Warrior Dash with MR. Heat advisory made it wicked hot to run in the afternoon, but we had fun in the hot mud anyway! This is the last year we'll do this warrior dash- the administrative part of this run just goes downhill every year. This year we had to wait in a line (in the sun and heat) for over an hour to pick up our packets. When we finally got to the front of the line, we saw that the lines were divided into all females on the left, males on the right. Someone should have mentioned that when we got into the line an hour before, because we were both on the left side. Who comes to pick up a packet with their spouse and then wants to wait in line for an hour alone? Then they had the male/female lines separated by last names. Hope you're on the right part of the line. Some of the packet workers were kind and help whoever got into their line. I saw one woman, who I'll call "Beverly," that when a woman and her husband got to the front of the line, she told the man he'd have to go to the back of the line for males (it's an hour wait) and that she wasn't going to help him. If he wanted help, he could get in the right line or just go ahead and see if someone else wanted to help him who hadn't been working all day. Really? This guy had been driving over 3 hours just to get to the race that morning (no packet pickup available the previous day) and she is going to get nasty like that with him? I will not throw my money at races that treat runners like this. It reminded me of the Rock & Roll folks that were too busy catering to the half marathon runners and all but left the marathon runners to fend for themselves at the finish line. I won't attend their races again either. They charge nearly $100 for race entry and need to use some of that money to buy a clue. After finally getting the packets, it was another 20 minute wait in the sun (again) to drop off the bags. They had drop off/pick up at the same place, and it was chaos. To my delight (NOT), Beverly had moved to the bag tent by the time we got to the front of the line. What is it with that woman? I wish I could have drown her in the mud pit!!! The race itself was lots of fun- always a good workout. They did a better job pacing out the obstacles so the back-ups we experiences last year weren't an issue. The mud pit was crazy at the end. It was really, really long and had really deep sticky mud. My foot got stuck at one point and I couldn't pull it out. My leg started cramping from me trying to rescue my foot. MR had to help me pull it out! It was a true obstacle! Some people lost their shoes in the pit. Which wasn't much of a loss if the shoes were just going to the donation pile, but a couple of folks lost the shoe with the timing chip in the laces. The chip is what you turn in to redeem for your free beer. So there were some unhappy sober campers at the end of the run. Luckily for MR, he had his chip and mine to keep him happy. We both got sunburned on our heads from standing in the afternoon sun in line for 90+ minutes. Good turkey legs and people watching when it was finished. On the car ride home the next day, we would see cars with orange mud all over the tailgates/door frames and we'd know where they'd been on Saturday!
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