Warrior Dash 2010

Let me start this with "OMG THE WARRIOR DASH IS SO MUCH FUN!". Now that that's off my chest, let me go on about the details.

The drive up to Mountain City GA was actually quite nice. Because we were headed to the mountains near the Georgia-South Carolina border the views were just lovely. The mountains were covered in lush green trees and the weather really held up for us nicely. It was clear but not too sunny, and warm but not too hot.

Red and I finished at 38 minutes with another friend of ours, and the guys all came in about 5-10 minutes after us. Rex had a blast at his first race. The pictures I'll post later will be awesome.

One last thing - I have never been so dirty in all my life. At one point I was literally swimming in mud.

As far as the technicalities of the course, I swear it was not even close to the advertised 3.2 miles. It just didn't have that feel (I left the Garmin GPS at home since it was so muddy). Plus when the course is super flat and I'm pushing myself I can hit 38 minutes. Add some obstacles and it's going to take longer. Personally it felt a little closer to 2 miles. This makes it a tad bit hard to judge my performance, but I have to say that just completing it was enough for me. Obstacles included: walking on planks in the lake, trudging through waist-deep water in the same lake, stepping through tires, climbing over cars, climbing up and down cargo nets, sliding down a muddy hill and then swimming through the mud (supposed to be a mud crawl) under barbed wire, crawling through a tunnel, jumping over 3 walls, and last but not least - leaping over two fire strips.

Organization of the race was spot on. It was easy to pick up the race packets, catch shuttles to and from the parking lots, and I have a feeling getting the professional photos in a couple days will be easy (if expensive lol).

Afterwards we needed to clean up big time. I'm glad I brought so many towels and baby wipes, because clean up was a bitch. I think it took us an hour in a BP bathroom trying to get the dirt off, and we were still dirty - just not as bad as before.

For lunch we finally made it to the spectacular Dillard House. Let me just state that all the reviews are correct - it is a beautiful area with amazing food and service. I have a soft spot in my heart for good Southern food because 1. it's delicious and 2. my dad's family is from the foot hills of the Appalachian mountains near the Tennessee-Georgia border. When Rex calls me half redneck, he's not that far off LOL! He would be more accurate if he called me half hill billy. We had country ham, fried chicken, barbeque chicken, ribs, black eyed peas, collard greens, fried okra, and a whole mess of other dishes it would take too long to list. Needless to say we were stuffed by the time lunch was over. The best blackberry cobbler I have ever had topped the whole meal off. I think a good number of the crew slept on the way back to my house. Food coma? YES!

All in all it was worth the money we paid. It was so well organized I felt no frustrations at all prior to the race. I'm just glad I had some friends there who were not running. We were given our swag prior to running, so they were kind enough to hold everyone's stuff while we ran. Otherwise I'd have a ruined shirt and viking hat before I even got to wear it. I had to wash my clothes 3 times to get all the mud out!