Many, many months ago, my sister, my brother and I registered to run in a race/obstacle course called the Warrior Dash together.  Shelly and her husband also signed up to do it.  So, last Thursday, my sister flew up from Florida so that we could do it and on Saturday morning, we left my mom’s house at 6am, with mom driving us and drove the almost two hours to Berkeley Plantation in Charles City, VA, where the race was being held.  We were excited to all be doing this… although slightly less excited when we first found out that Charles City was not allowing beer at the event (one of the main things we WANTED) and then when we pulled up to pouring rain and very chilly temps.  Plunging into water obstacles and running soaking wet doesn’t sound so much fun when it is freezing outside.  Thank goodness the rain did not last long and it was warm enough that with running, the water was not so bad.

Here we are before the race… looking all clean and happy.  We have our warrior eye black on, our numbers pinned to our shirts and our OLD running shoes laced up and ready to go.

This is one of the obstacles from the race - The Cargo Climb… and that is my brother coming down on it.  There were 12 total obstacles, as follows and in this order:

Barricade Breakdown - Hurdle over waist-high barricades then crawl under barbed wire about 6 times.
Rubber Ricochet - Ram your way through the rubber jungle of swinging tires.
Road Rage - Stampede through tires, then over a scrap yard of rusted cars, then through tires again.
Chaotic Crossover - Combat crawl across tangled nets.
Deadweight Drifter - Trudge through chest to overhead deep water and over multiple spinning logs.
Teetering Traverse - Level your nerves as you teeter through a soaring track of planks.
Deadman’s Drop - Climb to the top and over the tall unhandy hurdle.
Great Warrior Wall - Conquer the wooden barricade climbing up one side with a rope.
Rio Run - Dash down the river at multiple depths.
Warrior Roast - Leap over the Warrior fire pits.
Cargo Climb - Maneuver over the cargo nets.
Muddy Mayhem - Scramble beneath barbed wire in a pit of mud as you near the finish.

The Great Warrior Wall was the hardest for me to do - as I have ZERO upper body strength and had to pull myself up a 2-story wall with a rope.  FUN FUN.

The entire course was a complete mud-bath.  In normal conditions, it would have been an awesome trail run, but after two and a half weeks of NOTHING BUT RAIN, it was a pit of mud from start to finish.  Not to mention that the trail we were running on, I can only assume, is normally used as a trail for horses, since the god-awful smell of manure that we inhaled the entire time was prominent.  The mud was not a huge deal, since parts of the course were SUPPOSED to be mud… but having to run the entire thing with your shoes sticking in the mud constantly, and if they were not sticking, you were sliding around every single curve and almost completely eating shit.  The above photo is me coming out of the “Muddy Mayhem” and crossing the finish line… with a mouthful of mud.  My sister got to this point and ran to throw up because of the smell/mud in her mouth.

Here are the three of us after the race - not so clean looking anymore… but damn proud for finishing it!  My damn brother finished the thing in like 36 minutes - which is AMAZING.  The boy smokes a pack of cigarettes a day and NEVER exercises… yet ran through this race like a damn gazelle under attack!  The minute the flames went off at the start line signaling us to go, my brother said “see ya bitches” and TOOK OFF!  It was so damn funny.  After this photo, we all trekked down to the James river and jumped in to clean off, then we donated our shoes to the large pile they were collecting to be cleaned/donated to people who need them.

Then we headed to the truck to take turns holding up towels and covering each other so that we could strip down naked in the parking lot, wipe ourselves down and change into some dry, less stinky clothes.  We also cracked open some beers from the cooler we packed… PSSSHHHH… NO BEER… OKAY…SURE!!!  We also made sure to put on our Viking Helmets and pose for photos!

It was an AWESOME experience… and I am SO SO glad that I did it.  I can barely move from my stomach up, but still TOTALLY worth it!  Special thanks to my mom for driving us so we could drink after the race, for braving the chilly rain/muddy race site and for taking photos of us.  She was a trooper!!!  Below is a slideshow of all the photos from the day.