Warrior Dash Race Recap

I'm usually a fan of flat, straightforward road races.  But I'd been hearing about the Warrior Dash and I'd wondered if those obstacles were for real....

YES, they certainly are!

Tappan and I ran the Warrior Dash at the Berkeley Plantation in Virginia on Saturday and found out first hand that they were not joking about the mud.  Or the fire.  Or the walls.

Despite being completely drenched in water and mud by the end of the race, we had a blast.

When we arrived, we got our bibs and goodies from the friendly folks in the info tent...we quickly outfitted ourselves in a pair of fabulously fuzzy warrior hats.

And then we prepared for war (haha.)

The race was 3.65 miles on a MUDDY trail.  12 obstacles were sprinkled throughout the course, more at the end than at the beginning.  My least favorite obstacle involved a somewhat significant swim through some dusky, muddy water.  My favorite obstacle was the fire jump at the end!

I have some strange sore muscles that I didn't even know existed before I had to do all the stabilizing over the mud to keep from falling over.  I also have quite a few scrapes and bruises from various obstacles/logs/sticks.

But it was all worth the glory at the end.  When the race was over, we earned a pretty sweet medal, a little packet of Bare Naked granola and a Monster energy drink.  Totally worth it.

I have NO clue what my finishing time could be.  Didn't wear a Garmin (too much mud, can't hurt the precious Garmin) and the results still aren't up.  Actually, I don't mind not seeing my times, because they include what felt like 20 minutes of wading through water.  It really was just for fun!

PERHAPS one of my favorite parts of this entire experience is that Tappan had a GoPro video camera on his head the entire time.  He filmed the entire race!  Heather inspired me to use a GoPro while running :)  I'm going to edit a short little video with highlights of the race and post it later this week.  I'm just getting the hang of the video editing software so it'll be a couple days...

So stay tuned for my video debut later this week :)

Oh and last but not least, thank you to Warrior Dash for being so generous and providing me with the race entries!

Have you ever done one of these Warrior Dash/Tough Mudder/etc. races?  What'd you think?
Surprisingly, I had a really fun time, although I had not expected such extensive water elements.  I must admit, I was very thankful that I had remained free from any major falls or broken bones by the time the race finished.  I saw that one guy was hauled off a stretcher, hope he's OK!  I'm also glad that I did one of the earlier waves because some of the folks doing the later waited in traffic for hours because there were problems with the parking fields being too muddy from the rain.