Months back I heard of this thing called Warrior Dash. I've been trying to add all kinds of active things into my life lately (Pole Dancing, Burleque, Circus Fitness, Zumba, Self Defense, etc). I'll keep you posted on how they all turn out - but today I did Warrior Dash 2011. I plan on doing another blog about the Self Defense Class as well (Did that a couple days ago...but I only have energy for one right now). Anywhoo.
I sent out one of my "Hey wanna do this with me?" emails to some peeps about this Dash and ended up with a great group of 9. (We had a few others that unfortunatly dropped out at the last minute). Most of us met at my place early this morning to get out to Lake Elsinore by 10am. Our wave was 11am. One friend did it last year, and 2 friends had done a mudd run before but I have never done anything like this. The only thing I was a little concerned about was the running. I dont run. I cant actually. Ever since I blew my knee apart, running is not possible for me. It also kills my back, and honestly I just dont like it. But this particular event was obviously geared towards people who just want to have a good time no matter what size or shape you are and no matter what kind of physical shape your in. So I was game. The obstacles are what excited me. Its like playing fort or playing on a giant playground!
We all caravan out and pull into the parking lot quite excited. We slap on sun block (Most of us...I'm laughing at the ones now sunburned) gather only our nessasary items and head up. As we walk into the area, there is a group of people in red tee's cheering us on. We check in, get our warrior gear and hang out taking before pictures until its time for our wave. We all gether together with 700 other people (There was supposedly 700 per wave) do a 1-2-3 WARRIORS! Cheer and they blast 2 huge columns of fire and we slowly start to trot. As any marathon, the group starts to spread out and me, my coworker and my roomie end up sticking together as the rest of our crew takes off ahead. I attempt to run for a bit, but this doesnt last. My knee starts barkin (I did wear my brace!!) and I opt for speed walking. The nice part is my 2 companions are little tiny women so they can still jog to my speed walking.
1st obstacle is a giant hay stack. The group is still kind of thick so we have to wait for people to climb over it, but we score it pretty easy. Next up smashed up cars with tires you run through in between. As I grab the corner of one of the crunched cars to hop over, I slice my thumb. It was a tiny little cut but it bled like a bitch. We then ran thru some mud, my co-worker almost ate it. Then some walls showed up, about 3-4 feet high we had to hop over, then go under barb wire, then over the wall, etc. We then came up to a wall with ropes hanging down we had to climb up and over. Next up I believe was this awful rope box thing we had to go thru. My brace came undone and kept getting caught. A lovely fellow runner that looked like Julia Stiles kept rescuing me. After that we ran across some beams over a ravine, then up a rocky hill. Unfortunatly my knee torked a bit here, but didnt get too bad. We then ran into the lake and had to jump over logs in the water. I of course turned to check on my friend and fell head first into the water. Yup. After that was a rope climb thing that went up, across then down. I opted to balance my way across the beam and did quite well. We then ran up another hill thing and started heading down the home stretch. By this point the water had made it extremly difficult for me and my co-worker friend and our shorts were falling down, so we were having to hold them up. Roomie at this point had gone on ahead to join up with 2 of our other crew. Then was the giant rope wall that we climbed and over which was a blast the we start toward the finish line. People are cheering and we hear our names...there's our mom, Keri and Amy shooting pictures. Then Tully shooting pics as he must have finished way before us. Not shocking. We leap over the fire and slosh thru the mudd. It was so squishy and weird!!! I'm laughing the whole time. We cross the finish line and I see photographers on ladders - I scream and give my best warrior cry hoping that'll make it into the photos of the Dash People. We rinse off in the lake, donate our nasty shoes to a charity, head to the car and change then chill in the beer garden eating BBQ beef, Turkey legs and beer.
It was a fucking blast.
Even though I'm not a runner, I smoked all the obstacles. They werent that difficult, but it felt great hopping over things or climbing walls way better then the people around me. I'm starting to accept my strength a little more, which I'll get more into during my self defense blog. But I did it. I did a 5K with random obstacles and a great group of friends. I'm enjoying this active kick I'm on. I'm not a marathon runner or a body builder or an athlete anymore, but keeping the random variety of active stuff is awesome.
I'm a Warrior!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment