Warrior Dash II - Ohio

Apparently we couldn't get enough of Warrior Dash with only one race this year so we decided on two.  We ran Warrior Dash in Georgia back in April - you can read about that race here - and decided to run it again in Ohio with Ben's sister and brother in law, and a couple friends.  Well unfortunately work schedules didn't work out for a few of the people, so Ben, me, and some friends from Virginia headed over to Columbus for the race.

We met at our hotel, the downtown Hyatt Regency, and headed out to get "an amazing burger better that Litton's" at a place called The Thurman Cafe.  While the burgers were delicious and GIANT, they were no Litton's.

From there we headed back to the hotel, we had some race prep to attend to.  So I busted out my sewing machine. Bet you didn't see that coming, I mean who pack a sewing machine to take to an obstacle run?  I get to work on the ridiculous costume we are wearing the next day.  Doug who came in town to run with us is a band director and had some old uniforms laying around.  After pulling some strings he was able to get us some to wear on the race.  Well these fit high schoolers...we are SEVERAL years removed from high school, so some seams had to be let out, some sleeves cut off.  And of course after finishing 1.5 of the jackets my needle broke.  I may have brought a sewing machine, but I sure didn't bring extra needles!  Thankfully the nice people at the Hyatt Regency didn't ask too many questions when we called down to ask for 3 sewing kits.

Doug Ben and Jenn trying on our overlays

Me and Susan began feverishly hand sewing these overlays as we played Cards Against Humanity.  If you haven't played this game you need to, it's hysterical!  Now don't play this with grandma at Christmas...one of you will be very embarrassed.  For the 4 of us in that hotel room, it was absolutely hilarious.

Ben's Flat Warrior Ready to Go!

We finally finished up for the night and laid out our flat warriors and passed out.  The next morning, we got up early and started making the hour drive to the race site in Millfield, OH.  We parked the car - note it's our brand new (to us) Honda Element - on this giant hill stacked in with all these other cars.

Susan all set up to watch our bags while we run!

This is where Warrior Dash dropped the ball...MAJORLY!  We got in line to get our bibs/hats/shirt, it took almost 45 minutes, we couldn't believe it.  Usually there's NO ONE there that early, then we finally made it to the front of the line and were told all 3 of us were on the "master list" and we had to check with information.  We walked over to the information tent, where we found a line 2 times as long, and only 2 people working it.  After waiting there for another 45 minutes we finally had our gear to go run.  We got all suited up and headed off.

Conquering the Mud Mounds!

Conquering the Mud Mounds

The first basically mile had 1 Warrior Dash obstacle, and the rest was God's obstacle.  I'm not kidding when I say it was hilly.  They have it listed as "slightly hilly", I don't ever want to know what anything about slightly is.  There were parts where no one would have blamed you for getting on all fours it was that steep.

The Great Warrior Roast!

We had Stormin Normandy, the only obstacle where Ben uses his knee pads.  I didn't wear any, and now have cut up knees. The Mud Mounds, which absolutely destroyed me.  After running/walking those hills at the beginning I was already getting exhausted.  We had the trenches, which I've never done before, so that was awesome.  Apparently I was the only one to crawl through them, Ben and Doug just walked then ducked under the slats. Dead Man's Drop, where I was able to complete it this time (with a little help from Ben).  It wasn't slanted back like it was in Georgia so it was much more manageable.  Then we had the Warrior Wall, which I chickened out on, we were so muddy from the trenches and mounds that I didn't think I was strong enough to hold me on the slick ropes.  I did however conquer the Warrior Peak (A-frame) and I didn't use the wussy 2x4s they had nailed into one side!  We had the shock top obstacle, the barn, , and those horrible cargo tubes to climb through.  Those, as Ben said, are deceivingly difficult!  Goliath - which didn't have the GIGANTIC line like in Georgia so I completed it all, the Warrior Roast, and the Muddy Mayhem.

Goliath!

 I'm not sure exactly what happened at the end, Ben started playing and rolling all over me, I couldn't get my balance, somehow I twisted the holy crap out of my ankle.  Again!  I did the same thing in 2012.  So I limped probably the last .01 miles to the finish line.

At the Finish Line!

Warriors!

It was a great race course, if they could figure out the new system for registration it would have been perfect!

One thing I'm not sure if I mentioned in the other Warrior Dash post from Georgia in April, Warrior Dash has decided to offer FREE, yes FREE professional pictures of the race!  So far, we've had tremendous pictures, of course I keep an eye out for the photogs so I ham it up for them.  But this is another reason to run this race, most races set you up with marathonfoto.com which is NOT cheap!

We headed back to the hotel, cleaned up, and headed out to Schmitz for some German food with Ben's parents, sister and brother and law, and Doug and Susan.  After that, we were wiped out.  We've gotten to be so boring in our old age.........

Schmidt's!

Ben's Parents!

The whole crew for the sausage fest!

We headed back to Tennessee on Sunday morning, but not without stopping to fill up the car with various beers that aren't sold in Tennessee due to the ridiculous tax laws.  Hello Fat Head Bumbleberry!

