Race Review - Warrior Dash

The Training
While running has been playing third fiddle to my three sport training regime this summer, I haven't been doing ANY obstacle training, so you know, you could say that I pretty much didn't train for this at all :) I was in it for the fun.

Packet Pickup
You pick up all your junk the day of the race - For the number of people they served I think they actually did pretty well. I mean they hand out 24,000 packets to people over the course of two days. I didn't wait in line, and while it was a little confusing exactly what you needed to do once you got to the area, I just grabbed my own packet and someone came by and gave me a shirt and hat.

Race day
The morning of the race we took our time getting out of the house. The race is about 45 minutes away, and our heat didn't start till 12:30. So we got there around 11 - the deal is that the event was held at a ski hill with next to zero parking, and they needed to accomodate 500 person heats every half an hour. So we parked in someone's field nearby and took school buses to the ski lodge. The bus system actually worked really well, we didn't wait around at all, so that worked out awesome. We got to the area, muddy is the word of the weekend. From the spectator area you can see the start and the finish - or the uninitiated and the dirty, however you want to look at.

The Run
First things first - the run is three miles on a ski hill. Now in the pre-race writeup I thought I knew what was going on and that we'd start at the top of the hill, and then run down and back up. I was so confident I even talked about it with some people at work. WRONG. You start at the bottom of the hill and immediately run up some retarded big hill. I don't know how far it was, but I do know that hill pretty much destroyed everyone's desire to run. This run was pretty much filled with hills, you basically run up and down the ski hill 4 times, and every time we came to a hill, of any size, every single person around me immediately started walking. It was almost comical.

The Obstacles
As could be guessed ahead of time the obstacles made this race fun. It's just fun to climb over cars, run through wind & water storms created by snow making machines, climb cargo nets, slog through stinky mud, jump over fire, and take a swim in a muddy water pit. Much to my surprise they weren't that crowded, I really expected them to be plagued by lines and slow people, or just a little too hard for the average person. It's not like they were empty, but there also weren't any lines. But, probably, unless you ran out in front you also couldn't attack the course for speed, there were plenty of people on each obstacle.

Closing Thoughts
I would do this again, it may even inspire me to look for more races like this, or maybe I'll just make it the yearly treat. Who knows. It's fun, and while I'm sure some people sprinted through it and are happy to always push themselves to the limit, I was in it to have fun. In the end I had a great day out with the family and I'll take that any day.

The only real objection I have for this race is that the course here isn't spectator friendly. There may have been a way for people to get to the top of the hill, but the course is mainly inaccessible to anyone who isn't running or on an ATV.

Pre-race shot - it was a great day

Big water "slide" I remember making a goal to not look like a big spider - fail :)

Jumping over fire

Last mud pit

I also remember making a goal to not have an Orbitz gum moment, also fail. Duct tape would have helped

On the way to the showers - snow making machines

Post-race shot, it was a great day

Look how dainty that pinky makes me look :)