…Scary proof.  Yup, that’s me, sporting some of my most flattering headgear, if you ask me.

This weekend, my husband and I and a few of our friends, competed in The Warrior Dash, a 3.24 mile trail run with 12 or so obstacles, the slogan of which is “The Craziest Frickin’ Day of Your Life.”  Well, I’m not so sure about that part – I am a stay-at-home mom after all, and things get puh-ret-y crazy around here.  Maybe if some of the obstacles had included running up some stairs with a two-year-old on your hip while a 5-year-old kept trying to trip you, or a dark tunnel (reminiscent of 3 a.m. in a baby’s room) where you are trying to avoid stepping on open poopy diapers…but all in all, it was definitely a super-fun, challenging, memorable day.

See, I’ve never done anything like this before.  Never went to youth camp and done a ropes course.  Never been to boot camp.  Never participated in a presidential fitness competition.  Even rope climbing in my high school P.E. class had been banned.  But I do love an adventure, and I figure everyone needs to crawl under barbed wire and hop over some walls every now and then.

So when Lukus told me about The Warrior Dash, I was thrilled.  I started training right away, and by “training”, I mean working out so hard on Monday mornings that I was too wiped out to work-out again until the following Monday.  But in between work-outs, I made sure to eat a lot of protein – I highly recommend chocolate-peanut butter pretzels.  And over all, I completely avoided learning anything about what the obstacles would be, knowing that I function better going into challenges totally blind (child-birthing for example:  we quit going to labor classes after one visit and I decided that what would happen would happen and I’d just follow directions.  It just works for me.)  I was prepared to be unprepared.

Except there was one thing I wasn’t prepared to be unprepared for – my good friend Hannah running with me.  See, Hannah’s tough as nails.  She’s in great shape and she’s very competitive (in a fun sort of way, not a jerk sort of way).  But she was signed up for a later heat than I was.  So I was very surprised and kinda nervous when all of a sudden, Hannah ran up to the starting line right next to me, and said she was going to run with me.  Oh dear, I knew I could never keep up with her, and I really didn’t want to kill myself trying, so I warned her that she might have to run without me.

When the flames burst to signal “Go!” Hannah shot ahead, and I started at what I like to call a “Zen warm-up pace”.  In other words, I’m slow.  Oh Lord, I was a hundred yards into the trail and I thought I might keel over.  People were passing me at disturbing rates.  I was sure they’d all have heart attacks and it would turn out to be a “tortoise versus the hare” victory.  Unfortunately, none of them did, and I dispelled the myth that “slow and steady wins the race.”  But that’s okay, because all I really cared about was finishing (hopefully NOT last).

I found Hannah cheerfully waiting for me at the first obstacle: 4-foot walls to hop over, intermittent with barbed wire to duck under.  Huh, not bad.  Next were a bunch of hanging tires to squeeze through.  Simple enough.  Then came a carpet of tires to knee-high through, followed by wrecked cars covered in mud to climb over.  I was still truckin’.  A smooth wood wall sloped against the hillside awaited us with a rope to climb up.  Fortunately, it wasn’t a very steep incline, so getting up the wall wasn’t a problem.  I was starting to feel like this was a little too easy.

But on the other side of that wall came the hills of Turkey Mountain.  Steep, rocky climbs that kept climbing and climbing and climbing.  Finally, we reached the half-way point which was commemorated with a horizontal cargo net crawl.  Then more hills.  I’m pretty good at just keeping on putting one foot in front of the other, but even these hills were making my legs feel like they were no longer attached to my body and I was simply dragging them behind me.  I began an internal chant of “My legs have to do, what I tell them to do.  My legs have to do, what I tell them to do” – part of my zen-ness (so long as you ignore the hyperventilating).

When the trail leveled out, there was a big, dirty pond waiting for us with several logs to somehow get over.  Hannah and I got into the chilly water together and discovered that it was quite refreshing after those sweaty climbs.  We fumbled around with the slippery, rolling logs, but we did get over them, and my big contribution to Hannah was yelling at her to keep her mouth shut when I noticed her spitting muddy water out of her mouth.  It’s all about the teamwork, folks.  When we pulled ourselves out, the mud in our tennis shoes felt like cement, and the cold water had tightened my muscles.  Immediately, there was a cargo net to climb over and down, and then IT was there:  the big rope climb.

The first rope climb wall had been at only a slight slope.  But this sheer wall was at about a 45 degree angle with only a rope to pull yourself up with.  Anyone who knows me knows that I have the upper body strength of Raggedy Ann, but my legs could probably snap the neck of a horse.  Okay, that second part is an exaggeration, but not the first.  I managed to get myself up the rope in spite of my slippery, muddy shoes, but the way I was holding the rope, I could not pull myself over the wall.  Hannah was already on the other side yelling “You can do it!”, but my hands were slipping.  She made it over to me and a very dramatic movie moment ensued:  I was gripping the rope with all my might, but my hands were slipping by the inch.  Hannah slammed her hand on the wooden beam to show me that I just needed to get my hand there.  I got my fingers to that spot, but it wasn’t enough to pull me up.  By now, Hannah was yelling, “Take my hand!  Take my hand!”  and I was shaking my head saying, “I can’t do it!  I can’t do it!”  I think I remember people looking at us thinking we were auditioning for some adventure film.  But I couldn’t hold on any longer, and I told Hannah I was going down to try again.  I held on to the rope and slid the 18 or so feet back down.  I got a good running start, made it high enough that Hannah grabbed my hand and flung me to the top of the wall.  Oh sweet victory!  That’s teamwork for ya: one person flings you over the wall when your strength is out and spares you the humiliation of not completing the race, and you tell the other person to keep their mouth shut so they don’t swallow mud – it was like Band of Brothers out there, I’m tellin’ ya.

Then it was on to a couple more climbs, some barbed wire crawling, and mud pool wading.  At last, there were two small fire jumps and the finish line, where Hannah linked her arm with mine and we crossed the line just under 57 minutes.  I had finished, I had finished under an hour, I had finished as not the last person, and I had managed to keep my viking helmet on the whole time too.  Sweet, muddy victory never tasted so good.  Especially since there were bananas at the end.

I must say, I highly recommend attempting something you’ve never done before without preparing for it whatsoever.  You might amaze yourself.  Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and it helps to have a friend who can fling you over walls and remind you to keep your mouth shut (even if mud isn’t involved).