Pain, Pain and More Pain.... It was fun too... Did I forget to mention the pain? I was so beaten up by mud and nets and dirt and Stairway to Heaven that wobbled 20 feet high, that I couldn't even bare the thought of getting on the computer to give you the down low on the mud.
I am supposed to be writing a book right now, but I am taking this short moment to share some pics that my mom took after we got done. Let me tell you, we all looked so pretty before the race. Oh and we didn't come in last. That is always a plus. Story goes like this...
We start off and there is a long stretch of running...(mostly walking for us, I felt bad for James.) It is James, Chris and me. I think it was 1.6 miles to the first obstacle, which was the Wall. It was about 6 or 7 feet tall. You have to climb it and go over. I did it! Wa hoo for me...first one down and no mud yet.
We get to the next obstacle 100 foot tunnel, cool. No problem, no mud yet. Slide right on through.
There there is the English channel. 100 yards of water and mud. That was fun because there wasn't much mud, but a lot of muddy water. Silly Chris walked in front of me with his white shirt and I decided that I had to take big hard steps. He got a little muddy. :-) That was fun. There were individuals that were coming by us the opposite way, a couple of them were being funny and "swimming" instead of walking in the thigh deep water. We were laughing at them.
Obstacle 3, um....there's the mud...ewwww. Can I back out now? It is thick and gross. Are you sure I can't back out. There is a line and I have to watch everyone go down and lay on their stomach for a Marine crawl under the wires. One by one...then it's my turn. EWWWWW...Did I already say that? Not only that, there was a drill sargent their yelling at everyone, threatening to send us all back to do it over if we don't get down. No thanks, stomach it is. Oh, yea, it's going straight down my shirt getting caught in my sports bra. That was fun.
In the midst of all that, there were a couple of water stops too...no cups. Wonderful!
Obstacle 4, log walk. No mud, thank you Lord! It was like walking across a log. No problem for me, I have great balance. Whew!
Obstacle 5, Mine field. It was basically like the Marine crawl above except for it was only 2 lanes, one going each direction and it was not as muddy...more like sticky mud. Still gross.
Obtacle 6, Cargo Nets...ever heard of Gladiators! It was a net up one side, thrown over the top of the bar on top then hanging down the other side. Kind of like a triangle. Yup, I climbed up about 15 feet to the top and got stuck. Couldn't get my leg over because I was looking at it swinging in front of me on the other side....James had to grab the bottom of the net and pull it straight to get my legs back under me. I got over and scooted on down and yes, I conquered a small portion of my fear of heights and I did the happy dance in front of about 100 folks standing in line on the other side and sang out loud, "I did it, I did it!" Yea for me... I heard a couple folks laugh, but I think it was James and Chris! Thanks guys for your support! :-)
Obstacle 7 - Hole to Hades... run down steep grass into concrete ravine, and back out the other side. The cheat sheet said steep, but they didn't lead me to believe that it was a trap, mice can get in, but they can't get out. Thank goodness my awesome husband could, because he helped pull me and Chris out! :-) Thanks babe!
Obstacle 8...Called the Quigley...I don't even remember this one, but it was a Marine crawl one too. I am sure it was muddy and gross...from here on out, I think they were all gross...
Obstacle 9 - The mud slide... Wa hoo! Got to bipass this one due to someone injured in the mud pit on the other side of the slide. Sorry dude who got hurt, but thank you.
Obstacle 10 - Slide for life....You climb probably 100 feet to the top of a moutain of dirt and slide down on plastic into a huge pit of water and mud. It reminded me of a waterslide, with dirt instead of water... math lesson for the day, water + dirt = mud ... in your shirts and shoes and ears and pants pockets and nails and nose and eyes...I think you get the picture. If you didn't have it everyone before this point, (which I did) you did now. Then you get to sludge out of it and try to climb the mud wall, not hill, to get out. Again, thank you to James for saving me from the pit of hell.
