Warrior Dash 2011

You may have had your suspicions and I've had mine, but now it's official, we are Warriors!


On Saturday afternoon, we anxiously awaited the babysitters arrival, and then made our way to the Dallas Speedway.

We parked our car among thousands of others, rode a school bus to the park and met up with our friends, Lee and Jill, their loyal support crew, my sister in law Christina and her friend Andrea who flew in from Colorado, and my parents.



We checked in, put our chips on our shoe laces, and headed to the starting point. As we walked, I saw people absolutely covered in mud, like hand dipped strawberries.



Before we left the house, Dan found some footage of a previous Warrior Dash. We skipped through it, and honestly it didn't look that bad. People were even trying to get muddy. We knew we didn't need to do that, but these people we were passing made me start to think that it would be unavoidable. I didn't mind though, that's what we were there for.

We discussed among ourselves and decided that the best course of action was that everyone go at their own pace and meet at the finish line. So once the fire exploded and the 4:30 herd started moving we were on our own.

Right off the bat, the first obstacle was crossing a river. And it was up to my chest. The bank coming out was like a mud slip n' slide. So much for staying dry or clean. I worried about running in soggy shoes for 3 miles, but what I hadn't worried about was my pants.

I didn't anticipate the gravitational pull on wet yoga pants.


They were actually capris with a fold over waist, but once they were wet, the only place they wanted to be was on the ground. Especially with the extra fabric at the waist.

I think my main battle that afternoon was keeping those dang pants on. But I am a warrior, don't forget!


The obstacles were for real. The walls were higher than we anticipated along with the cargo net. We ran through tires and over junkyard cars. We did a series of going over walls and under barbed wire, we crawled through a pitch black tunnel, we crossed cargo nets, climbed a hay mountain, crossed floating logs in more water, crossed balance beams, jumped the fire, and of course crawled through the mud pit.






I didn't really think about much while I was doing it. Mostly just, keep going, keep these pants on, keep going, keep these pants on.

I finished with mud in my teeth.

Dan and I only started running about 6 weeks ago, but we were proud of ourselves. Neither of us walked and I'd say we did pretty decent. The times were finally posted yesterday and I am still proud of us: For 3.24 miles and 11 obstacles, I finished in 34:48. Out of 894 women between 24-29 I was 88th. I was 1617/7393 racers on Saturday. I don't know how Dan feels about me posting his time, so I won't.


We were so glad to have our friends join us.





Once I had been running for a few weeks, I thought about what I would do after this race. I was starting to enjoy myself and I thought of trying longer races, but what I ultimately decided is that I think I will stick with 5ks and just go about improving my time.

For so many years, my main outlets and hobbies were physical. For all of high school, I played basketball almost year round, between school, AAU, and summer leagues. And then once I got to college I found it hard to keep up with that. And then I got married, and then I had kids. And for the past six years, I have still been having very physical experiences (growing and raising babies, anyone?). This race was like a piece of the old me though, coming back and it felt really good.


So now that it's done, I think I will just sign up for another 5k. Otherwise once the kids are in bed and I am so tired, I wouldn't have a reason to push myself out the door to the track. Dan says he plans to keep running, though not as much.




But he promises to do the Dash again with me next year.


So after the mud pit, we took our pictures, got hosed off,



and rode home on garbage bags.

I can't speak for the others, but that was the most fun I've had in a long time.