Last weekend I did the best run ever: The Warrior Dash. It was 2.5 miles of mud, obstacles, crazy people in costumes, and fun! Everyone should do it next year :). A bunch of pictures that Sarah took are up on my picasa site. Most of these pictures are by Sarah, but there are a couple by Brightroom Photography.

Final results: I ran the 2.5 miles in 30:16.90 (about 12:21/mi.), and came in 2911st out of the 5455 people that ran on Saturday (651st in my age group). Overall, I think I came in 5837th out of 10773 people. Not terrible!

It was more like a music festival or something than a race, with some (terrible) live bands, food (turkey legs), beer, and tons of people. They were running waves of hundreds of people every half-hour from 11:00am to 5:30pm. And the first day sold out quickly, so they did it all again on Sunday too. All in all, almost 11000 people ran the course. You can look at the web page for the south east race to get an idea of what was involved, but the map isn't very accurate. It was advertised as 3.22 miles, but didn't feel anywhere near that long (analysis of the pacing calculations from the race results is how I came up with ~2.5 miles).

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Kittens of the Apocalypse"] [/caption]

We started off crammed into the starting area with a bunch of other people. If there is one complaint about this race, it would be how crowded things were. There was a section that was freshly broken trails through the woods for a while, and it was completely single file -- not enough room to pass anyone because of the trees, and there were a few times where you were just walking, stuck behind the person in front of you. The race started how all good things should: with fire.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Off to a fiery start"] [/caption]

We ran back to the highway, and along the road for a bit, and then circled back around near the start to a big pond.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Across the pond"] [/caption]

You can see in the distance the people are standing up -- they're running on top of planks tied to floating tires. After that, you can see the people are deep in the water -- the floor of the pond was extra muddy, and so uneven that you'd step into a hole and suddenly be up to your neck. By the end I had given up and just finished by swimming.

Next we had to run though a field of tires, which I surprisingly managed to get through without falling down.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Still on my feet!"] [/caption]

Immediately after the tires were a bunch of short walls to hurdle. Paul and I are already past them, but you can get an idea for what they looked like.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Past the walls"] [/caption]

That was it for what Sarah could see from the beginning spectator area. I don't remember the order of things anymore, but some more of the obstacles included: climbing cargo netting up to a platform and then back down the other side, a steep hill to climb with the aid of a rope, the aforementioned trail through the woods, crawling through a drainage pipe, and jumping over vehicles in a small junkyard. I'm sure that there are more that I'm forgetting.

[caption id="attachment_267" align="aligncenter" width="198" caption="Junkyard"] [/caption]

Coming in to the final stretch, we ran up to the top of a big, muddy hill with some guys spraying it down with a hose. You had to sit on your butt and slide all the way down... I got going really fast and almost destroyed Paul, who had to stop for some guy in front of him. At the bottom of the hill you splashed into a thick mud pit. They had rigged up barbed wire across the top so you had to crawl on your stomach through the mud. Everyone came out of it completely filthy.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Covered in mud"]

[/caption]

The next obstacle after the mud was another pond. This one was knee-thigh deep, and had huge logs floating in it. The idea being that you had to climb over the logs in the water to get past them.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Here come the logs"] [/caption]

I was way too tired to climb over the logs, and it seemed like just diving over them would be much, much easier. As an added bonus, this washed off a lot of the mud :P.

Now that we were all wet and muddy, it was time for the final obstacle. On the web site, the fire jump looked like it was just a pvc pipe on the ground with holes in it and fire shooting out. What it actually was was a pile of firewood about two feet high that they kept throwing those starter logs onto.

[caption id="attachment_270" align="aligncenter" width="200" caption="Fire Leap"] [/caption]

And then the finish! This was definitely my favorite race so far. We're talking about doing some other obstacle-focused runs next year, and I can't wait. So much more fun than real running :P

[caption id="attachment_272" align="aligncenter" width="198" caption="Big Finish!"] [/caption] [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="We survived!"] [/caption]

All that was left was to enjoy our free beer and a giant turkey leg!