What do I get up for at the butt-crack of dawn? Wildlife and races. It used to be babies, and before that it was work. I loved my babies, and I enjoyed work (usually). But wildlife and races are more fun. All that to say, I got up at 5:30am and began my Super Fierce Warrior Woman preparation ritual.
Crazy hair: Check!
This involved three, small braids in my hair...painted purple. (The details of this qualify me for "Weird Neighbor of the Month" status, as I did this outside in the early dawn hours, and it involved a tiny mirror, purple hairspray paint, and paper towels.) Then I put my hair up. And then we added to the fierceness with feathers! Thanks, Amy! It really made the look complete.
Matching outfits: Check!
Amy, Toni, and I had matching blue shirts and black shorts. No warrior woman should be without coordinating outfits with her other warrior women friends.
Tats: Check!
Amy was kind enough to bring us very cool tattoos that we were able to affix around our highly muscled biceps. (We will not mention my highly flabby triceps.)
Face & Body Paint: Check!
We did way cool Celtic designs to add to our fierceness. First, we all did the Trinity Knot (Triquetra), because that's how we roll. Then we each chose from a few designs I'd picked: the Double Spiral (for balance), the Triskelion (for progress and competition), and the Triple Spiral (signifying the stages of a woman's life).
Sunscreen: Check!
Okay, okay, it's not exactly fierce, but it is necessary for redheads like me. I was fierce in the application of my sunscreen, though. SPF75 lotion with an additional sprayed on layer of SPF45.
After a few additional preparations, we were off! We enjoyed the scenic route, and we enjoyed the stares of the locals in the few places we stopped along the way.
Amy survived her first challenge of the day by maneuvering my van through the incredibly tight loop at the fairground field! But after we finally parked, we caught a bus which took us to our battleground. (Please note the liberal use of fierce terms in this blog post. It is necessary, I think, to convey the serious intensity that was upon the entire event.)
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| Mountain of muddy shoes being donated to charity |
I'll skip boring details like picking up our packets and checking our gear. I'll just say, for those who are reading this with a possible interest in participating next year, it was very well organized and easy to negotiate. Also on a practical note, bring whatever gear with you you'd like to the gear check-in. I'd recommend: water (I froze mine beforehand), wipes (antibacterial or diaper wipes or something!), change of clothes (maybe), flip-flops/sandals, garbage bags, and a towel. And, seriously, I was glad I brought goggles. Since I wear gas permeable contacts, which are easily dislodged, the goggles were quite handy in several of the challenges. I could have used a bandana or a headband to keep the sweat out of my eyes. (I type that all up to be helpful, hopefully, and to remind myself for next time.)
Okay, back to the battle! Booyah! The start of the race begins with the blast of a giant blowtorch. (Which is really hot, btw.) People are dressed in costume, such as suits and ties, prom dresses, tutus, fairy wings, and Greek warriors. I'm not sure how they do the race dressed that way, but they do.
So we began by running across the field, but we were quickly stopped as we entered the woods. The steep hill funneled us down to nearly single file. Now, this hill wasn't steeper than any hill at Sugarcreek; it's just that this hill went on forever. And ever. And you'd round the bend, and there it was still going ever upward and onward. I am glad to say that, while I walked it pretty slowly, I didn't stop at all.
This began our introduction to the mud, by the way. The trail was completely muddy. In fact, when we finally started heading downhill, it was so muddy (and steep) that we had to slide down either on our butts or on our hands and feet (like crabs). This up and down process seemed to continue for a long time. A very long time.
Eventually, though, we came to hanging tires that we had to navigate, and then afterwards short, wooden walls that we had to climb over. These walls were interspersed with barbed wires that we had to go under.
I think this was followed by more hills and more mud. Always mud.
(I want you all to know that the three of us tried to write down the order of the course on our way home that evening, and none of us was sure about it all! LOL! Talk about mind over matter! It's amazing what you can block out.)
Then we came to one of the most challenging obstacles. One I somehow missed on the website. One for which I was not prepared. And that may have been a good thing. (Really, ignorance is bliss sometimes.) It was a swimming challenge. Now, I've gone back to the website since then, and it says "waist-deep water." So, in any case, they lied. It was over-my-head deep, and it involved swimming through stinky, brown water and clambering over floating logs.
