Ok, so after 8 weeks of training the “Day of the Dash” was finally here. Weeks of running trails on top of the normal gym routine was now going to pay off.
I committed to do this race with my friend, Jen Ferruggia from the gym who was more of a runner than I was and looking for some extra motivation. I began by running 5k on trails which turned into a run/walk with my legs locking up and lungs not exactly up to par. Even running on the treadmill and hitting the weights hard had not prepared me for this type of event. Well maybe, but I wanted to do it in a respectable time. A 5k of trails, mud and about 15 obstacles.
1st time out on the trail, 5k…..43 minutes, yikes. After 7-8 weeks of running 3 times a week on the same trail and same 5k route of hills, grass, gravel and mud, I got down to a respectable 26 minutes.
Race day- I hadn’t had the jitters since my days racing motorcycle (this was normal, since you can get killed on a speedway race track any day) But here I was with jitters anyway. Maybe adrenaline, but I was excited. My running partner was in the same wave, but she was going to run with her son & his girlfriend and give them some support & I was advised to go “full bore”
We line up early for our wave and had a fairly good spot to avoid any bottlenecking. 5 4 3 2 1….. Off…I started out going on a bit of a faster pace than I can usually do , but this extra push got me in front of the pack along with about 30 to 40 others who were “going for it” . Running at a decent clip , approaching obstacles : tires, swinging tires, running over junked cars, scaling rope walls, scaling walls, water hazards, crawling under barbed wire, hills, rocks etc. Now pretty much covered in mud and making my way to the last half mile of a twisted , knee deep mud path…. picking up the pace a little bit and scaling two final walls before making my leap over a couple of fire pits and dove into the swamp pit and crawled under the barbed wire as fast as I could and gave it my all to sprint to the finish line and went right for the water, only not to drink, just to rinse the mud out of my eyes. Hung around waited to cheer my friends on in the final leg before we all went over to get “the fire hose” and have most of the mud washed off and pick up a pint of completion beer before getting into some much needed dry and clean clothes and chucking our sneakers onto the giant pile of obliterated mud caked shoes.
So after 8 weeks of training it was a success and most of all it was a blast!
Cool event, great story ! Hard trail but looks like fun 🙂