Alright, after a couple of days of recovery, let me fill you guys in on this obstacle race…Coach Crystal’s Barbarian Clan started out in good spirits:
Spirits high!
Crystal and I were also clowning:
Look at that gun! She was sad when her number finally washed off… she called it a badge of accomplishment.
Amid our high spirits, we began the Barbarian Challenge. After successfully getting over the junk cars obstacle, it was on to the electric crawl… You crawled under hanging wires, some of which were live. I was the only one to avoid all the live wires.
Then it was down a hill and into the creek… the exit from the creek was not well-marked so several of us out front continued down the creek bed until being alerted to turn around (about .25 mile I guess). Once we got back to the creek exit, we found it bottle-necked with people. The hill was so steep and muddy, it was almost impossible to climb without help. Basically, you pushed the butt in front of you and someone pushed yours to get over the slickest part… Haha.
There were a lot of huge hills. In fact, I found the terrain harder than any of the obstacles… I ended up on hands and feet on several them. There was the slick tarp obstacle, a balance over mud, a VERY difficult wall obstacle, a rope climb obstacle (no knots and slick = HARD), a lot of muddy crawls under the barbed wire, travel through a creek on slick rocks, through a culvert, and a weird crawl under a tarp, pitch black, with hay bales blocking your path (a maze I guess, but it was 15 degrees hotter under there and seemed like a ridiculous obstacle to save for last).
Finally, a race to the finish. While we didn’t intend it, our Barbarian Clan ended up finishing in two groups. Crystal and Jeremy finished together about nine minutes ahead of me and Brian. We didn’t run together, the rope climb just bunched everyone back up.
Overall, we finished 7th out of 35 Barbarian Clans which I thought was pretty good. (Most people ran individually and not in Clans). I finished with a time of 1:24. (the winner finished in :48 WOW, right?). So this race took me almost three times as long as my last Warrior Dash… and was at least three times as hard. I almost got sick (after the rope climb) and thought I was going to pass out on the last couple of hills and after the race (hills doesn’t do them justice… bluffs maybe? not quite vertical cliffs?) .
We weren’t as spry afterward:
I was staring off into nothingness… but I was proud of that medal!! It was earned!
But we bounced back once the endorphins kicked in:
We may have been delirious!!
Overall, it was an achievement. And I have the T-shirt… Not the one below! Crystal’s shirt will never be the same.
White?? Really??
I had a HRM before, but never one that counted your calories. This was such a great gift. Something about knowing the actual calories that I have burned in an exercise has made all the difference.
Coach Crystal's Padawan 