When we reached the official starting line, who I’ll assume is an ex-marine had us kneel down in the rain and spoke to us about the importance of helping each other out, that this was a challenge and not a race, and we paid our respects to current and past service men/woman. After an energetic speech, he gave us words of encouragement, we cheered in a hooRAH! x3 together and were on our way. As the cold rain dripped onto us we ran through the muddy path and almost immediately found ourselves waist deep in mud water in a small trench.
After another half mile of running we made it to “Kiss the Mud“. You basically fall to your stomach in an inch of water (because of the rain?) and mud and crawl under barbed wire. They started the course off easy. Just be careful not to lift your head or body up too far. We all got through this obstacle no problem and made our way to the next one.
Along the way we probably went through 1 or 2 trenches, some muddy terrain and made our way to the “Glory Blades“. This is similar to my feared Berlin Wall, except the 8 foot wood wall was at a 45 degree angle, so yes you literally had to pull yourself up without any foot assistance. Josh and I helped the ladies up, then he helped hoist me over where I pulled something in my left side back. Since my left foot is the side with the bunion, I think my entire left side of my body is somewhat messed up. I don’t know if this has something to do with my right side being the more dominant side in drumming (pedal and high hat hand) but I’m definitely off weighted in coordination and strength. I’m attempting to fix that this year, but it probably won’t be fixed in a weekend. Either way we all made it over, with some slight injuries from the crew, and josh was the man.
For the sake of not including them and I don’t remember exactly, every 1/4 mile (or so it seemed) there was another slight trench, where you’d walk 3 feet in waist deep water, get out then keep running. In addition every other 1/2 – 3/4 mile or so would have the extra ‘challenge’ of 30 lunges, if you liked leg cramps and 10 push ups because why not? I would usually do just 10 lunges each sign and all 10 push ups when we got to them. Assume these happen between each or every other obstacle.
The next obstacle was the electric eel. This freaked me out taking pictures last time, as randomly getting shocked by wires didn’t seem like a fun thing. This was similar to the ‘kiss the mud’ challenge, except in addition to crawling on your stomach underneath barbed wire there would be random electrical wires with 10,000 volts at the end of them. Of course you didn’t know which ones were live, so as you’re crawling in the mud your arm would get shocked and then your body would tense up. Or your back would get shocked and tighten for a brief moment or the worst possible one your head would get shocked. When my head was shocked it felt like I was hit in the head with a bowling ball and I paused for probably a second, but it was definitely a feeling I didn’t enjoy. It was over after about 6 different shocks and 50 feet* of crawling. We pulled the remaining teammates from the last 3 feet and shared the horror stories and where we got shocked. ‘My butt’s still numb’ was one humorous experience we heard from someone jogging past us.
At this point we might have reached a water station. Anytime we approached one of these we each drank 2 or 3 cups of water. It was so refreshing and definitely helped. They did a good job spacing these out.
With all the physical activity & running it tired us out. It sort of hit us all, but we weren’t going to let that get in our way. We continued on to the bear walk, where you’d walk on your hands and feet about 30 ft, slipping along the way in the mud and letting the blood rush to your head. We bear walked about 70% of the way, got up then jogged to the killa gorilla. This was really fun. You basically ran up the side of a muddy hill, then slid down on your butt. This I could get down with…
After this was the bale bonds. This was different than the picture. I’m assuming because of the rain they knocked them down? It was basically 5 foot tall hay bales spaced 20 feet apart. You had to latch on and jump over them. It wasn’t the hardest thing we did all day, but eventually jumping over 4 of these in a row would get to you. Not to mention the slippery mud leading up to the bale made it especially difficult to jump without falling.
Next was the boa constrictor. I initially enjoyed these stomach crawls, and by now I thought they were the rest that I needed. Similar to kiss the mud, you’d get down on your stomach and crawl through plastic tubing in 2 inches of water, to end up in 2 feet of water and then crawl up similar tubing. This messed with you psychologically because I was basically rubbing my arms on the inside edges of the pipe, with someone 2 feet in front of me and someone else coming right behind at probably the same distance. When the person in front of me or the person in front of them slowed down, you had to stop and wait inside the tube. Although claustrophobia is something I’ve experienced in some random tight spots, I was able to control my breathing and make it through OK.
