Warrior Dash - Georiga - 2014

Finally Finally FINALLY, my favorite race and race weekend of the year.  Warrior Dash.  This is the 3rd year we've run as a group (hubs and John went in  2011).  You can read about last year's here!  If you are looking into running an obstacle race or mud run, hands down this is the one to do.  They are by far the most organized race we've done.  (I'm not including Spartan in this since our experience with that race was less than the "norm" as far as races go.  Read about it here)  Last year they had some...snafus to be nice.  Parking was a nightmare, buses to get to parking was a nightmare.  They owned up to it in a big way.  They apologized and offered all runners from that race I think at least a 50% off discount for this years race if not more.  And this race was DEFINITELY above par.  Minus a back-up at Goliath (their big and new obstacle this year) there we had zero issues.

2014 Warrior Dash - Mountain City, GA

We've had everything planned out for AT LEAST a month, probably 2 months.  Of course, the curse of the new runner hits.  I've probably talked about this before, we have a theory that if someone comes and runs with us who has never run with us before, something bad happens.  See my post on the Spartan Race where we had several new people running with us and it almost killed us!  The Tuesday before the race, so 3 days before we were heading to Mountain City, GA our cabin rental place called Ben.  They had a pipe burst 2 weeks before and "thought it would be fixed by now" so we had to cancel our reservations there and find somewhere new.  Back to the Murder Cabin!  We stayed here in 2012, it is seriously a set of a scary movie.  You know how I know it's the set of a scary movie?  It has a book case...no real hotels have book cases, if you still question it, the copy of Deliverance that we left in 2012 was still on the bookcase.

We arrived Friday evening and proceeded to get ready to properly fuel our bodies for a race, with a shrimp boil and beer. It was delicious.  After we devoured it, we chilled for a little while and went to bed.

Pre Race Crew

The next morning we got up early and headed to the race site.  It was awesome.  Completely different than the previous year as the course was basically completely reversed.  It was uphill both ways, seriously you began and ended the race going uphill.  Jerks. We had to swim through a lake that was absolutely freezing, climb over cars, jump fire, (successfully) traverse A frame walls.  It was a great race.

Warrior Roast

Goliath

Goliath

After Ben almost killed a photographer on Goliath we headed to the post race party.  Beer and Turkey Legs.  You really can't ask for a better combination.  We hung out there then decided to head back to the cabin and drink the beer we had already purchased.  Apparently we thought we were in college still because 5 of us drank nearly 40 beers...excluding the ones we threw like grenades when someone didn't describe something well enough during our game of Charades (phone app....where you put the phone to your head and you have to guess what the word is based on the other person's description).  We grilled out entirely too much steak, then of course at it all, complete with baked potatoes, watched Boondock Saints at senior citizen audio level and crashed.

Post Race!

Turkey Legs!

Post-Race Party!

2 years ago we followed up Warrior Dash with white water rafting on the Ocoee.  Why not do it again this year?  It was awesome last time.  What we didn't realize was that Warrior Dash was a month earlier this year as compared to 2012.  When I say the water was cold, that's a severe understatement, if I were to say it was freezing, also a severe understatement.  Was it awesome?  Of course.  There were only 2 boats of people, then they had about 4 or 5 boats of trainees.  It was crazy to see them in their training.  That's a tough job.  Hats off to anyone who does it.

It was an awesome weekend with amazing friends.  I get to run another Warrior Dash in Ohio this year, it's going to have some GIANT shoes to fill if it's even going to come close to the race weekend we just had.