Warrior Dash Report

We started out like this:

A mighty clean-looking bunch.  Oh, and 

notice that big hill behind us.  Yeah, we 

ran up that.  And several of its brothers.

We ended up like this:

There's a full-mud shot of the whole group out there somewhere

on someone's smartphone,

but it hasn't surfaced yet--so you'll have to make do

with funny hats and bad hair.

In between, there were 3 miles of (a little) running and (mostly) walking; 13 obstacles that involved climbing, crawling, water and mud; and a whole lot of fun.  The SISU group made the event a puddle-stomping, joke-cracking, somersault-doing, cheer-everyone-on blast.  This is definitely an event you want to do with a group, and I can't imagine a better group to do it with.

As it turned out, the obstacles weren't a problem; none of them were challenging physically.  Of course, it would have been different had we been trying to do the course for time; there was pretty significant potential for slipping on the wet obstacles--especially some of the climbing ones--for anyone moving quickly.  Fortunately I moved with my usual sloth like methodical pace, and thus never came close to disaster on any of the obstacles. There were a couple of climb-over ones that could have gotten into my head if I'd stopped to think about them, (or paused at the top to look down) but I didn't so they didn't. 

Actually, I think that for a lot of people the biggest obstacle in the event turned out to be the terrain,which the website had described--with great accuracy--as "mountainous." Hey, if you hold an event on a ski hill you might as well take advantage of the natural obstacles--so they ran us up and down the hills multiple times.  (And they took advantage of the man-made stuff as well; I suspect that a mid-race drenching and our post-race showers were both provided by snow making machines).  I saw many people struggling up the last ski hill using the "bent over, pushing on legs with hands" climbing mode that predicts some serious muscle soreness tomorrow.

As for me, my skater butt wasn't too concerned with the hills.  No, my biggest challenge came at the very end of the race, on one of the last obstacles.  It started with a high climb up a cargo net, which was OK.  As with many of the climb-over obstacles, going up was fine and so was going down--it was climbing over the top of the obstacle that got a little tricky.  On this obstacle, fortunately the "down" side was short--just an 8 foot climb down a cargo net--so my fear of heights didn't kick in.  I wasn't happy with the horizontal cargo net we then had to traverse, but not because it was suspended fairly high above the ground.  No, I was cranky because the crawl peeled off my "keep the biohazards out" bandaid that I had carefully applied to my scuffed knee (I misjudged the bar/knee clearance on a clean yesterday) and had managed to nurse through almost the whole race unscathed and attached.  When I got past the horizontal net and climbed another short wall to look over the top at our final descent, though, I forgot about my bandaid.  I was facing the most scary obstacle yet.

A water slide.

I hate water slides.

For us control freaks, there's just nothing fun about whizzing down some slippery slope with no say in how fast you go, and then landing in some unpredictable position in water of unknown depth--water which, of course, will try to force its way into as many bodily orifices as possible when you catapult into it.  Trade "water" for "half-water-half-mud that God knows how many people have landed in then done God knows what in" and you have an obstacle that will make you stop and think.

So I stopped and thought, but I really couldn't see any other way down.  So I carefully edged myself into the slide, used both hands and both feet as brakes for as long as I could and then, when my speed got too fast to control, I plugged my nose, held my breath, closed my eyes, and landed in the "water."  Whee.

Other than the "slide of doom," though, the race was a blast.  I had a great time and I'm really glad I did it...but now I am DONE for the weekend.  Eat, sleep, roll, eat some more...that's pretty much all I have on the schedule for tomorrow.  I have exactly 36 hours to recover before my next CrossFit class...and one week before my first "real" (on-site rather than online) CrossFit competition, "Mayhem in Mankato" next Saturday.

This summer just keeps getting better and better!