Tiny, Dad, Leah, and myself after the Warrior Dash
Today was the fun mud run, known as the Warrior Dash. We entered the "Ohio 2" race, held in North Lawrence near Canton/Akron/Massillon at Clay's Park Resort. We ran this same race last year and came back for more!
This year, my wife and I talked my brother and his wife, Keri (nicknamed 'Tiny') and my dad into running it with us. A nasty softball injury knocked my brother out, but the four of us went up ready for a muddy 5K - with my brother acting as the full time photographer.
Our start time was 9am, and we loaded into the starting chute with about 500 other people. They wanted to avoid bottlenecks at the events, so they cut our heat in half and sent half of us at 9 and half of us at 9:15. The halfway line was drawn right in front of our group, and my dad and Tiny decided to join the end of the 9am wave and my wife and I took the front row of the 9:15am group. Before they sent us off, a guy next to my wife was wearing track shorts and running cleats without a shirt. He said he ran this in about 25 minutes last year (very fast time) and was hoping to do better this year.
I told my wife that I would meet her at the finish line, as I wanted to beat my 2012 time. The gun went off and a few of us shot off, all behind the guy in track shorts. I was more or less going at full speed and he kept pulling away from me. This guy was flying!
They had us running on trails through the woods until we came to the first event, an over/under thing. Very easy for taller people. I flew through with some other guys and onto the next event. More running, then we came to some water. After all of my triathlon swimming, as I approached the water I thought, "Here comes my Baywatch moment - I'll just show off a little." I'm in the water about half a second when I realize my HR is sky high and I cannot control my breathing at all. No freestyle swimming for this guy. I just did a casual breast stroke, trying to calm my breathing. The water was actually very deep (I couldn't touch) and I saw lots of people struggling to just dog paddle the thing. In the middle of the water was a floating platform with cargo nets that we had to climb over, then swim to the other shore and get out. Not too hard. I just took the swim easy and got my composure.
After the race my dad was saying this event almost killed him. He isn't a big swimmer, and we discussed how there really wasn't anyone there to help people in trouble. Just one clueless teenager/volunteer with a yellow shirt. No lifeguard or life raft or anything to help someone actually drowning. Kind of concerning.
After the water, more running to a teetering thing that was like a flat board you walked over, tight rope style to an incline/decline to another thin flat board to balance on. Very easy. After that, more running to some trenches. I took an empty one and actually had trouble getting out of it. It was muddy and slick with a wood roof. I could not climb out, so I pulled up on the roof with my back against the wall and feet pressed against the other wall. Talking to my dad after the race, he and Tiny had to pull each other out of this same trench (furthest left trench).
There were a lot of other events. They all sort of blurred together. I was running hard until the 2 mile sign, when I actually thought, "Oh... I think I might puke. Wait! That means I'm pushing it! Awesome! I hope I puke so I can tell the guys!" See, I normally regret not pushing to the point of puking in a race, and then agonize over the time and wonder how much faster I could have/should have gone. So, when I felt a puke coming, I knew I was maxing out my effort and I couldn't go much faster. There was a water station there, and after a drink of water the puke sensation vanished - unfortunately! I never got it back, which means I didn't push as hard as I could have on the last mile. :(
Overall, I never saw the track shorts guy again (until the very end, at the rinse off area) but I am happy with my race. I am tall and lanky and surprisingly coordinated, so the obstacles were very easy. Very easy. Nothing at all like the Tough Mudder. The Tough Mudder is nearly 10 times harder, if not more. I mean, the Warrior Dash is basically a fun, mud run of 3.2 miles with about 12 small, easy-to-do-solo obstacles, and I was done in 37 minutes (beating 2012's time by about a minute). The Tough Mudder was a 5 hour struggle through 10+ miles of ankle deep mud with giant obstacles, many of which had to be done with others helping you. Huge difference. Also, the Tough Mudder crowd looked to be in better shape on average. Like the difference between half marathoners and 5K'ers.
The fastest time of the day was 23:14. My time was 37:28, ranking me 491 of 5,343 overall (top 9%!!) and 136 of 945 males aged 30-39. Tough age group. Many of the top times were from my age group. Last year I was about 1 minute slower, and the top time then was 22 something. So, that and my memory make me think the course was a little harder this year, so I'm very happy with the time. I don't have much speed in my run, so I did about as good as I could. My wife was done in 40:14, dad in 50:45 and Tiny in 51:40.
I wanted to lap my dad SOOO bad. He had a 15 minute head start and I would have loved to approach him, tap him on the shoulder, and then smoke him. He and I had a 40 meter sprint last weekend, where he beat me by a step. So I really wanted to catch him today. I knew I would beat him at the Warrior Dash, as he's a sprinter and I'm more of a slow and steady guy. But I would love to learn to sprint and take another crack at him. Before you think I'm a geek, I get my competitive side from my dad and he competes annually in the Police Olympics with people from all over the state in track and field events. He has about 100 medals from podium finishes over the years and sprinting is his specialty (though, he would say he's good at everything!).
After the race, we hosed off and grabbed a beer while watching some live music and reliving the race with each other. We had a great time and I recommend anyone thinking of doing a mud run to try this one first. Not really hard and the atmosphere is great. Forget about the Tough Mudder unless you are in fantastic shape and the Warrior Dash isn't much of a challenge. Again, 5 hour Tough Mudder versus 37 minute Warrior Dash. Also, the Warrior Dash didn't require much upper body strength, while the Tough Mudder did.
I'm not sure if we will do this race again. I enjoyed it, but I want to focus more on triathlons so I don't know how this will fit into my 2014 schedule.
Here is the "course map", though only the first couple events are ordered correctly.
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