All pictures are taken from this site here and my bib number is 70248. We are still trying to decided which ones to purchase (they are so expensive!), so tell me which one is your favorite. A full description of the path and the obstacles is here.
Our heat time was at 1 o'clock, right at the sunniest part of the day. We were at the race early, so we were near the front of the pack waiting for the ready, set, go. Looking back, I think next time I will drift to the back of the starting line up to try and avoid the stampede coming out of the starting gate. We kept to our pace as it seemed like the 600 hundred people in our heat passed us, but we stuck with what worked for us.
The first obstacle in our path wasn't even an official obstacle. They just made us go down a steep muddy bank, wade through shin deep water, and climb up the muddy bank on the other side. What better way to kick off the first half mile then with soggy wet sneakers.
The Barricade Breakdown was fairly easy. I was tall enough to be able to hook my leg over and swing myself up, but I saw some of the shorter girls struggling a little more. Crawling under was easy too. The Teetering Traverse was more nerve wracking than I originally thought it would be. With everyone's muddy shoes passing over it the boards were rather slick. It took a couple deep breaths and a steady foot to cross it.
The Chaotic Crossover took more arm strength as we bear crawled across the cargo nets. My arms were a little shaky as we finished it, but we were still moving forward. The Trenches just broke stride for a little bit forcing us to crawl on hands and knees for a good twenty or so feet.
The Great Warrior Wall was tough. I would say hands down, if we hadn't been doing the p90x workouts for the last three months I would not have had the upper arm strength to pull myself up. It felt awesome to be able to climb it, but my real problem came when I had to swing over and climb down the other side. Deep breaths, hold on tight, don't look down, and Alan cheering me on got me over that wall.
We have two photos of us on Hell's Hill. Looking at the pictures doesn't do it justice; it was a lot steeper than the picture makes it out to be. What you can't see is the giant ditch at the bottom of each side of the hill. We ran up the first side, and I'll admit that I sat on my butt and slid down the other side.
Capsized Catamaran was next. There was a good sized pond to cross, and two feet from the bank was a drop-off that had me swimming. We hauled ourselves up onto the floating platform (Alan helped pull me up), and crawled over the crates to jump off the other side and swim to the bank. Dripping wet with heavy clothes and shoes, we rounded the corner to the first Muddy Mayhem.
In my mind, I think it was one of the hardest obstacles. It was basically two muddy hills that we had to climb and slide down the other side into the mush, and then climb out again. I don't know how they make mud like that, but it was about the consistency of wet cement. It was deep, slimy, and hard to get footing, and once you placed your foot, good luck getting it out with your shoe still on. There was such a bottleneck of people trying to get through it that everyone was falling over taking those around them with them. This one took a lot of arm strength to try and hold on to the slippery, mud caked rope and haul myself out.
But, it also yielded my most favorite picture of the race. There was a camera guy at the top of the last climb that caught this one of us.
Storming Normandy was just like the trenches, except lower to the ground. I'm pretty sure this is where all the scrapes on my legs came from, because I was so numb and covered with mud at this point that I couldn't feel much of anything.
The Cargo Climb physically wasn't that bad (thank you p90x!), but I had the same mental challenge trying to get over the top. There were more handholds, but the rope and my hands and feet were slick with mud. I was a little shaky getting off of it, but we were almost to the finish by now.
The Warrior Roast was fairly simple, it was just a matter of digging deep to find that last boost of energy to make the running leaps over the fires.
The last obstacle was the final Muddy Mayhem. This mud was more just muddy water, and it was almost a relief to sink down deep enough to crawl/float under the barbed wire.
We started this thing hand in hand, and that's how we ended it. Alan certainly could have out paced me and finished earlier, but he kept saying that we were in this together and that's how we are going to finish it. I couldn't have asked for a better partner.
