Warrior Dash

After the Dash...and a quick wardrobe change!

On Saturday, some friends and I drove down to Jackson to compete (I use that term loosely) in the Warrior Dash. I had talked about doing the one in Nashville in the fall and it didn't happen, so when I got the phone call asking if I was up for this one I knew I had to say yes!

For those of you who may not know, Warrior Dash is basically a 5K with different obstacles. There were cargo nets, rock walls, a vertical climb up a wall with a rope, mud pits, walls to hop, barbed wire to crawl under, logs to hop over in the water (that one was a lot harder than anticipated!), and so on and so forth.

I don't know...apparently this is what happens when you put a camera in my face during a race. This was before things got real messy...

We left early Saturday to make the trek down there, but we did not anticipate the shuttle ride from the parking lot to the site taking so long. We were on a school bus taking us down winding dirt roads in the middle of nowhere for 45 minutes. If we hadn't seen other buses and people coming and going, I think we would have been a little scared. Okay, so we were already a little scared. Some people who had gone in an earlier heat than us were sending back reports that had us kind of scared of the course!

By the time we got registered, checked our bags, and had a porta-potty experience that I hope to one day laugh about, we had missed our start time of 2:00. Luckily it didn't matter at all, and we were able to hop into the 2:30 group. And then we were off!

Warrior Face? Weird...

It was so cold Saturday, but once we got going things definitely heated up. On top of all the "planned" mud, it had rained the day before, so it was a big ol' mess. But that was kind of the point. For the past couple of months, I had told myself that the obstacles had to be a lot easier than they made them out to be, partly to make myself actually do it and part hoping it would make it true. Now, ya'll, it is totally do-able and so fun! But those obstacles were no joke...at least not to me. Now, there were some that were kind of silly. But, when I got to that vertical wall and realized that if I let go of that rope there was a good chance I was going to break something, things got serious real fast. I did it though! I also made it through the water obstacles, although they had not told us there would be swimming involved. We thought it would be waist deep...oh well! And brrr...

Okay...ya'll. I am not one to be dramatic (ha), but this fire was so much bigger in person. Or it least it seemed that way at the time. Maybe it's the camera angle. Or I'm just crazy. Either one. At this point you are soaking wet, so I'm sure the risk for stop-drop-roll action is minimal.

One of the last things you do is jump through fire, and after that I thought I was home free. I forgot about the army crawl through muddy water under barbed wire...not so bad except for all the spectators lined up watching. Ha! By that point I didn't care and just wanted to finish!

Almost there! They just want to make sure you're nice and muddy.

All done!

When it was all said and done, we had a great time! We got changed (um...female communal changing tent...awesome!), and even though we were still caked in mud under our clothes, we were much better. After a shuttle bus ride back, we headed to Five Guys Burgers in our fabulous warrior helmets, and I joked that we probably showed up on a few facebook pages. The teenagers in there definitely thought we were a little strange.

People leave their shoes, then they take them, clean them up, and donate them.

My new look.

Whew! Long post...but I had so much fun, and it was so far outside my "ordinary" that I want to be sure to remember it all!