A sequence of events in Angie style:
-Friday, 4:30pm, I read an article my best friend sent me about people falling in love with mud runs.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45215162/ns/today-today_health/
-I read the paragraph in the article about a marathon runner who trained for the Warrior Dash and still got his butt kicked.
-I text Sarah Raccoon that I'm scared.
-I email my best friend asking her why the hell she sent this email!
-I read the next paragraph that says you don't actually have to train, just take the course as it comes, walk when you need to, you'll be fine. I feel better.
-I text Sarah Raccoon that the following paragraph says we're probably going to live.
-I post the article to my
facebook wall with the caption: "This article was a roller coaster of emotion. I'm going to die, oh phew, you can walk, uh no, I'm going to die. Leave no Ninja Raccoon behind! WE SHALL OVERCOME! WE WILL FINISH THIS RACE ALIVE SANS CRACKED VERTEBRAE! AS GOD IS MY WITNESS!!!!"
-My friend comments back that she loved her mud run, blown out knee and all.
-I comment on her comment, something along the lines of "
WTH? Are you crazy? Blown out knees..."
-Just before "bed," Warrior Dash posts pictures of the course on their
facebook wall.
-I lay awake all night in high anxiety. When I finally fall asleep between 4:30 and 5:30 am, I dream about the obstacles I saw in the pictures. The rope climb is haunting me.
-Saturday, 7:30am, I wake up and don my Ninja Raccoon shirt. I briefly consider sexy panties. I always feel empowered when I wear sexy panties. I need all the power I can get. I opt instead for panties that don't ride up (this ultimately proves to be a brilliant decision).
-8:30am, Roberta Raccoon arrives. When I open the door my eyes are wide open, like "HOLY
SHNIT." Roberta greets me with the same face. Good, she's scared
shitless too. I say, "WE'RE DOING THIS ROBERTA!" She says, "I got no sleep, I was up all night with anxiety." I explain that I was in the same boat. She asks why I didn't text or post on
fb. I say, "I DIDN'T WANT TO SCARE YOU!"
-Sarah Raccoon arrives with tacos, all hyped up and ready to go. Henceforth she is Raccoon Motivator. Sarah was never a cheerleader, and I think we can safely say she missed her calling.
-I give the girls their raccoon tails, and off we go!
-And we're back...I forgot my phone.
-AND WE'RE OFF!... again.
-We park and don our
raccoon tails. Seriously, these raccoon tails...THAT I CUT FROM MY DAUGHTER'S OLD PARKA AND SEWED MYSELF...are the piece
de resistance! I cannot stop laughing because they're cute and ridiculous at the same time.
-Sarah preps for the race by enjoying a Diet Coke and a smoke. We snap a picture and label it, "Sarah preps for the Dash. What up b*
tches? You wanna' piece of me." Something about running this race had me talking like
Carlito.
-Sarah's had her coke, Roberta arrived with coffee, I've had no liquid since 8pm Friday evening because of my
freakin' bladder and its now infamous limitations.
-Sarah's the first to pee. We have to stop on our way to registration. Ha ha! No
TP! We laugh and laugh at Sarah. A very kind woman offers us one of her tissues (clean).
-I hand the tissue to Sarah and her
ungrateful response is, "ONE
FREAKIN' TISSUE?!"
-I respond, "Hey! You'll take that tissue and be grateful and you owe this woman an apology when you get out!" Roberta and I laugh and laugh.
-Sarah gets out, thanks the woman graciously, and accepts the woman's offer of hand sanitizer.
-The penguin in line for the port-a-potty behind us compliments us on our Raccoon Ninja theme. That's high praise coming from a penguin. I suspect the penguin lied when he
signatured the item on the Warrior Dash waiver that says you pledge not to drink before the dash.
Mhm...I'm just guessing.
-We walk in, carefully avoiding the muddy people as they exit. Ironic.
-We get our materials and head back to the car.
-Roberta zips her key and $20 into the butt of her running pants. Best hooker pants ever. We joked that she just needs a pocket knife and she's set for a new part-time job.
-Sarah enjoys another smoke.
-I drink NOTHING.
-We tie our tracking chip onto our shoes and head to the starting line.
-Dashers, a panoramic: Lots of people in tutus. (Sarah wants a tutu next time, I'm on it. Brown and black raccoon ninja tutu.) Two girls dressed like Olivia Newton John in Let's Get Physical. Bananas. A group of guys wearing shirts that say, "So what if I had to be
resuscitated? I finished!" ...that's disconcerting. A very happy man in an over the head to toe, pink Nike
unitard. He looks like the sperm from that Woody Allen movie, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex. He's the embodiment of joy, and we fall in love with him instantly. Some Christmas trees. Moses...or maybe Jesus? Sarah asks and he says he's "T-Bone." Okay. Some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. A flock of
perty insects. We are asked several times how we came up with our brilliant Ninja Raccoon theme. The raccoons in my neighborhood are becoming famous.
-Despite the fact that I am liquid free, I still manage to pee four times before the race begins. Yes, I've seen a doctor. Some people are camels, some are frogs, it's just the way it is people.
