Warrior Dash 2011

Well, I ran the Warrior Dash, and I use the term "ran" loosely. I did not do especially well time-wise, but I did have a great time. I didn't get hurt (one guy broke his ankle right in front of me and had to be dragged out of the mud pit.) My worst injury from the event is the horrible sunburn I am currently wearing from staying at the Warrior Dash for 4 hours and having a blast. I'm definitely doing this again.

Here is a video I compiled from this year's race. This is the one I ran:





I'm sorry that you can't see the actual course itself very well. I saw some runners wearing video cameras on their heads. I don't have a camera like that, but I hope to have one next time I run it so I can record the whole thing.

This race was like nothing else I'd ever done before. One major problem that I had was that I got extremely sick the week of the race. Wednesday I even had to stay home in bed. I slept until 4 pm until someone knocked on the door to my bedroom to see if I was OK. If they hadn't of awakened me I don't know how long I might've slept. That's how sick I was.

So because of being sick, all my training stopped. I couldn't do any more running or workouts. I just had to focus 100 percent on getting over being sick enough that I could participate. I went to the race not even knowing for sure if I was going to be able to run it. But I figured I had paid my money and I wanted to see what it was all about if nothing else. Luckily, when I got there, I felt well enough to take a crack at it.

My time was horrible. I think I did it in 50 minutes, more or less. And I walked A LOT. I have never before in my entire life walked during any race. But I walked probably half of this one. The funny thing was, I flew over some of the obstacles, such as climbing steep walls with ropes and then climbing down the other side. I flew up several of those without much effort.

But by the time I got to the end of the course, I was so exhausted that it was all I could do to make myself trot to the final stretch. I did my best hurdler impression over the flaming logs. There were 2 rows of them. And when it came to the final obstacle, the mud pit, the spectators were screaming for all the guys to dive in and do a big belly flop. It was all I could do just to step into it and crawl on my hands and knees at an agonizingly slow pace. Some people threw themselves in, splashing mud onto the spectators, and then swam the pit. I was lucky just to make it from one end to the other without collapsing. And then I climbed out and somehow found the energy to jog across the finish line.

I was surprised by how many people walked most of the race. I was even more surprised to see so many people walking across the finish line. But to be fair, this is not a race you compete in to see how fast you can go. At least, not for most people it wasn't.

The biggest surprise of all, though, came after the race when we were all gathered around fire hoses trying to spray off the mud. Girls in skin tight tank tops and sports bras just threw their shirts into a box for unsalvageable clothes and started spraying themselves down like something out of a wet T-shirt contest. One particularly busty, slim, Playboy bunny-looking girl stuck her boobs in my face as she was hosing them down and shook them at me. And she was surrounded by other similarly busty girls, apparently all part of a group who ran together, who were also soaking their boobs and shaking them at the guys. I have run a lot of races, but never have any of them ended like that. I was nearly punched in the face by jiggling, wet, hot girl boobs. Talk about motivating - I'll be back next year!

There were a lot of people running dressed in costumes. You can win a prize for having the best costume in the race, so it is encouraged. Maybe next year I'll run dressed as a viking. I haven't decided yet.

Anyway, I did pretty lousy, but I did it. I'm sure Alana's time was much, much faster than mine, but then just looking at her photos I can tell she's in tremendous shape. My friend who encouraged me to run it is a personal trainer, pump class and spin class instructor, and I believe she used to model. So I don't even want to know what her time was, either. She did tell me that she walked a lot, too, which made me feel better about myself. But I still have a long way to go to getting into a condition that I'd call competitive.

Video Games - E3 2012 - AOTS Exclusive