Father & Son's First Warrior Dash!
''That was the best hour of my life!''.....
Evan, 14, said that.
Up and at 'em at 5am. Ever try to pour a 14 year old into the truck? A bottle of water and we're off from the Atl burbs to the Blue Ridge mountains. This was his event, I tried to put it off and he read me the riot act. Now, we were looking at the sun breaking through the valleys of the rolling terrain of the foothills. Need breakfast? just grab a moonpie when we get gas.
When we show up at the parking lot, I can feel his nerves kicking in. E's recent diagnosis with Social Anxiety Disorder comes down to this...the only worse than having to jump in a group of people, make an idiot of yourself, and have everyone watch would be to jump into a group of people, do great, and have everyone want to give you props out in the open. He's been dealing with this stuff for a few years now. What we used to think was 'Painfully Shy', turned into 'Paralyzingly Shy' and hard to pull out of his dark room. Out of respect for your time, I'll leave out all of the details between, but it's been a hell of a roller coaster. And, now, here we are, watching the sunrise in the mountains about to do this 3-4 mile muddy trail run with obstacles. My training for this, no prob cuz of EN. Evan's? stadium steps for football practice.
Chose the 8am Sunday slot to keep him away from the Saturday revelry. It was cold & sunny. Great costumes everywhere, though I could've done without the old dude who was 50 lbs heavy and stuffed in a Too Small Hooters Outfit. When the flames (start gun!) fired, I was surprised to see how aggressive this kid was running, looked like a military march, but a pretty good clip. After about 5 minutes on the road, we hit the trails, started climbing muddy trails and looped around the edge of the lake, where the trail.....ended. Into the lake, running chest/neck deep to the other side, felt like those horses in the old westerns. E was laughing the whole way. Freakin' cold! hit the other side running/sloshing thru mud and had to carry on thru many obstacles like junk cars, chest high slippery walls with barbed wire surrounding it, cargo nets, 12ft high walls with just the rope, etc. I missed one of the walls to be hurdled, completely flying over it and landing fast first in the mud! And, another time, I looked back to see where E was and ran off the trail and into the woods! I was shocked at how ez he nailed all of these obstacles. And the run was tuff, too. VERY steep climbs, single trak stuff, with some kind of hose or water pouring downhill the whole time. Made it super slippery and the descents were a bit sketchy, too. We finished strong and together, hope the finishing pic comes out good.
It was cool to say the least.
Funny how a 30 minute fun run can mean more to me than completing IMAtlantis '08 in upstate New York.
Remember, its about the experience, not the event!
Comments
Joe
I did a Warrior Dash in NorCal last year. Was a blast. Favorite section: doing a head dive onto a muddy hill and sliding for like 40 yards down.
The 3' deep mud crawl right before the finish line killed me. That was frigging hard.
Glad you had fun and post some pics.
@ Joe - youngest....14. which happens to be the age requirement. We were going to do the Tough Mudder until we saw that you had to be 16 (maybe 18, don't recall exactly).