We are WARRIORS!

Oh my goodness, what a fun day we had. Today is Tim's birthday and his birthday suffering of choice was The Warrior Dash in Huntersville, NC. I know "birthday suffering" may sound weird to a lot of people but we like to be active on our birthdays and do something that we consider fun. Tim had been thinking of a mud run for a while so it worked out perfectly. Grandma C spent the weekend and took care of the boys so that allowed us to make a quick day trip to the race and back. First, I must say it is wonderfully quiet doing a road trip sans little ones. Oh my, I had totally forgotten what it was like to ride / be a passenger and not an in-ride concierge. We got up early and were on the road by 6am. We drove for a while and then hit Chick-fil-a for breakfast. (Now Tim loves to go out to eat, I do not, but on his birthday we ended up eating ALL three meals out!) We arrived at the race site about 8:30am, got a great parking spot and had plenty of time to find our way around and get our race stuff. For this race, they set off waves of 500 people at 30 minute intervals. They said 9,000 people were racing on Saturday! And they also had a Sunday version. It was insane!!

So we got our race stuff and went back to the truck to change into our clothes. Thanks to a friend of ours telling me about her group's Superhero costumes, I ordered Tim & I "Super Dad" and "Super Mom" t-shirts. I figured that would give me an visible excuse for being slow and overweight instead of just being slow and overweight. =) Tim & I were scheduled to go off at 10am (the 3rd group). While we were standing in the corral, we saw Susan - a mom from Eli's class. I think she thinks I am everywhere. A few months ago, she was pacing at the Umstead 100 where I volunteer every year. She saw me in the middle of the night and it just blew her mind that I was there. And then, seeing me at Warrior Dash......we can probably now expect to see each other in the MOST random places. It was fun seeing her. We also knew that Jenny, a mom from Cole's class was there too starting at 11am. Crazy to see folks we knew out of that many people.

Lined up in the corral, 10am, the torches went fired and we were on our way to becoming Warriors. We ran about a mile before the first obstacle. We've tried to remember the obstacles in order because they were not what was on the website!

1st - balance beam. Not too hard just walking on some skinny boards.

2nd - 45 wood wall with ropes / ladder on back. Just the start of upper body strength for the day!

3rd - rope crossing, triangular bridge. Not sure if you've ever seen the rope bridges where you walk on one rope and hold on to two that are waist level, that's what this was. It was harder because multiple people would be on there at one time.

4th - tires on ground, cross 2 sets of cars. You had to run through a section of tires, think sports training, and then climb over a car, more tires, climb another car, more tires and then you were out.

5th - v shaped walls. You had to climb into a structure that was like a big V and use 2x4 cleats on the angled wall to get through, climb over a wall, shimmy more, climb another wall and then get out.

6th - super mud crossing (I lost both my shoes!). This was crazy. We had to slop through a bunch of mud. I ended up losing both my shoes and doing it in sock feet. I had to then put them back on my muddy feet when we got across.

7th - tee pee maze. Wandering through ropes made to look like tee pees

8th - rock climbing wall + fire pole (OH MY!). For this one you had to go up a wall using rock climbing holds, cross a little section up top and then reach out to / slide down a fireman's pole. I was VERY nervous about going down the pole. Tim was already on the ground and I had to convince myself it was the only way down. So I reached out and held myself onto the pole and then lowered myself down - we're talking 15+ feet! Funny thing was, when we finished, I saw a big screen that was focused JUST on that very obstacle. So whoever was watching saw my chicken-ness. It felt very Hunger Games-ish when I saw that.

9th - vertical wall with rope assist and ladder on back. This one was tough! The vertical wall had a rope with knots for you to climb with but the foot boards were very far apart so it took a lot of upper body strength. The back side was just a ladder so you just had to make sure you didn't fall off.

10th - cold water crossing with barge followed by water slide. Wowser! We knew there would be a water crossing but thought it would be waist high. Oh no, it was over our heads!! You got out to a barge (at least that's what I'm calling it) - an open square configuration of plastic containers. You had to pull yourself over into the center where there was another section of water to cross to the other side where you had to climb over the containers again. This was another hard one because you couldn't touch the ground to get any help getting up and over. Finally through that, you walked a little bit to a fun waterslide. And oh yeah, the water was super COLD!

11th - A frame cargo net. Just a typical cargo net up and down except it was free floating over the top so as people got on and off, you would move with them on the net.

12th - horizontal cargo net. For this set of nets, you climbed up and then had to cross three horizontal sections. Again, free floating and you moved with other people.

13th - fire jumps. There are two rows of fire jumps at the end. They look scarier than they are because they're just rows of Dura-flame logs. We didn't see anyone fall into them!

14th - mud pit. And last but not least, the massive mud pit. You crawl under two rows of flags, into the pit and you have to stay low because there are multiple rows of barbed wire that you could scratch your back on. The pit was rough because there were some sticks and rocks on the bottom.

So super muddy with scratched up knees and what would eventually be a sore body, we crossed the finish line together 1 hour and 5 minutes after we started. Would have loved for a faster time but we had so much fun doing it. We got a great Warrior Dash medal when we crossed and then had to go in search of the fire hose to clean up. I'm serious - the only "shower" was a guy with a fire hose connected to a non-potable water truck hosing off the crowd. It was insane! We managed to get clean enough, dried off a bit and then changed clothes for the drive home. We hung out for about an hour or so watching folks finish and it was a lot of fun.

We got home about 4:30pm and then continued to celebrate Tim's birthday. We had Outback take out and Oreo ice cream cake. How's that for a fabulous birthday?!