2011 Warrior Dash Ohio

Sunday started bright and early for Scott and I as we got up to prepare ourselves for the first Ohio Warrior Dash weekend. For those that aren’t familiar with the Warrior Dash, I’ll explain briefly.  It’s a 3 mile trail race that has obstacles along the way.  The obstacles vary race to race, but to get an idea, think of like a military boot-camp style obstacle course.

There’s fire, water, ropes, and mud, all of which you have to make your way through in order to get to the finish.  Oh and barbed wire, you know, just for kicks.

For the first Ohio series this race was located in Logan, Ohio which is just south of Columbus in the Hocking Hills area.  As thousands and thousands of people descended on Logan this past weekend, I’m pretty sure it’s still trying to figure out what hit it.  Though I bet the cabin rentals got a huge upswing in reservations and aren’t complaining one bit about being invaded for the weekend.

Scott and I ran on Sunday with the 9:30am wave. We met friends of ours there and ran the course together.  This was Scott’s very first race! Way to start off with a bang, right?!

Unfortunately the only pictures I have are these pictures from the day after.  Booo!  I brought my point-n-shoot camera and took some lovely pictures of us before and some fabulous pics of us afterwards. However once back to the car I lost the camera and now it’s gone forever.  I put it on the roof while I changed and forgot about it. It was a Christmas present from Scott a few years ago and I’m really upset that it’s gone.

So this is all you get along with a recap of the race.  Sorry about that but I promise that you are way less bummed out than I am.  No pics from Scott’s first race ever? Okay, so bummed is a really light way of describing my mood.

Our race started right at 9:30am complete with fire being launched off of the start banner.  We crossed the start line over some rubber mats and Scott joked that those were our first obstacles.  I guess technically the first obstacle was this huge hill that we walked up for probably 10 minutes?  We were able to jog up it a good part of the way but then it got a little too muddy and jogging stopped.  Once we reached the top, we had to come back down and the hill was just as steep down as it was up.

After trying to navigate it carefully, I finally said “eff it”, sat down and slid the rest of the way down in the mud.  Scott was ahead of me and still very clean at this point so I did my best to make him less clean.

The trail was very very muddy.  The area got a ton of rain the night before so the trail was basically a mess.  It wasn’t safe to actually run it because it was hard to get traction with all the mud.  Walking carefully was the best that we could do and our whole group was walking.  Even walking was tricky and I fell twice.

The obstacles were spread apart and once you got to one, you were kind of happy not to be in mud any more.  I’m just going to list the obstacles that we did and I’ll try to list them in order but I can’t remember the exact order of things

A section of hanging tires that you had to navigate your way through.  This wasn’t hard at all but you did have to keep an eye out in case some jackhole tore through before you and pushed tires your way.  The woman in front of me caught a tire just in time before it knocked straight into her face.  You guessed it, some jackhole went through before her leaving the tires swinging like mad.

There was a section that had four walls, slightly taller than waist high that you had to jump/crawl over then a lower barbed wire wall that you had to go under.  Repeat about 4 times I think.

There was a small pond that had logs chained across it.  You had to get into the pond and swim your way across making sure to crawl over the logs.  This one was tricky because the water was deep so you were swimming and treading water to get to each log.  I didn’t even know there were logs in the water because it was so muddy and very wavy that I didn’t see them.  Scott was ahead of me and turned around yelling that I needed to becareful of the logs.  What? And then I got smacked with a log.

Oh.

The logs were only maybe 15 feet in length (fully guessing, I couldn’t see them very well), then the rest of it was chain attached to the side of the pond somewhere.  Where the chain connected to the log was a square metal plate that stuck out a bit. The idea was to push the log down into the water and swim over it.  They would immediately pop back up once they were cleared.  I thought I could go over the part where the chain was but I got caught up and the log popped back up before I could get over catching me in the right groin area with the square metal piece.

I figured out that you had to time the logs just right or you would get smacked.  I paired up with other people going across so we could all push the logs down together.  Once across I was finally able to catch back up with my friends!

