Plain Can Be Lovely

Wow where did the summer go? I’ve been meaning to post this for a while and in the meantime I’ve continued to run and have some fun travel stories to share. I’ll try to get back to posting more regularly, so stay tuned!

Nicola and I before Warrior Dash.

Back in July, Nicola and I tackled Warrior Dash for the third time together (and her fourth time overall). After last year’s disaster, Dan decided that Warrior Dash wasn’t for him, so he offered to take our pictures and hold our bags for us (and by “offered” I mean I told him to). Connie also didn’t come with us this year because her brother had just had a baby and she had a lot of family in town etc. I guess she had a good excuse!

Nicola and I after signing our waivers.

This year the weather was cooler and we felt more comfortable. Parking and the shuttle buses were a breeze again and soon we were getting our packets and getting ready to run. One noticeable difference this year was the lack of chip timing. In previous years our run for Warrior Dash has also been chip timed but this year they only timed the competitive runs. I was ok with this because we mainly do it for fun and while it’s fun to compare our results year after year, the timing piece has never been a big deal to me.

Warming up. My marathon training instructor Jason would be so proud of me! Dynamic stretches all the way!

Another welcome change this year was the course. Last year the course was run backwards with a huge hill leading up to the fire jump (the former starting area). This year the course was back to the same starting area as the 2012 course. I guess they like to switch it up sometimes. We also received free race pics, which is always a nice bonus!

I was concentrating on not falling off of this beam.

I felt like this year we were wiser from our previous experiences running this course. While the obstacles change every year, we finally learned to check them check the other side of them before committing to tackling them. This reduced our number of falls considerably this year (I don’t think we fell at all). Fortunately most of them were obstacles that we could do. Nicola felt claustrophobic on one obstacle but persevered. I skipped one climbing obstacle when my calf suddenly seized up. I knew I couldn’t make it over so we went around it. Because of my crazy calf cramp I also skipped the fire jump for the second year in a row. I can’t help it. I’m slightly scarred from falling on the fire jump two years ago. This could be my Achilles heel for obstacle runs.

I think we’re clapping in this picture as we wait our turn at an obstacle.

I’m climbing up the wall and Nicola is talking me through it. It was hard to do in my old marathon training shoes that don’t have much tread left on them!

Me and another girl climb over the wall at the top.

Nicola is ready to jump over the fire while I’m running beside it in the grass.

Nicola and I emerging from the mud pit. We look really impressed!

Nicola and I were really proud of how we did this year. We ran most of the hills, kept up with a group of very fit looking girls and also breezed through (most) of the obstacles. I’m glad I had her to guide me or I’d probably still be stuck up in an obstacle somewhere. The volunteers were amazing this year. There was one volunteer at the top of a hill yelling “See the hill, take the hill, run the hill, beat the hill!” over and over again as we tried to get up the hill. Overall we did really well and this ended up being one of our best Warrior Dashes ever. After the race we even did ten unmodified push ups to earn free purple headbands! The firefighters were back to hose us off and though we weren’t as muddy as previous years, we still really needed it.

Can you tell I’m excited to be finished?

Us immediately after the race. Showing our guns and sporting our newly earned headbands and medals.

Our after photo. All muddy (but less muddy than previous years).

Dan took video of us being hosed down by the firefighters. I took this hilarious screenshot (sorry the watermark is so big on this!).

Taking a bite out of our medals while sporting our new red fuzzy warrior dash helmets. Love my viking helmet.

After conquering another Warrior Dash we decided to stick around, mostly because it was advertised that we got a free Shock Top beer. I love Shock Top! I was slightly disappointed to discover that they were serving Coors Light instead. That’s ok though because free beer is free beer I guess. We also bought the biggest turkey legs I have ever seen in my life. They were so good that I kept yelling “Why is this the third time we’ve run this together but only the first time we’ve tried eating this?” We left the race feeling happy with how we ran and with full tummies. We felt so good about how we did that we’ve already signed up to run it again in 2015. I can’t wait!

Enjoying my giant turkey leg. It was delicious.