Obstacle 11 - Over n Unders - Imagine, 4 logs hanging about 3 inches above the water. In order to proceed through this, one must go over one log and under the next...whichever order it doesn't matter. I think I forgot to mention that there was a tv crew on the course filming for a tv show...well lucky me, they caught me on this one. My worst most embarassing one. Please God, let the edit crew cut me. I am not that cute... Anyway, I jump in and realize the water is deeper than I thought...it is just above my waist. I go under the first one, over the next, sort of, I kinda threw a leg up and pulled as hard as I could till I splashed over. Under the next one and the last one was a bit higher and lucky me, I get to over over it. I guess I did the math wrong and wasn't paying attention to the height. After a couple of tries, I got over it, camera spying me the whole time...then realized that I couldn't get a hold of anything to help me get out. The wall to this pool of mud was flat. I started to panic, since the camera was in my face my this time and the marine who happened to pick my lane offered to give me a leg up. I rolled out onto my back and got up in the cameras face and smiled really big. I was totally embarassed. Thank goodness for nice guys. James and Chris had come through on the opposite side of the course, so they were waiting on me.... probably they saw the camera and didn't want to be seen with me... just kidding guys!
Obstacle 12, it was supposed to be the tubes, but I don't remember them...
Obstacle 13 - Rope swing...I would call it the rope drag though. It was so muddy you couldn't hold on, you just slid right on down.
Obstacle 14 - The Stairway to Heaven. Actually it was a ladder from Hell. It was about 20 feet tall with the wooden 2x4 ladder rungs about 4 feet apart. The area you had to climb up with about 10 feet wide and each section had 4 areas. I headed for an open one and turned my fear of heights off by saying, don't think just do, don't think just do. I couldn't get my foot situated on the rung, so I decided to throw my knee up then stand up from there. That was how I got to the top. Once safely at the top, my feet strattling the ladder, my arms wrapped tightly around the top piece, I realized that there were other people also moving up and they were making it sway in the wind. I looked down and the only thing that would catch my fall were some small foam pads strewn about the ground. There was lots of open areas and I thought to myself, what if I hit there...it might hurt there. I came back to reality and the guy next to me was coaching his wife, "C'mon honey you can do it. We are almost there." I pretended he was James talking to me and I moved my other leg over and got down as quickly and safely as I could. Whew. When I got out of the way of the other participants, once again, I did a happy dance and threw a couple of jumps in, I did it, I did it... whew, I was still alive.
Obstacle 15 - Hurdles. Big logs, gotta go over them and they get higher as you go. I needed help on the last one, but I did those too. Did I ever tell you that boots are heavy when they are wet???
The last 3 obstacle were the same as we already have done, but on the way back, you are wet, cold, tired and muddy.
Obstacle 16 was the low crawl with all the mud and the mean drill sargent that was waiting for you to screw up so he could send you back. I was so tired by this time, I almost didn't care, almost. Most of the water was gone by that time, so it was sticky mud and sticky mud is hard to get your body to move through...did you know that.
Obstacle 17 was the tunnel. It was easier this time, because we were wet, you could just slide right on through.
Back to the English Channel. 100 yards of mud and water. It was so hard, I thought it would never end. James had booked it on ahead of us through it, but Chris and I could barely walk. I remembered thinking back to when we went through it the first time, there were people "swimming" through it. Now I know why and I felt bad for laughing. I was so tired, I wanted to cry, but we kept trudging through it.
Right on to obstacle 18. The Wall. This time, I was so tired, I didn't know if I could get my leg up to go over it. Thanks to one of the kids watching the obstacles...young Marines, he gave me a lift up to the first place my foot would stick and I made it over.
Now we just had to make it the rest of the way. James coaxed me into running by trying to beat a couple that was ahead of us. I thought he was talking about the one right in front, we beat them. He was talking about the couple who was in front of them. We almost made it.
I was so proud. I didn't throw up and I didn't cry. I wanted to, several times, but didn't.
My body is killing me now. I have pain in places I didn't know there was pain. I also have bruises in places that I didn't even know I got hurt. They are nasty and ugly. Mud did it. Next time I see mud, I am going to stay way away from it. It is mean and angry and takes out it's affliction on people like me. Stay away from it.
So, with our story being told, only from my perspective, by the way... here are some after pictures. The water bottles we are holding have beer in them, by the way. They had run out of cups. Our finish time was 2 hours and 20 minutes or something like that. There were lots of lines that we had to wait in... seriously. I'm not kidding. Seriously.
Enjoy the pics I will upload the before pics when I geth them from my mom.
Until we read again...
Chris, Steve, James and myself...see how pretty we are?
Um, not so pretty anymore...
We should have done this for our wedding...it would have been cheaper... :-)
