Warrior Dash 2013

Good day blog world.  After another hiatus from blogging (summer camp was entirely too draining), I am finally back.  Before I go into how our summer ended, I should bring you up to speed on my adventure from last Saturday.  After much prodding from a friend who had signed up for the Warrior Dash in Crawfordsville, I decided to finally sign up myself in June.  I've never done anything like this before and while it sounded fun, I was hoping I wasn't going to get hurt or that it wouldn't be too much for me to handle, especially since I hadn't trained at all for it.  But I decided to do it even as the days counted down, I found myself not wanting to do it.  Then Sara backed out and the person who had persuaded me to try it wasn't going to be with us as we conquered the course.  Alex and I bravely (?) soldiered on and decided to do it.  I have done two races in my lifetime and I hated it both times.  A 5K at the Indy Mini-Marathon and a 5K at Faith a long time ago.  I had no inclination to do another.   But obstacle courses are fun and I thought that this was worth a shot.  I read up about what to expect, what to wear, etc and by 11 am Saturday I am headed on down to Crawfordsville to meet up with Alex for our 1:30pm slot.  When we meet up, we are both like, "Why the hell are we doing doing this??"  But we decide to continue on and enter into the madness.  We check in, get our timing chips, check our bags, and wait in line for the 1:30 wave.  Above is what we looked like before the race started.....it was the cleanest we'd be for the rest of the day.          
We start off in the second portion of the 1:30 wave and pretty soon we're running up hills, mounds, through creeks (and marking them all as "obstacles" in our heads), and then we hit the first obstacles of crawling through mud tunnels under barbed wire.  Up and down some muddy slopes, over and under walls and barbed wire, a rope crossing over a ravine, and finally we are maybe halfway through.  A few water breaks here and there and we were ready to conquer the next half of the course.  Lots of crawling through mud and crawling up walls with a slippery rope.  There were a lot of waits at the walls and at the mud pit but everyone else seemed to be having a great time, helping one another out and cheering when they made it.  At one wall, the wait was so long that the mud began to dry on us, making a nice hard layer.  I was proud of how well I did at the walls concerning that 1) I'm a girl and 2) Most of the girls were struggling.  I try not to brag but I thought I did a fine job climbing up the walls.  I had a rough go at the monkey bars with my wet/muddy hands.  I decided to just drop into the water/mud pit which looked to be about 6-7 feet from the water but I didn't know how deep the water was.  When I dropped in, it turned out to be much deeper than anticipated and at first I thought I blew out my knee but thankfully, a few strides later, it didn't hurt nearly as bad.  A little sore later but definitely not what I thought at first.  At the end we had a few more walls to go up and over, a few boats to go up and over, another hill, a swim through the lake, a few modest jumps over fire, then one last swim through mud under barbed wire.  I finished the race smiling and knowing that I'll probably do this again.  I was very proud of my medal.  Alex and I washed off in the lake, redeemed our chips for a free (nasty) beer which we didn't drink much of, then we were off to home with wet, muddy, nasty clothing.  I honestly had a blast and want to sign up for next year.  There was a definite thrill to knowing I could handle those obstacles.  Before I leave, I have a few pictures to share of the experience.  Fun fun fun!