The Warrior

I am a Warrior!!

Literally, I have the shirt to prove it!

After my amazing week with Sweetness in Central Texas I was able to spend Saturday with my “Big Brother”, his wife, and their friends running around East Texas.

3.11 miles to be exact, including 12 obstacles.

Obstacles you ask?!

Yep. Military style obstacles forcing the “Warriors” to jump, crawl, climb, and slide. Oh, and run through mud and wade through a creek bed too!

By now you get I LOVE to do unconventional things. Hiking and rock climbing…awesome! Now add a quicker pace, uneven ground, tons of people and another surprise and I am giddy like a first grader!

I do not think I stopped smiling from the moment I woke up Saturday until I took a much deserved nap that evening.

BigBrother is one of my favorite people for a variety of reasons, but mostly because he really is like a big brother to me. He and his wife are the ones who told me about Warrior Dash and got me involved. I jointed them in the lovely town of Splendora, TX for a little jog…

As I had the largest car I drove. We were in the Noon wave of runners, but were told to get there an hour and a half early. We got to the exit two hours early and figured out the reason for promptness…parking was CRAZY! Two lanes merged to one with 500 plus people per half-hour wave trying to park.

We were in line for a while…

So long in fact that BigBrother and I had time to do an “Irish Fire Drill”. It’s a Chinese fire drill, but it was St. Patty’s Day and BigBrother danced a jig around my car, so Irish Fire Drill it is…

We got there, war-painted up, I taped BigBrother’s wife’s ankles and we checked in.

The Dash itself was SO much fun!

I ran with two friends of BigBrother. They are a husband and wife team from El Paso…awesome people!

The first “obstacle” was running in mud. This is precarious and you have to be nimble. Standing on your heels or stopping will cause you to either fall or lose a shoe from the mud suction.

So we ran through mud trying to be strategic and find the “most dry” mud patches and wind up at a freaking creek bed! This requires a jump into chest deep water and wading across only to run around a corner…in mud…and go back the other way through the creek bed again! By this time I’m thinking of the move Stand By Me and the leaches scene…not digging it. I persevere.

After the water is the first real obstacle of what I call “over-unders”. Jump over a three-foot wall and crawl under a board two feet above the ground with barbed wire on top.

The order of events from here on is a bit fuzzy. Not because they were impossible, I just plain don’t remember.

I know there were walls that required a rope to get up and over. I was actually most worried about this obstacle during my training, so I was PUMPED when I had NO trouble. I hit the ground on the other side and yelled WOOOOO at the top of my lungs!

The last couple obstacles were great too. One was a “waterfall” with a slide on the other side. My happy hind-end somehow got twisted to the side and ended up in the water at the bottom head and back first, feet in the air! I wish there was a streamed video I could post here, but take my word for it…hilarious!

Now, did I mention a surprise earlier…I think I did…

FIRE!

Yep, the second to last obstacle was jumping over fire pits!

My little group of gals decided to wear tutus for the Dash, so I hiked up the fabric and jumped. I KNEW I was going to catch fire over one of the pits.

I didn’t!

I just kept barreling on through.

The last obstacle was a crawl through mud under barbed wire. There was no way to cheat; you had to be belly on the ground to get through. One kid went past me with a sword in his mouth! Fantastic! Fortunately, there were no leaches to worry about. We just got plain DIRTY!!

Loved.every.minute!!!

While getting my medal the gal even mentioned how big my smile was. I felt great!

It took only 50 minutes to get through the dash.

Here is a picture after the entire group made it in.

Afterwards was time to clean up and enjoy a couple free beverages.

I opted to pay for a gigantic stein full of brew. There were also turkey legs available for purchase…yes, please.

Delicious on both counts!

Here are a couple people I met on the trails…

The day was awesome! Great people to celebrate with and a low-key St. Patty’s on the couch that night.

I just want to say thank you to all who have supported and inspired me through my trials and tribulations the last couple of years. It is because of you I am able to write this blog today. I could not be the rockin’ Warrior without you!

Inspiration Song…The Warrior by Patty Smyth