?  
What I thought was going to be the yuckiest was actually the best part...the mud!  It was soft, cool and refreshing.  As I was wading through the water/mud at the end it was kind of kind of kind of.  Now, there were some items floating in the mud that I wasn't too sure what it was but you really just have to think past that part and get to the finish.  At that point, I could see it, people were cheering and I am sure that I was quite the site.

What was the hardest?
For me, running is not easy.  Today I am feeling the aftermath of running...my asthma is here and starting to rear it's ugly side.  Most of the beginning was running and the last part was mostly obstacles. If you like to run...this is not a problem at all.  It was a very flat course but it was pretty uneven terrain and had a few "area induced" obstacles...a.k.a horse poop.  There was a girl that I passed at one point who kept screaming something.  At first I didn't know what she was screaming about but every few minutes she would just burst out a huge scream.  As I got close to her I realized she was screaming "poop!" at the top of her lungs.  She must have lost her voice towards the end because the entire course was basically full of horse poop.  This race was at a horse ranch and...well I guess they decided that since we were running in mud they weren't going to pick the poop up for us first on their many acres of land.

What about the obstacles...were they hard?
Most were not.  There were a few that were more mentally challenging than physically challenging.  The hardest for me was where we had to balance on a piece of wood, go up an incline, down an incline, go across for awhile, go up again and then down.  The entire time this is up off of the ground and if you fell it would hurt since the ground below was hard dirt.  Our shoes were wet so I was sliding as I was going up and down on the inclines and being almost 6 feet tall...I was up off of the ground quite a ways.  This was farther than I am used to.  :)  My brain said "you are going to fall and break every bone in your body", my shoes showed that I was going to fall and that I really had no control and my heart really wanted to try but was scared half to death.  I finished but it did take me a bit to get my head to be quiet.

The rest of the obstacles (12 of them total) involved water, jumping, climbing, crawling over things, under things, barbed wire, fire (which seriously was nothing), ropes, old cars that you climbed over, some height related climbs and a few trenches.  The obstacles were finished by some sliding down mud, swimming in mud, sliding again and then swimming.

How did you clean up?
Hmmm.  Not so well.  The reality of the situation is that there are hundreds of people running in each heat.  I believe at least 400 to 500 people every 30 minutes.  That's a lot of people.  That is a lot of people that are dirty.  The fine people of the Warrior Dash have figured that a fire hose really is the most economical way to get that many people clean at one time.  Can we say FREEZING!!!!!!  and VERY HARD WATER SHOOTING AT YOU SO THAT IT HURTS YOUR SKIN?  I could only take so much of that and I was done.  I really didn't care that mud was still caked on me at that point (it really was...I had to wipe it off certain areas of my body where it was caked on and chunks of mud fell out of my sports bra).  I was not going back in that water.  What we did do though was walk back to the vehicle, grab some towels and changed inside or outside with the towels.  Thanks mom for driving YOUR car!  :)  We were a mess.  We knew that.  We had clean clothes on though, got our shoes off and felt so much better.  We also stopped at an Arby's to eat and did a little bit of washing in their bathroom.  

Were you able to walk the next day?
I did have a few areas that were sore but it wasn't any worse than a typical workout for me at the gym...in fact, I was less sore after the Warrior Dash.  I am VERY glad that I workout otherwise I wouldn't be able to walk the next morning.

Did you get hurt at all?
General answer.  No.
Reality is though that I do have quite a few scrapes and some bruises on my legs.  I think most of it was from jumping over some pretty high barricades and the way that I did it made the bruises since I pushed off with one leg.  There was a lot of crawling...some on plain dirt, some on mud or a combination.  Pretty sure there were some rocks mixed in that since I have some scrapes.  A few of the obstacles also can lead to some scrapes on the knees if you accomplish them in Jessica Williams style.  I don't like heights so much so as I was on the top of some areas I used my knees to crawl over some things rather than stand as a lot of people did.

Will I do it again?
Yes!  We are actually trying to get a bigger group together for next time.  Should be fun!
  






2 comments:

Cori said...

Good for you! Way to go! Looks messy but fun, in a way. I did mud volleyball once, and we ended by sliding in the mud. Didn't anticipate the inability to wipe mud from my eyes and mouth. ha ha!

Unknown said...

Yeah, the mud in the face was something that I wasn't prepared for. Right away we had to jump in water and someone kicked it up at me and I was pretty gross. Couldn't wipe off with my shirt...cause that was covered in mud too. You should do it with us! September 7th, 2013. Should be a fun time. :)