-One minute until the race! We start jumping up and down. Fire is blowing out of the Start sign.
-AND THE RACE BEGINS!
-Slowly. There are hundreds of people in each wave and we're all crammed together at first.
-Okay, now we're off. Our goal was to jog at least until the first obstacle. Ya, no. That didn't happen.
-The first obstacle is the barricade breakdown (hurdle over 3 ft barricades, crawl under barbed wire). I HAVE NEVER SEEN SARAH SO PUMPED. This woman runs up to the first barricade, plants both hands, and clears it with a side leap. Roberta and I run up to the barricade, throw one leg over, then swing the other over, and hop down. (This accounts for my rather large thigh bruise.)
-Sarah attempts a different strategy on barricade two...and racks herself. Yes girls can rack themselves. (More bruising?)
-Obstacle one down, we high thirty and carry on.
-Obstacle two is road rage (junkyard cars and tires you must cross). This was my favorite. If zombies chase me over cars, I'm TOTALLY ready now.
-Obstacle three, a horizontal hike over an arching obstruction, is reached by crossing deep ravines and scaling rather steep inclines, BUT WE DO IT! We also conquer the obstacle (Because we're bad asses).
-Obstacle four was fun, and a bit harrowing. A teetering traverse that looked something like this: /\/\_/\/\. You had to walk it like a plank. Again, we killed it.
-Obstacle five wasn't on the Obstacle Map. It's a mud pit. Sarah says, "around it or through it?" I say, "Hello, it's a mud run. THROUGH IT." Sarah runs right through it, deterred only once by getting her foot stuck in the mud on top of another runner's foot that was stuck in the mud. Roberta takes two steps and is stuck like chuck. I take one and fall on my arse, yet still somehow managing to get both feet LOCKED in the mud. I struggle to move for a minute, but I'm laughing so hard I'm weak, because I'm watching Roberta fight the same struggle and IT. IS. HILARIOUS. You know I love to see human folly. This is like the San Andreas tar pits of human folly going on right before my eyes! I briefly thought I was going to pee my muddy pants, but I did not. I yell for Roberta to come back and help me because I'm stuck. She says, "You want me to go BACK!? Do you know how hard that's going to be?!" She comes back. I dislodge my foot WITH SHOE! Hooray! Take one step and fall into the same trap. For the next five minutes, Roberta and I repeat: take a step, get stuck, get unstuck...whilst Sarah yells from the
other side, "COME ON RACCOONS! YOU CAN DO IT!" We finally get out of the pit, but must now, completely lubed up with slick mud, climb a steep hill that is completely lubed up with slick mud. We try to crawl. NO. We try to walk. NO. I find a stick and attempt to use it like an ice pick. NO. I slither to the edge and find some footing. I have no idea how Roberta made it up. Sarah says she used her teeth.
-On our way to Obstacle six I make everyone stop for laugh break because I am still laughing so hard, I'm weak and can't breath. I take this opportunity to smear the girls' faces with mud...warrior style.
-I am now weighed down by 5-10 lbs. of mud. My pants are 6 inches longer than when I began and they would have already fallen off my body were it not for the draw string.
-More deep ravines with slick muddy shoes and we do a horizontal crossover on nets. Sarah and I get across
spidey style pretty quickly. While we wait for Roberta we talk to pink
unitard guy, who has stopped to root on his sister (lucky chick). He's from San Fransisco and came out just to support her. He has muddy hand prints on his chest. I ask if I can provide a complimentary pair on his arse. He says, "Heck ya!" And so I do.
-They don't last long because obstacle seven is another mud pit, followed by a wooden inclined wall you climb with rope.
-I'm reminded by Sarah that it is here we begin a ritual of booty shakin' whilst waiting for Roberta. Sarah says it was Soul Trainesque. I'm thinking more "To the window...to the wall." Because I dropped it low. This is also when Sarah starts compuslively high fiving everyone in the race. I freaking love Sarah.
-In this mud pit the mud is silkier than the mud in the other mud pit, which means it's slicker. I get through the mud pit faster and grab the lip of the wooden incline to hoist myself up to the wall. Then, on scary, slippery feet, I pull myself up the wall with the rope. Sarah's bad ass is the first up again, and again, she is at the top
cheerleading.
-On the way to obstacle eight is another couple of very deep ravines...on the same mud slicked slippery feet. I fall off the feet on to my butt and slide down on it. Sarah is yelling, "Sorta' sit and slide down on your feet." I try, nearly teeter forward onto my face and yell, "Shut up Sarah." In a joking laughing way. She laughs and yell back, "it worked for me." Roberta gets crashed into from behind, and all I hear is "watch out, SORRY!" and Roberta saying, "I think I just impaled my wrist with a stick." (This accounts for the scrape on Roberta's wrist.) On the
other side Roberta says the raccoon tail has to go because it's smacking her in the rump. More laughter as we realize that our raccoon tails now look like giant raccoon turds. I pin Roberta's raccoon turd to her sport bra strap in the back and away we go!
