My First Race Recap!

For someone who has been trying to be a runner for quite some time, I don't race very often. So this will be my very first race recap!

My fiance and two friends ran the Warrior Dash in northern Pennsylvania on Saturday. It was one of the most fun things I have ever done!

Our wave of runners wasn't taking off until 12:30 p.m., so we took our time leaving Philly and stopped for McDonald's breakfast for the ride up (breakfast of champions? I actually ate fruit and a croissant from Whole Foods to make everyone else in the car feel guilty.) I was in one of my cutest outfits: a free shirt I received on spring break in 2003 that dubs me "official keg stand coordinator 69" and a pair of shorts circa 2002 with "Outer Banks" plastered across the butt.

We took our place at the start and some fire blasts signaled our start. The first mile was pretty uneventful. We ran through some mud and mostly just followed a trail. (Side note--I need to work at trail running. My vision feels off because I'm looking down but also ahead and I think it messes with my brain.) But then the mud got deeper and stickier. One of our friends lost his shoe and had to tug it out. A guy in the group behind us popped his ankle out of place and had to leave the course.

Then we hit a tunnel we had to crawl through in the dark. No biggie. The next obstacle freaked me out a bit. We had to walk across wooden beams that were angled up and down. I don't have an image of this, so I'll send you to another blog to check it out.

Next three obstacles were also not totally insane. We had to scale some hurdles and then slide under some others, crawl through a tube and make our way through a bunch of ropes strung like a giant spider web. The cool thing about this race was the sense of camaraderie. People were holding ropes for each other and just laughing and talking along the way.

We then made our way through waist-deep water, which was also surprisingly easy. But don't think I'm a stellar athlete yet. We then came to the great warrior wall. I couldn't do it. So I had to skip it. I didn't feel too bad because a good chunk of other people weren't making it either. 

The next set of obstacles were my favorite part. We had a cargo net to scale. Some guy behind me was apparently a little too close because he was able to tell me he liked my underwear (it was pretty cute). Stupid Outer Banks shorts.

Once you drop down the other side of the net, the finish was in sight. Between me and the finish was a set of tires--I don't know what this is called, but it looks like those drills football players do where you hop through tires--and then scale a bunch of junked-up cars.

Following this was fire to jump over--super cool! Then a giant mud pit you bust through and then eventually crawl through because there is barbed wire over you. My knees are still thanking me for that one--there were a lot of stones under the mud, so my knees are cut and bruised (warrior wounds).

Then you slither out of the mud and run to the finish! I was kind of a jerk once we hit the cargo net and beyond because I just got excited and completely ditched my group and finished without them.

We then got hosed down by a firetruck and openly stripped down in a field. It was that kinda weekend.
I officially retired as the keg stand coordinator (I was not taking that beat on shirt home, and those shorts, they can't even hide my underwear, so they also stayed at the dash.)

This is after we were hosed off:

 Andrew and me. A couple who gets muddy together stays together.

The rest of our race crew.

After this, we promptly got the free beers we were promised and set out to see what northern Pa. has to offer. We found the World's Largest General Store, which was indeed huge and full of odd things. Like these ducklings to pet:

And a dinosaur in the middle of the furniture section:

We capped the night off by seeing X-Men at the drive-in. I love drive-ins even though you have to worry about draining your car's battery, usually drop popcorn all over your car and end up kinda crammed into a weird position.