WARRIOR DASH, BITCHES.

Sorry about the cursing, BUT I'M JUST SO EXCITED AND SHIT. ASJDFOAJGAJDFASD.

As you can already tell, I had a BLAST at Warrior Dash. It was easily the most fun exercise related thing I've ever done. EVER. And I'm going to tell y'all ALLLLLLLLLL about it. Probably with lots more online-yelling.

Okay. So. We left for North Carolina around 8:30 PM. One thing y'all should know about me: long car rides, especially ones at night, put me to sleep. Anything over thirty minutes is guarenteed to have me blinking in that sleepy way, and after an hour I have to really fight to stay awake. So true to form, I fell asleep pretty quickly. I woke up around 11, suddenly realizing that I'd forgotten my ID, which I would need for check in. Momma managed to email a scanned copy to my cousin. I then played Angry Birds on Joe's Kindle. When 12 rolled around, I fell back asleep until we got to the hotel.

At the hotel, I slept fairly well. I can fall asleep pretty much any time, anywhere. Around 6 AM I got up (having set my alarm for that) and showered. Reasons for the shower: I needed to shave, and wet hair braids better than poofy, expands-with-humidity hair.

We left the hotel around 7:10. On the way up to the race track, I listened to intense music (also known as my Exercise playlist) and looked out the window. At some point, I saw a road name: Knoxwood. I think that'd make a lovely town name for a story, dont' you?

Anyway.

About an hour later, we made it to the parking lot. I pretty much became a jumping ball of spaz. I used my cousin's Kindle to show the people my ID, and got all my race gear. For those who don't know, that includes: a chip monitor for your time, a warrior hat (looks like a viking helmet), a warrior t-shirt, and your number. I bounced around more as we went to the car to put away what we didn't need.

While we waited for our wave (11, but we left with the 10:30 one instead), we wandered around and stretched. At some point my cousins got energy drinks. Holly hated hers, and we split it (I hated it too. Nasty stuff, energy drinks). Probably not the best idea when I was already BOUNCING OFF THE PROVERBIAL WALLS.

THEN IT WAS RACE TIME! We got in the giant herd of people gathering at the start line, definitely near the back of the pack. When the race started, it took a good minute for us to even reach the starting line. My cousins and I dodged and weaved around slower runners. And get this, SOME PEOPLE WERE ALREADY WALKING. Like, what? The race just started. You canNOT be tired already.

After a couple minutes, the giant throng of people turned into a steady line. There was a backup at the first obstacle, which sucks, because that takes away from your time. Joe and I amused ourselves by making dinosaur noises at the obstacle, and pretending to fly, and a bunch of other nonsense.

What WAS the first obstacle you ask? I'll tell you. It was boards that went up, and you had to walk up them, then go across another board, then another, then go down the last one. Easy peasy. I ran it. On the other side we had to go through the throng of people again. Eventually we made it through, only to be held up YET AGAIN at the next obstacle.

Now, I can't really remember the order for the obstacles except the last four. So I'll just tell you all the other ones in no particular order.

A rope bridge thingy that you walked across. Once again, easy peasy. Then there were these rubber tires to hope around like in military movies, which led to two cars you had to climb over, which led to more tires. Less easy, because at that point I was dead tired and just wanted to walk and never run again ever. There were trenches to run up and down. Uhm. A giant hurdle to climb up and through. A wall thing to scale with rock climbing holds, that had a firemans pole to slide down the other side. Another wall that you had to scale with just a rope and some foot holds.

Around 2 miles, I started lagging. I was tired, and the obstacles seemed really far apart, and there were so. Many. Hills. We weren't running on a track per se - we were on a recently-made trail that had been churned to mud in many places by the other runners. Often we were running through the woods, dodging stray branches and prickly vines. That was fun (I love running through trails in the woods), but exhausting. But no worries. By the time we got to 2.5 miles, I got my second wind and was jetting through the course like the badass I am.

So, the last obstacles. First of the last (how clever am I?!) was a giant water pit. This was greatly appreciated, as we were all super hot (and I don't just mean in the sense that we're all better-looking than average individuals). The sign said that the water was waist deep. Yeah, for a 7-foot man. I totally couldn't touch the bottom. We had to swim (and with like five billion other people in this small little thing, that wasn't easy) to these gray floaters and climb over them, then into the water, then over some more, then back into the water. This was super easy for me, I'm a fish. Once I was out of the water, though... my clothes were so heavy I could barely run. Correction: my shirt was so heavy I could barely run. Seriously, that thing was pulling down so hard I was worried it would fall off!

Out of the water, I was covered in bracken. Like, swamp monster worthy covered. I pulled most of that off, then headed for the slide thing that was next. After that, it was through some really gnarly mud to the last three obstacles.

The next obstacle was a giant rope thing. You climbed to the top, then crawled across these ropes, which had holes among them. My knees are all kinds of torn up from that.

Then there were the fire hurdles. These were long lines of coal, which were on fire. You had to jump over them. I leaped across mine like a gazelle, earning quite a few rounds of applause.

Last, but certainly not least, was the mud pit. Which happened to have barbed wire over it. You had to go into the mud and army crawl. This mud was thick as all get-out, and deepish, and there were weird pebbles at the bottom. I got mud all in my ear because I'm not coordinated at the best of times, and this certainly wasn't the best. When I got out, I had mud EVERYWHERE.

Mud covered my face, but I could see. At least until Joe dumped water over my head. That made mud run into my eyes, so Holly had to lead me to the wash station. Which was men on trucks filled with water, spraying us down with giant hoses. One of the vans had a pipe that sprayed water out so you didn't have to wait for one of the men to notice you. I navigated to the front, and basically pole danced without the pole so that I could get my entire body somewhat cleaned off (the pipe was low to the ground, spraying at about waist level). One guy yelled, "USE THAT ASS!" I shouted back, "HELL YEAH. THAT'S WHAT IT'S HERE FOR!" Everyone laughed and it was fun.

With the race over, I was tired but energized. We got some food, and I danced a lot. Mud literally caked me - I could've taken off my tanktop and sports bra and still have a layer of mud so thick you couldn't see my boobs. It was beautiful. My hair had transformed into a helmet, and it took over ten minutes for me to get it clean tonight when I got home.

That's pretty much it. I'll post some race pictures when they go up on the website.