Warrior Dash Tulsa 2011

I had a request to blog about my experience at the Warrior Dash in Tulsa, and I thought that was a great idea.  Especially in a year when I look back and try to remember exactly what I thought.

This was the first year that Oklahoma had a Warrior Dash, so I was pretty pumped to participate in it.

Let me start off by saying that I WAAAAY underestimated how hard it was going to be and that I am NOT in as good of shape as I thought.

They donate your shoes at the end if you want so they encourage you to wear your older shoes.  (Big mistake on my part, and I'll show you why later.)

I ran the Warrior Dash with two of my best friends Stacy & David.  They are in way better shape, so they left me and had a much better time.  I ended up finishing around 55 minutes.
I'm okay with that because I didn't do it for time, I did it just to finish.  Also, next year I will be able to go under that time.

I went into this thinking, "Oh, I'm a runner, I don't really need to train for this too hard."  Yeah. Right.

It started off pretty good until about the 3/4 of a mile into it when it basically went into a straight up hill trail run with tons of little ditches, holes, rocks and what not.

The obstacles included:
-jumping over walls then going under bars x 4
 -stepping in tires and jumping over cars X 3
-running through tires
-climbing up a straight wall with tiny bars to step on that were very far apart and a  little wall (they had those a couple of times through the course.)
-climbing on nets flat
-climbing over a net wall which was SOOOO high that I had a miniature panic attack about plunging to my death.
-leaping into an ice cold river and having to roll over logs X 3 (apparently a lot of people peed in it..I found this out later),
- Climbing up multiple taaalll talll walls and worrying about falling and dying. (Yes, I'm a bit dramatic)
- Running down a straight downward trail hill, trying not to go too fast so that you run in a ditch and fall and roll to your death.
- Jumping over more walls.
-Crawling under barbed wire and nets
- Jumping and crawling in a mud pit
- Jumping over fire.

I'm sure there are more but that's all I can remember.

It was probably the hardest thing I've done physically, yet it was sooo much fun.
I wanted to die while doing it, but I felt so accomplished afterward.
If you know me well, you know I have basically no upper body strength.
That I was able to do those obstacles and climb up straight hills made me really proud and pumped up!

So obviously this is going to be a yearly thing!

Here are some photos from our little adventure:

Stacy, David, and I after

Me & Stacy

David & I

Me and my mud boogers

Next day. My bruised & cut legs (If you can see them)

...ANNNND this is why you do not wear old, too small running shoes in a race like this.

Notice the blisters on the left (sorry my feet are disgusting)

I encourage everyone to do this race at least once in your life!  You won't regret it!  (Well you might at the time you are running it, but afterward it's great!)  :)

My friend Sherrie found a video somebody had posted using their camera helmet.  It's long but you can fast forward through parts if you are interested to see what kind of obstacles there were.  Obviously this guy did it way faster than I did, and it doesn't truly capture how hard it really was.)

Love.