The Letter U: Warrior Dash fun :) (pic heavy)

Today was awesome. Travis and I ran the Warrior Dash. For those of you who don't know what this is, it's a 5k on crack. No really, it's a 5k with obstacles...like a cargo wall, a wall of fire, a mud pit with barbed wire, and a really dark, painful "tunnel" just to name a few. I asked Travis to do this with me for my birthday and for some reason he agreed. We woke up at 6am to drive to Logan, Ohio to run this race. Too bad we had horrible thunderstorms come through last night so we got about five hours of sleep :) Oh well :) We survived. Funny thing though, I run almost every day, I consider myself to be in pretty good shape, I even put myself through the torture of "hills" occassionally by running Diley Rd by my house. This road is deceptively flat when you're driving it. It rolls when you run it though. No amount of hill training that I would ever subject myself to could ever have prepared me for today. "One" of the obstacles was called Hell Hill. I hate hills and this obstacle was the one that I feared the most. It basically is the incline of all inclines and then you run to get the next obstacle, right? Wrong. The whole course was Hell Hill with obstacles grouped together throughout. Add to one gigantic perpetual hill the storms that came through last night and it was a hill covered in foot deep mud. There were times that I thought I may lose a shoe. This race was flipping AWESOME. Even for as sore and tired as I am right now (I hate hills) I am seriously glad Travis and I ran this race. And I have to say, I am so impressed with Travis. He barely trained and we finished in 46 minutes. No, we were nowhere near the fastest, but we also weren't the slowest. AND we ran with the same "group" the whole time who were easily 10 years younger. And Travis kept up with me, someone that runs almost daily....maybe I need to step up my training? :) :) :)

I also got to see my old college roommate today for a minute :) Dusty!!! We definitely need an Akron reunion :) It was great to see her and her husband!!! I hope they enjoyed the race as much as we did :)

Onto the pics...today is not about my photography abilities, it is about documenting a moment in time, with a cell phone :) No WAY was I taking my nice camera to a mud pit!!

1. Travis and I pre-race. This was taken pretty much when we arrived, by me :)

2. Second to last obstacle, the wall of fire. To me this didn't look nearly as scary from the sidelines. But it was definitely a taller flame than I had anticipated! We had to hurdle two walls of fire before diving into a mud bath and crawling army style under (actual) barbed wire to finish the race! I took this pic pre-race :)

3. Travis; pre-race, clean, and fully clothed :)

4. Anne; pre-race, clean, and fully clothed - Travis took this pic :)

5. Travis and Anne; post-race and post warrior wash off - why then are we still covered in mud?!?! Because it was worse before the wash off - but our cell phones were checked with our bag at the gear check :)

6. Anne; post-race; taken by Travis. We both threw out our shirts (don't worry, they were old shirts, we planned ahead) and Travis actually tossed his shorts when we got home! I run in mine regularly so I am hoping they're salvageable.

7. The shoe pile. After the race Warriors are invited to donate their disgusting shoes. Thank you, I think I will :) Travis ran in his old lawn shoes and I saved my old broke-down running shoes specifically for this race :)