2012 WARRIOR DASH RACE REPORT

Over the wall and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go!

I don't believe I wrote in the blog before about this, but yesterday I did Warrior Dash in North Plains, Oregon. Warrior Dash is basically a 5k with obstacles thrown in. Because of these obstacles, you can't really consider it a "normal" 5k, your time is going to be higher and the challenges are different. In light of that, I didn't really train at all for it and it kind of "snuck up" on me. It was kind of like, oh crap, Warrior Dash is this weekend.

Anyways, I was kind of nervous and semi-not looking forward to it just because I knew I was going to get all muddy. In retrospect that was stupid and I am glad I stepped out of my comfort zone and did it!


After climbing a large cargo net.

Libbie and I got there pretty early, but it gave us enough time to pick up our shirts and whatnot and put them back in the car. It was nice not to be rushed. I bit it and fell in the dirt near the tent where you signed a waiver. Ironic and also my worst "injury" of the day. How I ate it there and not on the course I will never know.

I forgot to eat before leaving so I was glad they were handing out free samples of Naked Granola. I had two packets of that and was good to go. The breakfast of champions!

Anyways, eventually we lined up in the corral and waited to start. I started feeling nervous with about five minutes to go, knowing that soon I would be getting wet/dirty/possibly injured.Eventually the gun sounded and off we went. I had to weave around a lot of people at the beginning and the trail through the forest wasn't super wide, so that kept me on my toes. It was over a mile to the first obstacle, so eventually we spread out and I was able to go my own pace.

I am not a trail runner and this was definitely trail running... up and down hills, slippery slopes, etc. I can't believe I didn't bite it during some of those downhills. I was really going fast and pounding it, and the number of times I slipped to the point where my arms flung in the air into that "falling motion" exceeds the amount of fingers I have to count on. A fall on some of those would have been really nasty with the speed I was going, but miraculously I was able to stay upright.


Mid-air leaping over fire.

The first obstacle was a small pond you had to walk/swim through and hoist yourself over a couple of floating obstacles. While a challenge for some, I went over those with ease. You had to time it right and be okay with getting fully submerged and "face planting" on the other side, but I was able to do so. I ended up swimming a lot here even though I could touch because it was faster.

I thought the water was going to be cold but it wasn't bad, getting in wasn't a problem. It was muddy and when I got out I looked down at my wet, now brown (originally white), shirt and thought "here we go." The rest of the time I was running soaking wet, but I didn't mind at all.

After the small pond immediately there was another challenge, this time you had to pull yourself over a four foot wall and then duck under barbed wire on the other side. Repeat five times. Not bad at all.

After that I don't remember the exact order of things, there was a lot of running on trails through the woods, some really steep uphill portions that I walked, which was actually good strategy. One guy who was pacing with me for a while decided to run up, which he was able to do. But I absolutely burned him on the backside and I am pretty sure he depleted most of his energy chugging up those things.


Trudging to the finish. 33:37!

Obstacles in the way included: a really tall wall you had to climb over with a rope, vertical cargo net climb, horizontal cargo net climb, running through tires, crawling under logs, jumping over fire, weaving though a bungee cord web, etc.

Eventually the final obstacle came, which was a giant mud pit. It was up to my belly button and times up to my nipples. I wasn't really dirty before that obstacle, but once you hit that, there was no way to stay clean. It was fun to trudge through that, a workout for sure, and I got REALLY muddy. At the end you slid down a hill on your butt to the finish.

It was really fun! I am very glad I did it. I maybe won't do it every year, it is expensive, but every other would be fun. I had a pretty good time too, 33:37 (10:30/mi), which was good for 274th place out of 5,691 participants, top 5% for the Sunday people. For both Saturday and Sunday, I was 536th out of 11,671. Age group wise, Sunday only, I was 87th out of 769 males aged 20-29.