Warrior Dash!!

Apparently this is going to just become my race diary blog!  Why?  Because I did a Warrior Dash yesterday and that is what you get to hear about.  I'm not going to write about my trip to visit Miranda or the long car drive to Arkansas.  Nope, that's going to have to wait.  Right now, you get to hear about my race!  Miranda had called me way back in September to ask if I wanted to come to Tulsa and do a Warrior Dash with her.  Um,... YEAH!  She talked our dad into doing it as well, but I think that might have been a ploy to get Mom to come down as well and babysit her boys, so she could run it with her hubby too.  Her plan backfired though, and she called me a few months ago to confess she wasn't going to be able to run it with me because she was suddenly in the process of procreating and somehow it seemed very wrong for a 19 week prego lady to be doing such an arduous thing.  I was so happy to hear of her impending joy that I was only a little disappointed she would miss the glory of dashing with us.

Yesterday was the day!  I took my trusty little camera which has taken crappy photos of all my other races, and sadly discovered it had a crack.  That rendered its waterproofness no longer so.  I took it with me anyway and snapped pictures till it suffered total immersion and died a wet death.  Let me share what I did get picture of!  (And if Miranda emails me any more, I'll post those too!)

 We signed up for the 11am heat and got there nice and early.  Good thing, because the line to park was lengthy and the walk was a ways.  Yeah, Superman.... He's with me!  I thought this was just too cute. Superman, pushing his stroller. (That's Dan, my sister's hubby.)

 Did I mention how excited I am that Miranda will be having more of these?!  She makes some really cute kids.

Dan is ready to fly!

Callie, Rylee and Camden, wearing our Warrior Helmets.  What's better than a race that gives you a challenge, and rewards you with a cool shirt, a cool helmet AND a medal?!!  Oh, and you get to jump over fire, too.  BEST race ever!

My brother in law was not the only one dressed up.  Check out this guy.

And these girls dressed as the Ninja Turtles.  Sorry, I couldn't get a better picture in the crowd.

The kilts were great too, but someone was disappointed to discover they were wearing shorts beneath their kilts.  I also liked the group wearing shirts that said, "I'd love to chat but I" ...then it had a picture of a mustache. And they all had mustaches painted on- even the girls.

Here is our group.  Me, my dad, my brother in law, Dan, and his friend.  We decided it would be more fun to stick together than to run it alone, and it was MUCH more fun together! 

We started out in a huge group, struggling to stay upright on a narrow, poorly cleared path while dodging other runners, rocks, mud, branches and other hazards. The first obstacle wasn't till we were nearly halfway done. I'm glad we got a mile and a half of running in before tackling the tough stuff.

 Well, unless they counted this super steep and muddy hill as the first obstacle.

 They did have some awesome, motivational signs on the route. This 2 parter was my favorite.  This was on the left side...... (It says "Making up for the other 364 days of the year.")

And this was on the right.  Awesome!

 Then we hit the obstacles.  One after the other.  I had thought I'd get a breather with the stops, but nope!  They made me more tired and out of breath!  So, here is number one- 8 feet up and you have to walk a balance beam.  Unfortunately, my brain was still on run mode and I'm a little afraid of heights!

 Dan went flying up like the Superman he was dressed as, with Dad right behind.

 I know, not a horribly narrow beam, till you look down, see a ditch of water 10 feet below and realize your eyes can't focus.  Never fear, I did not fall. But I did fear!

 Crawling in the mud.  There were 2 of this kind. Tough on the knees.

Walk up the narrow wood beam, down the narrow wood beam. Cross the balance beam. Climb over the wall while water dumps on you, cross the balance beam, over the second wall, up the beam and then down the beam.  Like all the obstacles, it wasn't horrible, but it was challenging, since it was wet and slippery. The guy on the beam next to me biffed it pretty good on the way down. Thankfully, I had some muscular partners to help me down the super-slippery beam.

Here's Dad, slogging through the series of mud hills.  You slopped your way up a hill of mud, then down into the mud pit, sloshed your way across the muddy water, then up the next mud hill.  There were about 5 hills and 3 muddy water pits to try to stay upright on.  You could tell who managed to stay on their feet and who slid down on their bums, from the muddy rear ends.

 Climb up, climb down.  Repeat. Dan made us look bad.

 Go Dad, Go!

