Did Seattle's inaugural Hell Run (a Warrior Dash look-a-like, obstacle course race) this morning with Justin. It was a BLAST! Let's see if I can remember everything (I'm sure these are out of order)... 405N was randomly closed and we had to wait for the shuttle and in the huge gear check line so we were unfortunately kind of late. We sprinted over to the start as they were started and so we were in the back of a huge pack (500 runners per wave) which ended up being SO annoying for the first mile or so. You ran on trails and in a corn maze type thing so it was so narrow and congested that we were walking for some of the first mile. I made us sprint any time we could to get around as many people as we could so that made it interesting! Obstacle #1: The first of several mud pits. This one was the worst because it had all these slopes you had to get in and out of the mud and it was SO slippery and impossible for me to get out. Plus it was congested so people were falling on you and I was falling on other people so it was really funny but I also for a minute actually didn't think I would EVER be able to get out of the pit because I kept sliding back down the mud hill! Obstacle #2: Climbing over a big wall (20 feet?). You had to wait in a line to climb the wall because it was still congested at this point. There were slats for you to grab ahold of, but it was scary going over and coming back down!
Obstacle #3: The dreaded icy river. UGH SO COLD! We had to wade waist deep through the icy river for at least 10 minutes. I was like LET'S GO FASTER because I wanted to get out so bad, but since it was still congested the only way to get around was to go out in the current which I wasn't going to do. So I braved it, it was so cold! Obstacle #4: Climb under barbed wire. The wire was actually pretty high, probably for safety reason, so I was able to do a squat type thing under them (there were probably 10 to crawl under) - Justin's too tall so he had to crawl. Obstacle #5: Cross slippery beams across a mini stream. This was kind of scary, they were a good 4 feet above the ground and it would not have felt good if you fell! Obstacle #6: Another mud pit. So many mud pits to crawl through! All the mud was of varying consistency which was interesting! This one (the middle one) wasn't that bad. Obstacle #7: Vault 4 walls and crawl under 4 barbed wire walls. Justin was dominating those walls, he had this whole jump clean over thing basically going on, while I was all awkward and crawling and NOT fast, he dominated me on this part! Obstacle #8: Climb over boulders. We actually skipped this on accident because we thought they were just random rocks and there was a path carved into the dirt around them that we followed, but then a volunteer yelled at us for not climbing them so we climbed the last of them. Obstacle #9: Crawl through a dark tunnel, this was kind of stupid because it was like made out of cardboard boxes or something. Obstacle #10: Mud pit #3. When you came out of the dark tunnel though you fell into the worst of the 3 mud pits, where the mud just suctioned you in and wouldn't let go. Basically my whole legs from the knee down got suctioned in and I didn't think I was going to get out! Guess that's how dinosaur fossils got made?! This was the dirtiest of the mud, it was pretty much liquid manure, and there was LOTS of it. Seriously, you've never seen so much mud covering people before. Obstacle #11: Climb huge wall #2, this time with a rope. The insides of my wrists were sore the next day and this must be from this, it was kind of scary because using the rope makes you not very close to the wall, and you're pretty high (20 feet?)! Obstacle #12: Jump over a huge wall of fire. The fire was actually quite high! I hope they got a good picture of us (especially since we were late and then checked our bag so we have 0 pictures from the race). It was kind of scary! I had a blast, and I REALLY wanted to run the course again after we finished and would have if Justin hadn't been there! Then we finished, except Obstacle #13 involved waiting in a 40 minute line to wash off in freezing cold water and then shivering to death while waiting in another line to get our clean clothes back. BRRRR!! This would be better as as summer race, that's for sure! Most of the running part was on dirt, grass, or meadow (that was a
rolled ankle waiting to happen!) with a little bit of asphalt path since
it was through this Remlinger Farms where lots of people go to pick
pumpkins and such (there was even a cute little train that people were
riding!). Everyone there said it was better than Warrior Dash, I would definitely do it again, I had a blast. Only I would get there earlier and elbow my way to the front of the line. This type of race seems to attract a lot of non-runners so I think that made the congestion worse as well. We got sweet medals, CAPES, and tshirts!
| 