Well, as fierce as I am, I will admit to a few moments of straight-up panic here. The first time I realized my feet couldn't touch, I did a little internal freak out. I'm not a great swimmer; I'm not even a good swimmer. (I am, for the record, a champion floater, though.) But, short of having a major freak out and making the lifeguards come rescue me, what choice do you have but to keep going? So I did a very elegant mixture of doggy paddling and regular swimming, and I ended up working together with Big Burly Guy. Now, Big Burly Guy had taken our picture before the race, and we just happened to end up going through this challenge at the same time. And he was struggling, too! After the first two logs, we realized we were making it to the logs at the same time, and so we would count to 3 and push them down together, making it easier for both of us to get over them. So thanks, Big Burly Guy!
Right after the swimming/log challenge, it was the junkyard challenge. This involved getting across/through/over some trashed out cars and then walking/running through tires, several times. This wasn't too difficult; you just had to be careful where you walked and touched to avoid falling or getting cut.
Then it was the water station, which was supposed to be halfway through. By this time, the swimming challenge had made me feel not so good. I was wondering at that point if I'd be able to make it. My stomach was hurting, and all I wanted to do was to sit down and rest. (It was hot, too, by the way.)
But I kept going (slowly, unfortunately--so sorry to my fierce warrior women friends who would've finished the race much earlier, I'm sure, if they hadn't hung back with me). It was more hills after this. Up and down. And mud. At the top of one of the hills there was a bungee cord maze to go under and over. And then more steep hills (which involved mud and climbing and mud and sliding on butts). At the bottom of one of these hills was a tunnel.
Some people chose to crawl through the tunnel. We opted to scoot through on our butts again. (I mean, hey, they were already pretty muddy.) I think this was the better way. We didn't cut up our knees, and we were able to use the structure of the tunnels themselves to pull ourselves through the tunnel.
After the tunnel? Oh, you guessed it. More hills (up and down) and mud.
Then we came to another intimidating obstacle--the high cargo nets. For the record, I'm terrified of heights. Surprisingly, I did okay on this challenge, though. I did start to freak out a bit at the top when you have to switch from climbing up to climbing down. There was another warrior woman who sort of talked me through it. So thanks, Random Warrior Woman!
(I will also say that my estimate on the height of the cargo net is 80 feet. Easily.)
Right after the cargo net there were the slippery planks that we had to walk across. They angled up and down and narrowed as you went.
Then we came to another scary obstacle--the high wooden wall with ropes. This was a straight wall, about 100 feet high ( ;-) ), that we had to climb up using the rope. My main source of panic came at the top of the wall when I could not find any apparent way to climb down again. Was I supposed to take the rope with me to the other side? Was I supposed to plummet 100 feet to my death? Slowly I realized that I was supposed to just climb down attempting to use the crossbeams of the wall as best as I could. SCARY!
The obstacles were coming fast and furious now. And we ran from some of these points to the others. The next obstacle was the flat cargo nets. Some people tried to "crawl" over them. I had gotten a good tip to log-roll over them. This was a great technique, for the record. It doesn't work as well in practice, however, when others are in your path of rolling. (And it's still difficult to negotiate the high points connecting the different nets.) Toni, in particular, considered this obstacle her nemesis and called it the "Web of Torture."
Next was the stream run. By the way, this wasn't splashing through a few inches of water. This was waist-deep to chest-deep water that we had to run through.
We're nearing the end now, though! And the second to last obstacle was the fire jumping. I will admit that I went around the first line of fire. The flames were really high, and I wasn't sure I had enough energy (or coordination) to clear it. The race official guy did get me to jump over the next line of fire, though.
Finally, it was the mud pit crawl under barbed wire! It was insane.
And muddy.
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| Even Fierce Warrior Women blink sometimes while getting their pics taken, which is a bummer, since this would've been a good picture! |
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Even getting hosed off at the end was muddy. We had to walk across this entire field of inches-deep mud. Toni and Amy had a rather traumatic hosing off experience, as the guy only aimed the fire hose at their faces. I wore my goggles and went to the other guy. He was better about trying to hose off your body.
But I can't say any of us really got cleaned off well. We did our best anyway, and then spent some time walking around the, um...searches for the appropriate warrior term ...battlefield staging area. We were still looking fierce, fresh from the fight. Even our feathers still looked intimidating despite being slightly bedraggled.
(FYI, changing clothes in a port-a-potty in 85F weather is Not. Fun. We actually finished changing clothes at the van. There was hardly anyone around us at that point.)
To wrap up the day, we went to Dairy Queen to eat. Mmmm! And then we went to Hocking Hills State Park and took a mile hike to Old Man's Cave area, which is so beautiful!
We had such a fun time! We laughed and laughed! We had mud in places no one should ever have mud. We cheered each other on, and we were, in a word, FIERCE.
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