The starting line had good energy and they were playing a wide variety of music to get us pumped up. Tyler, Kindal and I stood around chatting while Corley held all of our stuff (he was the official spectator, NOTE: it cost $10.00 to get a spectator ticket but in hindsight no one was really enforcing this rule so I'm pretty sure we could have gotten away with not paying the fee). Corley was also the official photgrapher, from left to right Kindal, Me, Tyler.
While waiting I saw Noah who has a blog called Moore on Running that I found earlier this year when searching for information on the Palmetto 200. I had to introduce myself since I follow him on Facebook and follow his blog. It's always fun to meet people you have interacted with and never actually met. I will see him again at the Palmetto 200.
At about 8:50 we headed to the start line to wait for the our wave (the first wave) to take off. The frikkin bugs got WORSE with everyone packed together and somehow Tyler, Kindal, and I ended up at the VERY front. I don't mind being in this position but I thought it was funny that we didn't even try, it just happened. People around us were jumping up and down and doing all kinds of warm up to get ready, I was dancing to Highway to the Danger Zone.
When we started I wasn't prepared for the rough terrain, I am no trail runner by any means so I slowed it down to avoid twisting an ankle as we ran through what is normally corn fields. Honestly it was a lot more running that I expected, I SUSpect that it was this way for a lot of people because I eventually saw a lot of those super warm up people walking.
The first obstacle we came too was a bunch of bamboo that was tied together across the path. Some people went over.. in what became a theme throughout the course I was small enough to go under, so I stayed to the left and crouched down under all of bamboo in the obstacle. After that we ran, and ran some more with no more obstacles in sight. I had figured that with 14 obstacles they would be more closely compact. Next we came up to a series of wooden walls that we had to go over, then under, under, then over. They were probably 4 feet high and the clearance below was enough that you could roll under them. No problem, then back to more running.
At one point we passed a water station from which I took a cup, this was the WORST tasting water I had ever had. It was warm and tasted like they had collected it from the fields during a rainstorm. I ended up tossing it on my head.. seriously it was only a 5k I didn't need shit tasting water THAT badly.
We came upon more obstacles bundled together after that. The cargo net that you had to climb up and then jump down onto a big pad (thank God, I had bad visions of jumping off things and breaking an ankle). Then there was a tire obstacle where you had to run over and through hanging tires, and after that was the walls you had to go up and over. I had been nervous about these but it turns out that they were about 7 feet high and if you could jump up and grab you had ledge at chest high to help you get over it. Sadly, Kindal got sand on her hands and jumped up to grab the wall, pulled up and lost her grip. She ended up falling down straight on her back which took the wind out of her. OUCH! She was trooper though and got right back up.
My memory gets bad here. We did more running.. and I don't really remember the order of the obstacles. We had to go under some bamboo which was covering a hole in the ground, through some plastic tubes that were kind of corrugated and hurt my knees (once again I realized I was small enough to crawl hands and knees instead of army crawling through). I found myself passing more and more people and kind of kept challenging myself to pass the next chick that I could see since I knew I wasn't that far back as far as girls were concerned.
After the bamboo was a dirt hill we had to go over and then another one we had to go up, on the downside of that was a slide which launched us into a pool of water. It was kind of shockingly cold and refreshing at that the same time. In the water there were some pipes floating that we had to either go over or under. I snake crawled over 4 of them and was surprised at how much I lost my breath doing this. The last two I went under. I was SPENT at this point and wondered if I would even be able to pull myself out but I could see the finish line and I was kind of competing with another girl that I had caught up with so I pulled up and ran towards the finish. The final obstacle was a mud pit covered by barbed wire. Again a lot of people got REALLY muddy here by army crawling. I managed to crawl on all 4's and remained quite clean. I was still neck and neck with the girl from Trysports and I started yelling at her that we were going to have a photo finish as we both sprinted.
Seriously I still don't know who won. I've never been that close in a race before. I will be interested to see the results. I don't know what time I finished in because I was too busy trying to beat the other girl and I didn't even look at the clock. At the finish I took a bottle of water, used it to rinse of my face, threw away my shoes and put on the other shoes and socks I had brought and enjoyed some beer. I would like to thank those people who dropped their beer tickets at the registration area, we managed to get 5 beers without paying because we kept finding beer tickets on the ground (for the record I had 1/2 of one beer).
I would say that it was a good time. The obstacles weren't nearly as hard as I thought they would be which is good. I thought it was a pretty fair race. Maybe I will consider doing the Mud Run this year to see what that is all about.
* Since these are ramblings please ignore spelling and grammar mistakes. I type a draft and then I publish it.. that's what my blog is all about.
