Event: Warrior Dash
Location: Platte City, MO
Date: 4/27/2013
Finally. The event that launched all this crazy training had arrived. I drove all the way out to BFE… AKA Platte City, MO. It was a cold and rainy day, but I really was unprepared for the mud. Because, well… I hate being dirty. Yeah, I know, I signed up for a muddy obstacle run. But it never really hit me until right then how muddy I was gonna get.
I stopped by my chiropractor’s tent and he worked a bit on my IT Band and hips. I noticed the line for bad check was long, so I asked if I could stash my phone and stuff with him. He said yeah, but joked to lock my phone or he would look through my pictures. So I quickly locked my phone and headed out to the course.
The thing I remember most was, at first, I was trying hard NOT to get dirty, Everyone else is diving in and I was trying not to touch anything. Yeah…. That kept me fairly clean until we got to these big mud pits were you head to slide down hill into waist-high dirty water, then climb up another hill and repeat two more times. That got me dirty pretty quickly. From there, I was resigned to dirtiness.
The lines for the obstacles starting getting backed up and that was kind of annoying. A couple I passed entirely because I didn’t want to wait 10 minutes just to crawl under 20 feet of barbed wire.
My favorite was jumping over the fire – which was the one that actually scared me the most. Everyone commented that in my fire jump pictures, I am holding my hands out like, “OMG! I just want to wash my hands!” Which was true.
After the event, I met up with my friend LaRissa who just slide belly-first down a mudhill with her husband. Crazy woman! I went back to the tent and got my phone and car keys and began trudging to my car.
That is when my trouble started. My phone wouldn’t unlock. I KNEW the code I put in, but it was saying it wasn’t right. I tried and tried until the phone just outright locked me out. Bad news since I used the GPS to get up there. I was also unable to make phone calls, so I could not call for directions or find my friend Dave who was coming up to see me run.
I got to my car and realized that I didn’t bring a change of clothes with me and I was covered in mud. I couldn’t get in my car like that! All I had that was clean was the event t-shirt they gave me. And it was a women’s cut shirt and not even long. Oh well. Lucky I parked way in the back of a side lot. I stripped down, put on the shirt, and threw my muddy shoes and clothes in the back of my Mini. And drove home. Naked. And not entirely sure where I was going. Then had to make a mad dash to get into my house. (Did I mention I was wearing running rights for the race and I don’t wear underpants with those?) Yeah.
I got cleaned up and Sprint had to wipe my phone to unlock it.
Lessons Learned:
Be discerning of who you leave your phone with.
Bring extra clothes to a mud run.
