This was advertised as a 9-12 mile run with obstacles that were designed by and tough as special forces selection activities. It was not either one of those things, but it was lots of fun. I also don't know how long it really took us, but the blog required me to put a time in the slot, so you get 3.
We arrived 90 minutes before our wave time and went to get our bibs, free bbq wrist band and free beer wrist band. We got our t-shirts too, but they only had large and xl. It burns me when I sign up for a certain size when I register and pay for a race and they don't have that size at the pick up site.
I chose to wear my $4 jeggins under my shorts to protect my knees from crawling scratches. I'd seen video of low crawling under barbed wire and wanted to be prepared for it. Here's a pix before the race: 
It was getting hot outside, and after we saw the first wave leave at 9:00, we decided to join the 9:30 wave and get a 30 min head start on the heat for our wave. Our team consisted of 4 people: Mr, MR, my neighbor, and Adams. Neighbor's hubby was there too, and he ended up running some of it with us, and taking photos the rest of the time. Here's the crew: 
We visited the giant blow up dragon with 2 slides before the run. It was soooo much fun. You get to climb up the dragon's back side and slide down it's throat & out of it's mouth, then try the second slide that runs backward & right along the first side. It was a definite high-light of the morning! After magic dragon time, we went to the starting line and we were off. The first obstacle was a cargo net up and down. There was a back up at the net and a little bit of a wait to get up. One girl was almost to the top and just stopped dead in her tracks... maybe a fear of heights? We had to go around her. Then there was lots of running on hills. It was at an atv park and we were running on all the little jumps that would be super fun with a dirt bike, but were tough to run. I was surprised that the course was very, very sandy. Like super dry, fine, beach sand. It was tough to run in. We had tires to jump through, and a big bunch of dirt mounds to go up & down on. At least 20 feet up & down, and super soft sandy soil. It was fun. There was a pile of round hay-bales stacked up like a q-bert game. The last one coming down the back side was not nice. I landed on it with both feet together at the same time, but someone had left a hole inside of it, and my right foot twisted & went into the hole. Some ugly pirate language flew out of my mouth, and I wondered if "game over" was blinking over my head. I walked for a while and then was able to run again, so we kept going. I found as long as I kept running, it was okay, but if I slowed down to walk or stopped, it hurt. That was one thing that kept me going. We went over trucks and cars, through a mud pit, through a pit of ice water (felt great on my ankle), through a huge mud pit where neighbor's shoe almost got sucked into the mud and left her shoe-less, over another huge hill, through the woods, and then we stopped at a huge pool of mud that was at the bottom of a 6 foot drop. We had to jump off the ledge and into the mud pool. Adams went first and when he jumped in, his head went under the water level. MR did a cannon-ball in (of course), and when I jumped in, my feet barely hit the bottom, and I was all the way under muddy water. It was nasty. Fun, and nice to get cooled off, but nasty!! Then we headed off for a long run through grasses, rocks, and moon-dusty trails. This is where neighbor's hubby started running with us in his jorts. I was glad he was with us when we got to mile 4 and had to push a full sized sedan through a field, around a cone, and back to the start. He pushed with the rest of us! We headed through to another obstacle where we had to run while carrying logs. We got to pick our own log. I went with a medium sized log. I saw the tiny one there and thought about Tony & said, "bring it!" Down another dusty, sandy path, around & through more woods, and then we got to swim across a little bit of water. It was amazingly wonderful to cool off in the water. Then we had to take wrist sling shots and each hit 2 out of the 4 paint balls onto the targets across the field. I had one of the paint balls burst in my hand.. crap. But our team managed, and we went on to more mud pits, barbed wire (with a mud pit under it, so no jeggins needed), hills, fields, more mud. At one point I fell in the mud pit and started laughing so hard I couldn't get up. Team mates had to come drag me out of the mud. The great part of the mud was it worked as a great sun-screen. And later a nice exfoliant! There was a huge dried up mud pit.. wondered where all the water had gone. It was supposed to be the 300 yard mud pit, but instead it was a dried up 300 yard pit. We got to do a tire flip across a field. Half the team flipped it down, the other half flipped it back. Then there was a short loop we had to run with a sand back thrown over our back. It felt super heavy to me, but MR says it's only 25 pounds. Whatever...I think it was 48 pounds. This was where the army kids kicked my butt. They're used to running with extra weight on their backs, and I am NOT. I nearly got run over by neighbor & her hubby. Tony let me down on this one :-) We had passed mile 6 about 15 minutes earlier, and we were looking for where to keep running, because we could see the finish line. It was supposed to be 9-12 miles so we knew there was still more ahead for us, but after asking the others who were at the showers we were next to, and after consulting the map, we realized we were at the end. There was only one more obstacle left...the burning hay bales, and then we were done. We couldn't figure out what had happened. Evidently the course wasn't what they'd said it would be. We weren't the only ones disappointed by the short-changed distance. The hay bales were burning on the sides of the trail. They made a lot of smoke, but I wasn't sure what their purpose was. At the Warrior Dash last year, we at least got to jump over the burning stuff. It was good to be finished, but I was a little let down that it wasn't as rigorous as it has been advertised as. We were certainly dirty hogs at the end. Here's some "after" photos: 
We showered off and got the free beverage offered to the "mature" runners. I'm not mature enough for those beverages and had to have a cup of water they'd poured out because gatorade was $3 a bottle. :-( The web site promoted that each runner would get a bbq pulled pork sandwich, a beverage, a free hug from a "hog girl." I chose to not get a beverage, I was relieved to not get a hug, but I was seriously let down when my pulled pork "bbq" turned into a choice of a hamburger or 2 hot dogs and a bag of chips. This is the south, and you do not dangle bbq in people's face and not deliver bbq. Some things are not negotiable. The employees were all yankees from up north, as was evident by their New York/Jersey accents and their blatent lack of respect for BBQ. If I knew who was responsible for the choice of food, I would have had someone walking the plank. That being said, I had a lot of fun. I would prefer doing this to running on the road any day. My neighbor feels differently. We'll just have to agree to disagree. I am looking forward to our Warrior Dash coming up later this month. I've done it before, and even though it's only 3 miles, the obstacles are super tough and really are more of a tough course than this one. I started p90x as a way to prepare for this race. I thought it was going to challenge me in ways I wasn't ready for. I see now that I didn't need to do the p90x, but I don't regret doing it. I've got 3 more weeks left to finish the program, and I'm going to see it through. However, I didn't do kenpo today because my ankle is sore. I'll try it tomorrow. If not, one day off won't be the end of the world.
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