We got to a section that had a bunch of old cards parked bumper to bumper in pairs of twos.  You had to either go through them or over them.  In between the pairs of cars were a bunch of old tires that you had to walk on or run across like how football players run tires.  I was so wet and slippery from the pond that I thought I was going to fall but I didn’t.  YaY!

I got to the end and went to catch up with everyone else, then SPLAT. I totally slipped in the mud and fell face first.  Umph!

Water stop! I grabbed water and was on my way.

Long muddy walk up a hill and then there was a bungee cord section. I was able to life the cords up and over my head.  One guy in front of me was weaving through them, going up and under and crawling.  Pfffftttt! Why crawl when you can just lift them over your head?  Goodness.

There was a box that was about 4 feet high and who knows how long.  We had to crawl through that and this is where my legs and knees got scraped up.

There was a huge hill that we had to down after that and it was way easier to slide your way down and that’s just what I did.  Down all the way!  Then we came up on a cargo net wall.  You climbed up, over, and then back down.  I have no idea how high the wall was but I can tell you that I wouldn’t have wanted to fall off of it.

Then there was a series of planks.  Up, across, down, up, and down again.  I took this super careful because my feet were so jam packed with mud that I had no traction.

After that was a wooden plank wall thing we had to climb down into a creek and wade our way through.  Then it was up another plank thing and on to the next obstacle!

This was a wall that had a rope on it that you climbed up and over, and down the other side.

We came up on some cargo nets again only this time we had to navigate them across instead of climbing them up and down.  Two sections and then a climb down.

We could hear music and knew we were on our way to the finish!

Running down the finish shoot you had to jump over fiery coals twice and then dive into the mud crawl.  You had to crawl this because you had to go under barbed wire.  Then that was it and you survived the Warrior Dash!

We were completely muddy from head to foot and that is no exaggeration.  It was such a great fun event though! We all went in with no expectations other than to finish and have a good time.  I did think we would be running from obstacle to obstacle but due to the mud that wasn’t the case at all, and that’s okay!  It was a great workout and challenge even without the running.

We hosed off with super cold water, donated our muddy shoes, and walked to the buses to take us back to the parking area.  We changed and headed back home.  I was doing okay after the race but on the way back home I was getting really tired and worn out.

After we got home it was all I could do to keep my eyes open and finally around 4ish, I gave in and settled down for a nap.  I slept for about 1/2 an hour but it did help a bit.  I was amazed that Scott wasn’t tired at all, considering we had to get up at 5am.  It eventually caught up with him though and by 9pm he was toast.  He went to bed at 10:30, which for someone who’s normal bedtime is somewhere around the 3am mark, you knew he was worn out!

I have one bruise on my right thigh, my groin area being sore from the log, and then scrapes and cuts on my knees, elbows, and one on my hand.  Not too shabby! I walked away from it in really great shape.

We had a great time and if it wasn’t for the missing camera, the day would have been perfect.  Would we do it again?

We’re already making plans.

How about you? You wanna become a warrior?

11 thoughts on “2011 Warrior Dash Ohio

  1. Nicole says:

    According to my Facebook feed, it seems that EVERYONE I know ran this over the weekend. I knew nothing about it, although the thought of getting dirty does not appeal to me, LOL. Looks like you got a super cool hat out of it, though. :)

  2. What a cool experience! It’s a good thing you documented the race here since you lost your camera! Great job to Scott for his first time, too!!

  3. You are a WARRIOR! :) That is so awesome! I remember doing my first mud run last year and LOVING it. Glad you were able to do it. And bummer about your camera, but I could totally picture everything you described.

    • Linzi, there’s a Mud Run and a Hell Run that is coming by this year. I’ve considered looking into those as well and see about doing them. Obstacles are fun!

  4. Dan was scrolling through Twitter (finally got him on there) and said – Did Andrea do the Warrior Dash? That’s the one I wanted to do! Ha, ha! I think he might be jealous. You rock, by the way. Sorry to hear about the camera. That’s a bummer. Hopefully the social media call outs will help you find it!

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