“Warriors . . . . come out to plaaa-aaayyyy” -Luther
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Warrior Dash? More like the Warrior Crawl! I mean, am I right people?!?
No really, the Warrior Dash was a loooooong slow day. Let's go through it, shall we?
The Warrior Dash is one of the new-fangled obstacle-based races that seem to be popping up all over the place in the last year or so, like the Spartan Sprint, Ruckus, or Tough Mudder. I've been wanting to do one for awhile, and since Tough Mudder is almost 10 miles long and includes running up, down and all over Mt Snow, and since I enjoy being able to walk, my unprepped body decided to pass on that one. So it would have to be one of the shorter ones, and when Groupon had an offer for the Warrior Dash, well, my wallet made the choice for me.
12:00pm – I leave Brighton to head to Amesbury, with a short stop in Cambridge to pick up Ryan. The drive should be about an hour, and we're expected to get to the parking lot an hour before our 2:00 start time (that would be 1:00, for the timing-ly challenged).
The Warrior Dash takes place on both Saturday and Sunday. There's probably 25 or so total heats in which several hundred people head out once. Since we signed up so late, with the rest of the cheap-ass Grouponers, we got one of the last heats.
1:05 – We get off the highway 5 minutes later than we hoped, after having to take the semi-scenic route to avoid weekend construction. Plenty of time before our heat. 1.5 miles to the parking lot, where they'll have shuttle buses to the actual race.
2:05 – We park. The last 1.5 miles took and hour. Apparently, they thought it was a good idea to have just a single lane into the lot, despite the fact that upwards of 400 people are supposed to be running in the various heats that take place a mere 30 minutes apart. It was . . . not a good idea. Luckily for us, we may have caught the “good” traffic, as they at least had stopped charging $10 for parking, most likely after learning that forcing people into 1 lane into an enormous grass lot and then having to take the time to collect money and make change creates a GIANT CLUSTERFUCK OF IMPATIENT WARRIORS.
We meet up with Cindy and her boy Brian, and then mosey on over to the shuttle buses. We've already missed our scheduled heat, so why rush now?
2:45 – We finally get on a bus. For a race that should garner more testosterone-fueled energy than any other I've done, I'm already tired, beat, and am more looking forward to my soccer game later in the day than the race.
3:10 – After sitting at the pickup location for 10 minutes, driving the whole mile to the race, and then sitting just outside the parking lot for another 10, we finally get off the bus. My Hulk rage is nearly in baby-punching mode at this point.
3:30 – We get to the start of the race, about 90 minutes after we were scheduled to. Luckily, we catch the very last heat of the day. We hop to the front pre-starting-gun because I imagine that with the obstacles, the tight course, and the amount of . . . less-than-athletic people participating in this particular event, the course is going to resemble the aforementioned parking lot and be a giant clusterfuck of humanity
3:31 – After the initial obstacle, a giant hill to start the course, we hit the mud. There's a lot of it. A shit ton of it. I look forward to getting out of it and not having to worry about my footing on every single step I take.
3:45 - So much fucking mud! Thanks to the rain the day before, and the fact that we had the very last heat of a race filled weekend, the entire cross-country course is basically destroyed. I assume there was supposed to be mud involved at various points, but the 3+ mile course was literally 98% caked in mud 2”-12” deep. It's worthless to run up hills. Walking is just as fast but twice as efficient, and the inner engineer says “just take your time up these, champ.”
3:50 - At the halfway point of the race, I start to pass people from the heat 30 minutes prior to us that have decided to apply the walking-is-more-efficient theory to the entire course. At this point, both the words “warrior” and “dash” seem to have lost their meaning.
4:08 – I finish in about 38 minutes, with a pace near 12:30 per mile. As someone who now (sometimes begrudingly) considers himself a runner, I would be disgusted with that in a street race (the last race I ran was a 5 miler, and my pace was 7:31 for some relativity). But even after taking into account the obstacles the conditions, you can still throw all pace logic out the window.
At that point in the weekend, even the people overlooking the obstacles were in full-on “meh” mode. “Want to skip the rope climb wall? Whatever, I'm half-drunk already anyway.” And with a lack of personel, I'm not even sure what one obstacle was even supposed to be. It was a bunch of tires hanging from ropes. Were we supposed to swing between them? Dive through them? I'm so confused! . . . So we just ran by them. I can play the “meh” game too.
The fastest time on Saturday was apparently 22 minutes, while the fastest time Sunday was 25. I can only assume that time happened in heat #1, because by the time we got the dregs of the course, even Steve Prefontaine would have been running a 28 minute race at best while merrily cussing through woods (that's called named-dropping to appeal to the hardcore running crowd). It was brutal. But my time did put me in the top 5%, so I guess I had that going for me, which was nice.
4:10 – I get my 1 free beer. Anger at the course slowly begins to subside.
4:45 – After the rest of our little crew finishes up both the course and their adult beverages, we take a pre-wash photo . . .
Not shown - the lower 1/3 of our bodies totally caked in mud
get moderately cleaned up, and head out. Of course, heading out requires more lines and shuttle buses. Argh. Seriously, keep your babies away from me. They will be punched in a fit of rage, though with my upper body, theres a good chance they will come out unscathed.
5:15 – We finally get back to the parking lot. We finish off the beers that Cindy and Brian had smartly brought, and get the hell out of there, taking our Warrior medal, shirt and helmet with us (even the "helmet" was a bit of false advertising, as I think most real warriors would probably make their helmets with less stuffing).
6:15 – Get home. Sigh out loud at the thought of a 3 mile race taking over 6 hours out of my day.
So while the race was at times an enjoyable physical challenge, it didn't really compensate for the mental challenge to my patience (of which I have little). I would do a race like this again, but only under 1 of 2 conditions.
A – We get a heat on day #1, preferably early in the day. Better in-and-out access, and better course conditions.
or B – Someone else drives, and we bring enough road “sodas” to compensate for the aforementioned lack of patience.
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