This weekend was the Warrior Dash in Platte Ridge Park, Platte City, Missouri. It was the second year for the race, the first one having been held last July, in which three men actually died due to the extreme heat. So they moved the race to May... an encountered more extreme heat. Fortunately, my friends Christy and Liz and I had registered early, and were in the early heats. We arrived at the parking lot and boarded school buses to the race grounds...
The course. You will die here, here, here, and here.
Sign your life away...
Upon arriving, we signed our waivers & stood in the packet pick-up lines. After about 20 minutes in line, waiting for the girl to find my envelope, I was told I had to go to the information booth. They had lost my registration. Apparently, they had lost a whole bunch of them, as we were all in line together. Thank goodness for this iPhone—it saved me—I was able to pull up my confirmation from 11/30/11. The woman's excuse was that they had over 12,000 registrations to track. (I should have realized this was foreshadowing, for when I checked my bag which they then lost & it took another 20 minutes to find it!!!) Ah, well...
Christy made our costumes: black tees with gold sparkly skulls & crossbones, and pleather skirts with gold coins. They look great with the Viking hats, no?
Christy, me, & Liz
My vote for best costumes!
Christy's photo
Christy's photo
Second best costume: Brown electrical tape codpiece?
Christy, me, Nathan, & Liz... Christy's photo
The course itself was considerably easier than last November's Ruckus. It was shorter (5k vs. 4 miles), and had far fewer and easier obstacles. However, Ruckus was 45 degrees, and this was 85, and for me, that made Warrior Dash much harder. I hate running in the heat & humidity!!!
The obstacles (even the stinking, muddy cesspools) were a welcome respite from sucking air trying to run a hilly cross-country course in the heat. I will say, though, that I rather enjoyed jumping over the piles of burning coals. I'm just glad the pleather skirts that Christy made for us weren't flammable!
In the end, I finished with a time of 44:03.05, or 12:57/minute miles. (UGH!) #2269 overall. I'd like to see what I could do further out from ankle surgery, and with cooler weather. What a blast, though, seriously. We had SUCH FUN!!!
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