This race is so badass they make you jump over a wall just to get into the starting corral.
It's also badass because it takes place at a ski resort. That means hills, people-and lots of them.
Oh I know those hills look all cute and small and stuff in that picture. But they were beasts, I tell you. Steep-ass thigh-frying lung-burning BEASTS.
As you come out of the starting corral, you race up the first of those beasts. Well, maybe not "race;" more like "try and run and then realize you will never make it up the hill running so you stop and walk and hope you don't cause a massive people-pile-up behind you." After you top that hill, you then run downhill over uneven ground down to your first obstacle- a mud pit. After that, the race becomes a blur of running over bumpy ground, one obstacle after another (mostly walls and cargo nets), and climbing up those freaking hills.
I would like to talk about a few obstacles worthy of extra verbiage:
1) The water slide in mile 3. This is perhaps the most fun obstacle (if you can call it an obstacle) that is on the course. Super-slippery, you go down fast and hit the pool of water at the bottom with a ginormous splash that feels fantastic that late in the race.
2) The sand dunes. I started the race with a small rock in my shoe that bugged me until the sand dunes you had to climb up and down. After that I had TONS of small rocks in my shoes and I didn't have to worry about the first one anymore.
3) The super-steep hills. There were two occasions where you had to climb hills so steep they had to put down ropes for you to pull yourself up the hill while you were trying to climb the hill. What's cruel is that the second hill is much steeper than the first hill. Oh, the swear words I heard at the top of those hills.
4) The mud pits. They put real barbed wire over the top of them so you were forced to crawl on your knees and/or belly. Not that I mind; this was a mud obstacle race, after all. But I wish I had worn capris that covered my knees, because they were pretty banged up from all the rocks and whatnots through which I was crawling afterwards. One of those whatnots included a corrugated metal drain pipe I had to slide through head-first towards the end of the race. Speaking of that pipe obstacle...
5) The pipe obstacle with the pool of nasty smelling water. After diving head-first through a pipe, you slid straight into a pool of muddy, foul-smelling water. I managed to keep my head above it, but you still had to swim through the water with your head not scraping the barbed wire strung above you. This meant the water had to come up to my lips. Yummo. I managed to get to the other side without putting any more of my head under the water, where I then had to now go up a huge drain pipe with only a rope to help me. And a rope without any knots in it, even.
This is where all my upper body weight work paid off. I could actually pull myself up that pipe this year, unlike last year where some gentlemen kindly offered me a push and then shoved my ass up the pipe. Mind you, I didn't do it fast and there was plenty of teeth baring and grunting involved, but I did it. It made every moment of hated shoulder-work worth it.
6) The balance beam. I'm the first to admit that my balance sucks. So having to walk on a beam across greenish-nastyish-there is surely some disease lurking in there-water is just asking for trouble. I got to that obstacle and started to cross....and then stopped. I didn't really have a strategy for this. I was trying to ballerina-side-step it across, and it just wasn't happening. I got about a foot and half out and then decided to back up and try again. When I backed up and tried again, the volunteer working the obstacle screamed, "GO ON, DON'T BE A QUITTER! YOU CAN DO IT!"
My response? "I KNOW I CAN DO IT. NOW BE QUIET AND LET ME DO IT."
And then I did it by prancing across the beam as lightly and as quickly as I possibly could, cringing at the greenish brackish water in the ditch below the obstacle. I"m glad that I was in the first wave, because after I was finished that same obstacle looked like this:
Check out those long lines. There was nothing like that when I went through. Amazing the difference an hour and a half makes on the course.
I saw those lines again at the final obstacle, a climb over some cargo containers and then up cargo netting (I sense a cargo theme).
When I got there during the race there was no mud at all on the wall. Looks like a lot of muddy runners had flung themselves on that thing after I did.
I took a lot of other post-race pics because my race photographer decided to stay in bed rather than come with me, so here are some other random pictures I took from the day:
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| The finish line before anyone had crossed it. |
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| Attack of the mud people. |
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| The last obstacle. |
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| The last of three mud pits. Barbed wire = bonus. |
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| Obligatory mud run fire jumping. |
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| Before the mud run..... |
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| ....after the mud run. And a rinse. |
Despite the water from which I am sure I will contract a fatal disease, I love this race. It is challenging and fun at the same time, even if there are hills from hell all over it. I must say that as I write this the next day, my entire body is sore, especially my ankles.
It's going to make my 20 mile training run this afternoon all the more interesting.
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