After the last obstacle was where KK was feeling out of it. She didn’t think she could do it and she was getting annoyed with me when I was trying to get her to smile. I don’t blame her. I jogged up to josh so she can hang with her friends and he was feeling it too. It would’ve been nice to have some sugar snacks but after what we’d been through would they have made it? Now that I know it’s possible, maybe a sealed plastic baggie or something. there’s always next time..
This brought us to Hold Your Wood. Cute, right? Josh and I grabbed a 3.5/4 ft log and carried it over our left shoulder with him leading the way. Every minute or so we’d pick it up over our heads and switch shoulders when that side would get tired. About halfway through Josh asked me why we didn’t get a smaller one. We had a pretty good groove going with him leading the way. We had a steady walking pace, we’d say when we got sore then lifted it over our heads to the other side. The trail was littered with people holding it in front of them 3 to the side and having a hard time. I remember a guy and assumedly his girlfriend getting a little heated, him angrily asking her why she was walking to the side. We made it OK. This was about when Josh’s fair skin was getting red, so he applied mud to his neck and face to try to help him from getting burnt. He definitely got burnt, but hopefully this helped a little bit from what it could have been.
As we finished Hold Your Wood you could see artic enema just in the distance. This was my 2nd feared obstacle, after the eels, as I also had no interest jumping into a dumpster full of freezing cold water. Over the past few weeks off and on I’ve tried ‘cold shower therapy’ (suggested from a great blog) and it would usually take me a few breaths to actually catch my breath, and was nervous what might happen jumping into a pool that cold. The trailer with the words ‘Artic Enema’ mocked us for 2 more obstacles.
The next obstacle was the mud mile. Those 3 ft trenches we’ve been running through were just preparing us for this. this was 50 (100ft?) of waist deep mud water, with 2 foot mud hills for us to climb over. Lots of slipping and sliding was involved getting up and down those hills. There were also quite a bit of 7″ worms floating at the top of the water. At first they looked like a snake, but it didn’t bite anyone. Thankfully. After this we were basically covered up to our necks with mud water, with a few of us just above our mouths. This always freaked me out because no matter what water I’m in I always accidentally get some water in my mouth and considering these conditions I definitely didn’t want it to happen here. It’s been a few days, I hope I’m OK.
After a quick jog and a banana and water station, we were on our way to the Fire Walker. Although we didn’t have to walk on hot coals, this was a pretty cool obstacle. you’d jump over 1ft of burning fire, run 20 ft then jump over another foot of burning fire into a pool of mud water about 4 feet lower than where you were. Once in the water it was a quick 3 foot swim to the rope ladder where you’d climb yourself out. Thankfully none of us got burned, but it was very hot as you approached the fire. Duh, it was fire.
After this we ran around, did some lunges then ran up to my 2nd most feared obstacle, the ‘Artic Enema‘. When we approached it there were 3 dumpsters next to each other, with 2 people at each dumpster looking over, dropping fresh bags of ice into the brown water. We ran to the far right dumpster as there was no one else there. Josh jumped in first and although looked cold, swiftly got to the middle piece, swam under and exited. My turn. i jumped in as close as I could to the middle plank. My breathing basically stopped as I tried to catch my breath, then focus my mind to the task at hand. Once I caught my breath I held it again, swam under the middle plant then doggie paddled as quickly as possible to the wood ladder at the other end of the dumpster. I was paranoid I’d go into some kind of shock, or just not be able to move before I got out. Luckily I made it, climbed out of the dumpster and for the immediate future I had a chill. My underwear and shorts, shoes, shirt, etc were all covered in wet water, and of course we had no towel. I shook and tried to dry off like a dog. It eventually worked, but it gave me and us the boost we needed to jog to the next obstacle. Halfway…
To be Continued…
*all numbers are to the best of my recollection and could be more or less. I could have most likely assumed everything was much worse and magnified considering, but, this is what I felt/assumed.
Plants on the Run 