Warrior Dash Recap

The Epicness of my weekend continues. I somehow managed to wake up and do a wine and cheese fueled five mile run. As per the usual routine as of late, I showered, packed up a cooler, and rushed out. Number of meals I have eaten at home this weekend: 0.

Eric and I headed to Lily and Tricia's house and the four of us headed down to the middle of nowhere, where there is room to set up 3.1 miles of mud and events for crazy people like us to partake in.

Warrior Dash official google description: Warrior Dash lands in Maryland for the second time in 2011 where 12 obstacles from hell await you along this 3.11 mile course. Are you a Warrior?

We were supposed to meet up with Carolyn, Casi and Donnie to run in the 3pm wave. Traffic sucked and we missed them by about 30 seconds and had to go in the 3:30 wave without them :(. 

So we started out "running" aka fast shuffling in a huge bottleneck through the woods. Right away you hit some deep mud and we were all thanking Kara, who had texted me after she completed the course yesterday with some helpful tips, such as tie your shoes tight. I thought that was sort of weird at the time, but understood when mud was sucking my feet down into the abyss like Indiana Jones quicksand and we saw all sorts of shoes that people had lost.

Not long after we started we had to crawl through the mud under these bungee cord things - not too difficult, it just makes you actually start to get muddy. 

The suction-y  mud ranged from ankle to knee deep, with some waist deep watery portions. I was actually wondering if this was an obstacle or just part of the course - apparently part of the course! A guy almost fell and grabbed onto me and completely wrapped himself around me like we were about to slow dance, then got his balance and just ran away. Um, you're welcome.

I think the next obstacle was the concrete walls that you had to hoist yourself over and drop into the mud on the other side. The real challenge was that when you would boost yourself up, your feet would still be stuck in the mud. At this point Eric had wiped out twice and completely belly flopped in the mud. 

Once we finally survived all the mud and crazy hills and got out of the woods we hit a water stop, and they told us we were halfway - we thought we were almost done! Definitely the toughest 5K I've ever done.

We climbed up and over a 15 foot (according to Kara's blog and I'm going with it) cargo net, ran through some tires (both on the ground and hanging), over hay, and went down this crazy out of control water slide. The tough part was that my shoes were so filled and caked in mud that they were super heavy!

Lily and I were pretty scared of the fire jump - the fire was pretty high and it was HOT. 

 

 Casi doing the fire jump - ignore that guy's head.

Eric and I did it together and it ended up being amazing. After that you jump into the shallow mud pool to crawl under the barbed wire, 

 

 That barbed wire is FOR REAL.

and then you are at the finish line. It was my first (and likely last) time finishing a race with Eric, so that was cool. He fell AGAIN inches from the finish line.

 

 

I have never been so dirty in my entire life. Mud from head to toe, in my hair, across my face, in my mouth, everywhere. 

Everyone but me got turkey legs and beer and we let the mud dry and get nice and crusty while we hung out and watched the bands. 

Although I'm glad I tied my shoes tight, it took me about ten minutes to untie them once they were covered in dried mud. Note to self - bring scissors to cut the laces next year. The race directors were kind enough to provide trucks with giant hoses to spray off everyone with cold water before you get back in the car. After that enjoyable experience it was time to change under a towel in the parking lot, then head back. We busted out the leftover snacks from wine in the woods and had a fabulous car feast during the two hours home (and Eric tried Nutella for the first time!).

Perfect epic end to the epic weekend. We were laughing hysterically the entire time we were running, and the photo ops were priceless. I was devastated that I charged my camera as soon as we got home last night and then forgot the memory card in the computer, so these pictures are from Carolyn, courtesy of her husband John who didn't race. If this race comes to your area, do yourself a favor and sign up asap. We wished we had signed up for an earlier time so we would have more time to hang out and eat and drink after.