on warriors, freaks and idiots

After a week of nonstop rain came a lovely (almost rain free) week and perfect for the outdoors.

On Friday I drove south through a green Ohio to the area of hocking hills, the rest of this state is flat, but this area is hilly and a darker green compared to the rest.

33 people from the groups were supposed to run in the race from about 20-30 thousands runners. So I booked a place for 30 in a local Amish Dutch restaurant after being asked to organize. From the group only 2 people came, myself included. The restaurant arranged a private big room for us and it was just the two of us, kind of embarrassing, but the food was ok. I crashed in a cheap but clean motel. Next morning was race day, the town of Logan has a bunch of nice old houses and this event is the biggest in the town’s history but still the town looked empty, I don’t know where all the people went.

 

The parking was on a field that is planted in other seasons, and busses came to take us to the race grounds, in a very well organized event.

I came in, signed the waiver and took my signup packet. And went to the finish line to take a glance at some of the obstacles, the mud pit which seems easy, all you have to do is crawl under barbed wire and the fire jump. I noticed many people ran on the sides which has lower flames and decided to run in the middle, still not to high of flames, just higher.

 

Many people were dressed in cute/ weird/ strange/ original outfits , and I was not. It’s nice to act stupid every so often; there were Fred Flintstones, barbarian brides, the hulk, superman, bat man, luchinaros, gay outfits, Romans , flamingos and other sort of freaks. Many had painted faces, some face painter lent me a whole face painting kit and asked me to pass it forward when I am done. I dint have a mirror so I painted a green dot on my cheek surrounded by a blue circle surrounded by a green circle, not sure how it actually looked, and the other side of my face was all yellow, why, no reason. I also had the horned barbarian hat that they gave each of the racer. For this race I ran 3.5k , 3 times this week on the machine and felt good. This race was 5k, but I figured I will be alright , after not actually running since last year, idiotically optimistic of me. My race time was 10 am and the race began.

 

Too many people to run fast (not that I can run fast anyway over distance) but still the pack was too big and we walked a bit or would have trampled some runners, and very soon came THE hill. I hate hill, I need to find a flat hill. On the top of the hill it curved to form another hill, I half walked half ran the hill, and the breathing grew heavy , on the other side we had to go down a steeper slower part, cause you can sleep of sprain. Then came the 1^st obstacle. A gauntlet of tires, very easy, all you have to do is not get hit by the swinging tires. After that we had to jump over low walls and duck under wood beams, not hard but I was panting from the run and this affects my breathing, we kept running on the other side, on another small hill followed by the lake. This is actually a muddy pool, so I jumped straight in cannon ball style and ruined my horned barbarian hat, and dog swam/ walked to the other side, and going over some under water ropes, a fun obstacle, but I was drenched on the other side.

My horns were facing down and a group of runners remarked that to me so I said “I was in a pool”, I would encounter this group later. The next obstacle was the ire yard, you run over tiers and over cars, that was fun, different cars in varying levels of rust and decay. Another hill , downhill , up another hill, then to a section of ropes where you have to go over some and under others, more forest run, then came the tunnel. You had to crawl in a long dark tunnel with some gravel at the bottom, not hard but a slow obstacle, more downhill then came the cargo climb, over a very high nets, easy climb.

For me obstacles are easy, as a kid I climbed every tree and building in school easily and would do so often, now If I could run half as good as I climbed I could be a contender In such a race, unfortunately, my running sucks. The next obstacles were narrow beams to walk over, another easy one, followed by another walk in the river, cold but nice, but I was weary of my ankles since you can’t see the ground from the mud. The next one were more cargo next so you could walked on all fours which was slow or roll on them, which I did and passed some crawlers  but left me very dizzy when I reach the high rope climb wall,  I heard someone fell on that wall ( but I heard it after the race) , and I quickly climbed and went down the other side, almost over (and almost dead) I came to the fire jump , went to the middle and jumped over and went to the mud crawl. A deep heavy mud and crawling in it wasn’t easy, and I had no air at this point. My race numbers were torn a the cargo net roll and I held it in my hand, then I passed the mud and jogged to the finish line where I more than welcomed water and a banana, more details later, go to go, I will tell you about the idiot part soon (that was me…)