-Obstacle eight is called storming Normandy. Crawling under barbed wired and then low hung netting. I'm covered in leaves when I emerge, and in my mind I look like something between Swamp Thing and the boys from Revenge of The Nerds after the Alpha Betas tar and feather them.
-Intermittently throughout the dash Sarah informs us that her underwear are giving her a wedgie (I'm fine), and she thinks she may be bleeding.
-I think another mud pit is involved on the way to Obstacle nine. Obstacle nine is an army crawl through rocky trenches. This accounts for the numerous wounds on my legs.
-Home stretch.
-Was there an
obstacle involving crawling through thick mud with barbed wire over head? Ya, I don't know, I'm pretty much delirious at this point, and it's a good time to mention that the order of
obstacles above is my best guesstimate. There was so much physical exhaustion, pain, elation, and laughter along the way, I really can't recall with certainty.
-More running/walking and we reach Obstacle nine, which involves scaling 2x4's to a platform, then sliding down a fireman's pole. I am still SLICK with mud. I'm not going to lie, this mud is slick like a spa treatment, and I was kind of enjoying the sensation. But faced with sliding down a high pole greased for speed, I'm a bit worried. Sarah's up and down. I get up, tentatively reach for the pole, and wrap my body around it. I
briefly sort of "eek, eek" down like I was going be able to do this slowly, enjoyed the comfort that accompanied that, then slid down the pole so fast it shocked the shit out of me when I hit the ground. I stood there a second holding the pole...in shock...looking at Sarah. Then walked away dazed. Roberta's never slid down a pole. Brief pole sliding lesson from the Warrior staff and she joins us.
-Next we climb Obstacle ten, a vertical net wall. DONE.
-And now, the Obstacle of my nightmare. We scale a wall using only foot holds and a rope. ON TIRED ARMS. We go up the first link and think, "Hey, we can do this!" We go up the second link. It's on the third link, high off the ground, with no way down but cracked vertebrae and no way up but the strength we used up on the previous obstacles, that we briefly think, "We're gonna' die." And this becomes the proudest moment for all three Ninja Raccoons, because we hauled our asses up the last two links of the rope and over the wall. HELL TO THE YEAH.
-Obstacle twelve involves a tight rope over a small body of water. Check.
-The last obstacle is a swim through a muddy bog under barbed wire. Here again Sarah swims through like a fish. The woman in front of me kicks like we're in a pool (mud in the eyes and mouth) That's okay, I was thinking of exfoliating my teeth anyway. This water makes you crazy
buoyant. Roberta and I can't sink and can't reach the bottom. You can't kick your feet, so I doggy paddle. At one point I turn to Roberta and say, "what is this? Dead sea salts?"
-The FINISH line ahead, we hold hands and run across together! Ninja Raccoon Warriors!
-We are greeted with medallions, bananas, and my
bestie. I want to hug her, but I'm covered in mud.
-Our official results: time 1:13:45Overall (out of 3073 I think): Angie #2871, Sarah #2872, Roberta #2873. ... Age division: Women 35-39 (out of 452): Angie #421, Roberta #422. Women 30-34 (out of 647): Sarah #607
-We walk over to a water truck where we are essentially water boarded, but with absolute gratitude in our hearts. At one point they give a little too much attention to Roberta and she yells "stop, STOP!" I laugh and yell, "Shut up Roberta, you whiner, step out of line and stop ruining it for the rest of us!"
-We walk back to the car where I lose all modesty and completely disrobe and
rerobe in the middle of a busy parking lot. FYI, THINGS YOU NEED FOR A MUD RUN: Trash bags,
ziplock bags, Q-Tips,
Wipies, 1-2 large containers of water (preferably the ones with a
spicket), towels, a change of clothes...go with a dress if you can.
-We go back to the Warrior grounds and eat our turkey legs and beer like the warriors we are!
-I donate my shoes, the other two crazies attempt to salvage theirs.
-8pm Saturday night, I am SORE. Advil.
-8am Sunday morning, I am SORE. Advil.
BEST. EXPERIENCE. EVER. We are strongly considering making this an ongoing girl trip thing, as these mud runs occur in some pretty cool locations. Also, we are going to start doing more mud runs, obstacle races, 5ks etc. Because you have fun, you get fit, and you do
good. I invite you all to join us. I've had many requests from friends regarding the Ninja Raccoon t-shirts. Please feel free to purchase and wear the shirts in support of our journey to get fit, or TO JOIN US!
http://www.zazzle.com/ninja_raccoon_t_shirt-235320652810748983 . Please note, the shirts run extremely small. I'm currently wearing an L, and I had to purchase an XXL.
Here is the information regarding Warrior Dash. I highly recommend it. John has committed to joining us next year!
http://warriordash.com/index.php
CONGRATS TEAM NINJA RACCOON!!!!!!!! You were the best team a girl could ask for, and I'm proud to know ya'!
Note: Zoom in on all pictures and look close, Sarah managed to smile with a mouth full of mud in almost every photo opportunity. Also, I've found a name for Roberta. Raccoon Cautious. Sarah was Raccoon Motivator. No idea who I am. Raccoon Historian?
