Warriors, come out and PLAY!

The Warrior Dash. Until a little over a year ago, I didn't know what it was either. Robert came to me and told me his brothers were asking him to do it with them. Seeing how I am always in favor doing ridiculous things together as adult siblings (see this post) I was in favor. Being the adventurous type, I decided to pack up my, then two year old and three month old, and tag along to watch. Robert had done a little research on this running series which turned out to be a 5k mud run, which many of the participants dressed up in ridiculous costumes  to trudge through the mud. Because we are who we are, Rob decided he wanted to throw together a costume as well. This is what he spent about a week and a half "throwing together"

Clever, I know, but consider the weather in March in South-
East Texas...It was hot and he STILL wore this!

I watched him as he came around the bend and towards the finish and leapt over rows of fire and then dove into the mud pit with barbed wire strung above it, forcing the participants to crawl through the mud on hands and knees, before crossing the finish line. I thought to myself as I watched all the people doing this, "I could do this, if I was in better shape"

  From that moment I decided that I would get off my lazy behind and stop accepting my post (not just one but TWO) baby body, and make it better.  So I started running. you may remember this post discussing my, then hatred for the activity. As time went on however, call it stockholm syndrome if you like, but I grew to accept it, like it, love it, and eventually, to need it! Thats right, I need to run in order to maintain my sanity these days! Well, throughout all that time, I always had the warrior dash in the back of my mind, and last saturday I finally got to see it through and run my very own warrior dash! I had one of the best times ever! It had been raining almost the entire week before, and got sunny for saturday so the course was EXTRA muddy, which was pretty awesome, except that a lot of the runners didn't know how to hold onto their shoes which got pulled of in the ankle-knee deep mud that covered 2/3rds of the course. For the record, my shoes stayed on the whole time, though I slipped and fell on the  wet mud, a number of times..

Because I can't pass up an opportunity to dress up for something, I made us district 12 tribute t-shirts, because I felt this was an appropriate place to pay homage to the Hunger Games. (These shirts will serve double duty as I will be wearing them to the midnight release of the movie as well, because, thats just how I roll)

The difference I find in myself from last year when Rob ran his first warrior dash and this year, is significant. I have re-gained my 'pre-baby' body and then some! Meaning I weigh less now than I did before I got pregnant with my first baby. Go me! (oh please, stop with all the applause, no no, I am just like any of you, stop chanting my name!)

Fortunately, my genius husband thought to buy a waterproof camera to carry along with us during the race to take pictures of the course that wasn't open to spectators. My family was set up near the end of the course and got a heap of pictures from there as well, so we have a TON of pics from this year.

So here are but a few of the fun things we did on our Dash of warriors!

Phase one: The still clean phase.

The getting ready to go phase.

The, getting used to the slick mud phase

The waist deep...

...ankle deep

And chest deep muddy water phase

the rope climbing phase (complete with hero stance)

The 'I'm not sure whats challenging about walking through
a 12 foot tunnel but I will go ahead and do it' phase

The, tires full of ankle deep mud phase

the, running over floating barrels phase.

the 'we do this TOGETHER' phase!

the, climbing up and over a wall phase.

The, climbing over the 20ft. tall cargo net phase

The jumping over fire phase!

The, doofus jump pose, phase

The, not so doofus-y jump pose phase.

The, crawling through mud and gravel, which tore up my
knees, phase.

The, covered in mud, and happy about it, phase.

The, Rob asking anyone if they want a hug, phase

The aftermath phase.

The lovely shades of purple, bruising all over my legs, phase.

We are totally doing it again next year, and dragging my family into it too!