The next day I begin the great task of cleaning out the warrior clothes.  Everyone has their own technique.  I prefer to let them stay in a garbage bag until I get home.  Keeping them wet if possible.  Some people prefer to dry them out then shake out the extra mud.  I bring all that sweet sweet mud home and lay everything out on the lawn chairs and spray it with the hose pipe.  Once I get as much as I can out, I wash it in the washing machine twice then dry it and usually that gets everything out. Most of the time the mud comes out of everything except whites.

It don't matter if you're black or white

Tap N' Run - Nashville

On the home stretch of our four races in four weeks for April!  We ran the Tap N' Run last Saturday.  It was nice to not be going out of town for the weekend!  We were able to hang around the house, work on projects and then head up to Nashville to run that afternoon.

 Obviously this race is in the afternoon.  Who wants to wake up to run and drink beer in the morning (other than my younger more "youthful exuberant" self as the academic probation adviser once called me in college).  The race was at 5:00, so we headed downtown around 3:00 to go to packet pickup at BB Kings.  We of course took the Jeep as it was a BEAUTIFUL day, but that also meant we forgot Ben's parking pass for his lot downtown.
No problem, I have this all figured out.  He can drop me off at BB Kings, I'll get the packets and he can go to the parking lot by Hooters and we'll meet there.  He drops me off, I go in get the packets, and head back out and realize due to the traffic he's not even a block from where he dropped me off.

I sprint...full speed to catch him before he turned on 3rd where I knew there wouldn't be any cars.  I was probably 5 feet from him, reaching for the door knob, out of breath so I couldn't holler, and he makes the turn and leaves me in the dust.....of course he got a huge kick of of this as I walked slowly to the car so we could grab lunch at SATCO. (yum!)

After we scarfed some tacos and cheese dip we headed back downtown to run.  The costumes.  Oh man everyone was in costume.  I wore a tie-dye shirt and a beer mug hat leftover from St. Patrick's day and I was under-dressed.  There was a man dressed as a baby, ninja turtles, Mario Kart, a couple of guys barefooted since they were hanging out in a bar downtown, heard about the race, signed up and ran it barefooted.

the starting corral

They were having issues with the sound, when I say issues, I mean ear-piercing feedback.  You'd think in Music City someone would be able to work a PA.

Starting Line Beer!

We got in the starting corral and were handed a beer - not a full beer, I think it's around 5 ounces.  They count us down and we chug and run, we ran down 2nd, up Broadway, turned on 3rd then headed towards the dreaded Pedestrian Bridge.  The degree of the arch of this bridge is insane, ESPECIALLY if you're trying to run it.  This is by no means a fast race, almost everyone jogs or walks it, roughly 99% of the people walk the bridge.  We got to the top of it, a Saturday evening in April means one thing to all high schoolers, Prom.  There was a group of people who obviously didn't check to see what was going on downtown as they headed to the bridge to take prom pictures.  A group of maybe 16 kids on one side of the bridge and their parents on the other side...and hundreds of runners between.  They tried to take advantage of a break in the runners for the obligatory "jumping picture" but they didn't account for Ben's ridiculous speed, as he ran, and jumped at the exact moment they did.  I'd love to see a copy of that picture.

Just a couple of Hulks

This Hulk knew the JT dance that was playing over the speaker so obviously she had to complete it.

Then at the bottom, another chug station.  We go around the stadium, back across the other bridge to Printer's Alley to another chug station, then back around to 2nd and are done.  It's only a 4K so it's certainly not that difficult.

Printer's Alley

This is the 2nd time we ran this.  We also did it in 2012.  Would we do it again?  Probably not.  Would we recommend it to people? Absolutely.

It's a great race, pretty well organized.  I wish they had more entertainment throughout the course, even if it's just speakers blasting music.  It was completely dead on the other side of the river so anything would have been nice.

We scooped up our awesome medals and headed to Bro's for ENTIRELY too much crawfish with the family.

Finish Line Medals and Beers!

Glow Run - Chattanooga, TN - 2014

I cannot believe we were in April before we did our first race this year.  Last year by this time we had already completed 5 races!

There are some races that I learn about on my various webpages that I simply MUST do.  Glow Run was one of them.  To my knowledge, they are the only glow run with medals, yes I'm a medal whore, and they are GIANT AND Glow in the Dark!

So I proceeded to start my campaign, emailing them multiple times to come to Nashville, citing that other races have multiple races in Nashville with a huge turnout.  Sadly, they didn't come to Nashville.  BUT they were 180 miles away in Chattanooga.  This had to happen.  Then I had to start my next campaign.  Convincing the hubs to let us drive to Chatt for a race.  We decided to drive down but only for the race.

The race started at 8:30, so we left Nashville at 3:30, met some friends for supper (word to the wise: running with a belly full of pimento cheese WILL come back to haunt you), and headed to the race.

It was awesome.  Very small.  Only 2000 runner/walkers.  They had pre-race zumba, free glow in the dark face painting, glow merch, and the brightest race shirts known to mankind.

The race was great, very well organized.  I HIGHLY recommend this race.  I'm glad too because I had been excited about it for quite a while!