After this was the water hole.  Wading through chest deep water, hauling yourself up onto the floating deck (that was well above your head and really tough to get up on!), and doing it all over again.  This is where I lost the camera.  I nearly lost my britches, as well, and I had a devil of a time getting out of that stupid water!  Apparently I need to lose some weight, since I had my Dad and a stranger trying to pull me up from the top and it took me 4 tries to get out onto the floating platform.  I admit I might have gotten out faster if I hadn't been holding the camera and trying to keep my pants on.  I bashed my leg pretty good on that one and have a spectacular bruise on my thigh from it.  But I digress.  The point was, I had to put the camera in my pocket, which was well under water and it got wet and kicked the bucket.  So no more course photos.  

It was brutal though.  The last hill about did me in.  It was hot.  It was muggy.  The course had too many hills and rough terrain. And I had rocks in my soggy shoes.  On the plus side, kudos to Warrior Dash.  They had 4 water stations (yes, in a 5K race!) to keep you hydrated.

 Leaping the fire at the end.  Way cool!

 Here we are, the last, glorious sprint to the end!  The finish is in sight, we see the cheering crowd, we're ready to high five our screaming children, and loving the chants.

Then we realize, there is one more thing to go.  Ug.  A mud crawl under barb wire. Yep, you have to get chin deep in mud.  Note that my shirt is white and my pants are hideous green.

 Yeah, I don't have photo editing software on my laptop.  But here I am after the mud swim, a uniform mud brown.

 Whoo-hoo for my dad!  He was a rock star! He sure looks pooped.  I know I was!

See the water behind us?  That was where we got to rinse off the mud.  I know, no shower, just a muddy pond.  Best part?  The cow pies on the shore.  Still, we were clean-er.  And it was muddy enough that Dan could wriggle out of his hot, gross Superman onesie and put his shorts back on without embarrassing himself. Anyway, here are the 4 of us- Race done, finished with the rinse off, and ready to show off our medals.

And a group shot under the Warrior Dash banner.  Yeah, we pretty much rock!

My takeaway:  It was a fun race.  It was really hard and challenging for me.  The hills were a killer and even though I have no problem running a 10K, doing a 5K with huge hills and tough obstacles was HARD.  The humidity and heat didn't help.  I'm glad I did it.  I would do it again.  It was a lot of fun to run with my dad and brother in law. Definitely more fun to run with friends.

Color me Rad

I know, suddenly EVERYONE is doing a Color Run, and I did one today!  I signed up when the groupon had it for a great price a few months ago, and my friend Marlie was bugging me to do it with her.  I figured that if we were going to be walking most of it, I could take Callie with me, since kids 7 and under were free.  Callie thought this was a fabulous idea and she was very excited about it.  

Color Me Rad was the name of our race and it was more fun than I expected.

You are suppose to wear a white shirt, which was incredibly difficult for me to find.  But I did find one and here's me and Callie, with pristine white shirts!

 Packing in at the starting line.  We'd signed up for the first wave at 9am.  None of our other friends wanted to go that early, so it was just Callie, me and my friend Marlie.

Marlie and me at the start. 

Callie rocking the shades.  The race packet included a shirt (which oddly enough was a blue shirt!), some temporary tattoos, and these awesome sunglasses. 

Showing off the white shirts. 

 And we're off!  Callie wanted to run and run.  I'd have run the whole thing, but Marlie isn't a runner, and I knew Callie couldn't run a whole 3 miles.  So we mostly walked it.  But started strong!

The first Color Storm station. 

Callie was disappointed she didn't have more color. 

Blazing through the pink Color Station. 

Definitely have more color now! 

Is it a New Orleans thing?  Dan thinks it is.  Do other races have folks who dress up to run?  

We saw this this guy on the course and he looked like he had a good time. 

At the end of the race, and Callie still wants more color! 

Yeah, that might be enough color! 

This was the crowd at the end.  The DJs were tossing loot into the crowd between the tossing of color bombs.  Callie really really wanted them to throw her something, but you can see the problem here- she's a little girl surrounded by tall people with long arms.  Callie was bitterly disappointed to not get anything and it about ruined her day. 

Throwing the color bombs! 

Every 10 minutes or so, they would count down and everyone would release the color and scream and jump up and down.  Callie enjoyed it a lot.  I prefer to breathe, so I stayed back after the first one. You can see Callie there on the lower right.

Callie took this photo for me, but she was grumpy about the whole no-loot thing, so this was all I got from her.  See how colorful I am?! 

This picture does not do her justice!  Her hair was quite orange!  And there was a bit of blue and green on the other side.

You can't see my color goatee, but I had one.  I discovered blue boogers later as well.  Fun stuff. 

 My shoes were well colored too.  Yikes.  And my skort- well, it just looked dirty.

My trophies!  Colorful shoes and shirt.

