Warrior Dash

What a crazy day today was (and I mean that in a good way)!!! John, my neighbor friend Melissa, and I did the Warrior Dash down in Windham at Windham Mountain Ski Resort. What is the Warrior Dash? It's a 3.23 mile race on the ski mountain with 12 obstacles throughout the course.
The obstacles are as follows:
Knee High Hell (running through tires)
Warrior Wall (getting over wooden walls)
Tunnels of Terror (crawling through tubes)
Black Forrest (running through the woods)
Slithering Swamp (a GIANT "puddle" that was chest deep with FREEZING cold muddy water)
Walk the Plank (walking on a plank over a trench)
Rip Van Wrinkle Way (a steep bridge )
Rio Run (run down a river bed which was not much of one)
Cargo Climb (climb up and down a cargo net)
Catskill Skid (a giant slip and slide)
Warrior Roast (jumping over 2 rows of fire)
Muddy Mayhem (crawling through a giant mud pit with barbed wire over it)
We had SO much fun!! We were scheduled to originally race at 3pm when we first signed up, but a month or two later, the released more times, so we switched to the 10:30am time slot. It was chilly, in the low 60's and once we hit the slithering swamp...it was FREEZING, but after you got out and kept running it was ok.

The whole first half of the race was entirely uphill. Needless to say, I walked up. I may think I'm in shape, but running up this mountain was a big no thanks for me. Melissa ran it since she's super fit, and had John not been playing the role of supporting husband, he'd have run up as well, but he walked with me. Once it leveled out though, I did run/jog. Unfortunately, somewhere after the halfway point, (snap, crackle, pop is what I heard) I twisted my ankle. I sat down for about 5 minutes until the pain subsided, got back up, and kept running. It felt good enough to run on and I also wanted to finish in under an hour which gave me the drive. After we crossed the finish line and saw Melissa, she comes limping toward us. I pointed to her and said, "Are you kidding? Did you sprain your ankle too?!" She did. First obstacle tripped her up...literally. I'm not sure how I'd have felt if I had sprained mine right off the bat, so I felt lucky that I was at least almost 3/4 of the way through.

I have never been muddier in my life. We threw away everything we had on, except for the sports bra I had on since I wasn't thinking when I got dressed. I thought about crappy clothes I could toss, but didn't think of a crappy sports bra. I'm currently soaking it in the hopes of saving it. I'm not optimistic. Despite the mud, sprains, chilly morning temperatures, we had a BLAST. I'm ready to do it again next year...maybe in a different location. Everyone we came in contact with was funny and friendly. The costumes we saw were priceless (and of course we saw them all when I didn't have my camera with me). Here are the pictures I did get to take. Hope they're as fun to look at as they were to be in!

The three of us pre-dash. Notice how clean we are. It won't last!


John and I


We're headed up there somewhere


This is near the end of the course. The big slip and slide in the distance, followed by a jump through some fire.


To finish it off, a crawl through this mud pit.


Spin girls play dirty!


A dirty bunch of neighbor friends!


Love a muddy husband!


And a sprained ankle to finish it off.