Warrior Dash : 2011

There is this thing called The Warrior Dash. It's this event that travels around the nation- part obstacle corse, part race, part party. This year my mother, her friend, a friend of her friend, and I all "ran" it. They ran, I sadly wound up walking most of it. I highly recommend it. [registration for this year's Northern California event is still open as of this blog post!]



It's not unique and I can't actually claim that any of the obstacles were overly hard. It was a tough running course (very hilly) but that depends very much on your site. Despite the publicity photos, there seemed to be a lot of "normal" people there (as opposed to the ripped abs and hotties pictured). This made me happy and is a major factor in my encouragement for others to attend. It's as hard as you want it to be. No one is judging you, and everyone there had a great attitude- runners and staff alike.


Anything you wear is fine, be it simple running cloths, a half-assed costume, or all out. I found myself having a particularly splended time because I chose to run in a nice dress. My mother jokingly suggested "Mad Women" as a theme and I distorted that into "I want to dress like Betty Drapper!". Recieved several complements while running and it turns out the dress was semi practical-- not nearly as much though as the gloves. Biking gloves are the secret sause, let me tell you.


If you go to the site, it'll tell you all the obstacles. My summary of only a couple in short is:

Climbing over beat-up cars is exhilarating. I wish there had been rows and rows more.

The spring-boards were perfectly safe but *felt* thrilling and dangerous. I highly approve. I got giddy just thinking about how video-game like it felt to jump around on them.

The deadman's drop was dangerous. I did not like this (and only this) obstacle. I didn't need to see the person with the broken ankle to know it was a bad idea. Dropping isn't something you can do carefully, it was hard to "scale" this obstacle's challenge, which was bad.

The over-hurtle walls and under-barbwire segments was simple but very pleasing.

For some reason my mother was most challenged by the firemans' poles (a bit too far out for her to easily grab). They phased me not a bit, which is interesting. Everyone has their special weakness... what will yours be??

In the end, we all had a great time. Next year my mother and I want to go back with my sisters. I recommend it. It's a bit pricey (~$65?), but it was a well run event and only once a year. Definately go early (10:30 wave) on the first day though.

More photos of the event at my Flickr site.