I made Callie shake her hair out before getting in the car.  You can't see the cloud of color coming off her really well, but it was very much there!

Consensus:  It was more fun than I expected it to be.  The volunteers were all very friendly and great.  At the end of the race, they give you a color packet, and when Callie went back to trade for a different color, the lady there stuffed 5 packets into her hand.  The color stations were short enough  you could hold your breath through it, but you still inhaled a lot of colored cornstarch over the course.  Wearing a hat and sunglasses kept my eyes pretty well protected, and I had no issues with my contacts.  My hands became green and blue pretty quickly though and I ran out of places to wipe anything on.  I carried my little waterproof camera on the run, and while the quality of picture isn't great, it was still a lot of fun.

They do not time the race.  They did not check that you were in the correct time group.   They didn't offer any snacks afterwards.  Fortunately, they did offer water and a lot of fun!  I was pretty impressed as well with the DJ at the end.  He directed people to a certain lady and said she was handing out trash bags, and anyone who brought a full bag to the merchandise tent would get free stuff.  The bags were gone in a flash and folks started picking up trash.  What a great idea!

We had brought a bunch of towels, but didn't need most of them.  I changed clothes in the parking lot before getting in the car.  I also brought sandals to change into, and was really glad I did.  I lucked out with the discovery of a leftover pack of wet wipes in the car and those were the best thing ever!  I had color caked on my arms, legs and face that the wipes took care of.  I suppose towels would have worked too.

Would I do it again?  I would.  It was fun to do with Callie, but it would have been fun to run with friends as well.  I am so glad I took Callie.  We had a good time.

Before and After

I told Marian I  was planning to get my hair trimmed.  She said she wanted a hair cut as well.  Her hair was really long and she has loved having it long.  I think the heat here has been getting to her.  She absolutely must have it in a ponytail.  The first thing in the morning after she gets up is to start nagging me to put her hair up, and it is always in her pony.  She wanted less hair so she'd be less hot.  I asked if she was sure, and she was, so off it came.

Her trademark ponytail. 

What it looked like down, which no one ever saw because it is always in the ponytail.

All chopped off! 

 Big difference!

That is about 8 inches of hair there! 

And this is me.  I have not had my hair cut in nearly 2 years.  I haven't even had a trim since we moved almost 2 years ago.  So I went to the salon that had done Delaney's hair last year and said, do something!  I let them talk me into color, which I have never, ever done.  I'm getting old and the gray hairs are starting to make me self conscious, so I thought, why not?  

Well, I know why not.  I can't believe how much time and money I spent on my hair!  It is hair, for crying out loud!  Sure, I love it, but sheesh.  It is going to keep growing and graying, and I'm so not spending that kind of money regularly on my hair. Besides, how silly is it to color my hair its same color?!  Sure, I know it is to cover the gray, but most of my hair is still brown, so I'm coloring most of my hair to hide the few gray?  Hmmmmm.  So, this is a one time deal.

It feels like it is really dark. It is definitely darker than my natural color.   I'm not sure I like the color (good thing, since I'm not going to do it again!), but I love the cut!

 Love my girly too!

Boston Trip!

Dan has gotten to do a little bit of traveling for work, and he thought it would be great to take Joshua along with him on a recent trip to Boston.  So they took off for a week, and went to see the sights.  They did a lot of touristy things and visited all the historical stuff that Dan likes.  Joshua said he liked the Salem Witch Museum the best.    Dan did a great job of taking pictures, although he did not appear in any of them.

Sadly, they did not take a picture of something I thought was awesome.  Joshua said they went to the movies, and at the base theater, there were 2 doors to get in.  One was labeled "Team Edward" and the other, "Team Jacob".  

I didn't get to go on the trip, so I'm not sure what all the pictures are of.  Perhaps I'll have Joshua or Dan sit down and caption them, but don't hold your breath!  (I am humbly corrected.  Dan has captioned the photos for you!)

William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony.  Look it up!

Interpretive Art.  Don't you feel uplifted?

We looked for this place hungry for pie, but we settled for pizza.

We walked for several hours on the Freedom Trail in Boston so I figured Joshua earned this overpriced serving of Gelato.

This is the site of the 25 minute presentation about the Salem Witch hysteria.  Lots of mannequins and good narration. Totally worth it!

The spire is the monument for Bunker Hill and the USS Constitution is the old ship with the sails.

This monument is at the North Bridge at Concord better known as the site for the "shot heard round the world."

Still at the North Bridge.

This 38.5 foot polished shaft of granite in Sharon, VT marks the birthplace of the Prophet Joseph Smith.