Warrior Tough

This weekend thousands, and I mean thousands, of Washingtonians gathered in North Bend for the Warrior Dash. They came in all shapes, sizes and umm, costumes. Alice in Wonderland and the White Rabbit were there, Wonder Woman and Batman were in attendance, too. A man dressed in a full business suit clambered up walls while holding a brief case. There were people clad in warrior garb, ninja costumes, or barely clad at all. There was even a finish line wedding for one couple. The groom wearing a tuxedo T-shirt held the hand of his bride, who was dressed in a white tutu, as they leapt over fire and swam through the mud.

The Warrior Dash is a 3.5 mile event, with several obstacles including scaling vertical walls, crawling through trenches, climbing on junkyard cars, walking planks and so on. Oh and in between each obstacle competitors run through mud-lots of it.
How do I know all of this? Well, I was there. Yes, somehow this take-a-deep-breath-and-look-both-ways-three-times-before-crossing-street girl got talked into competing in an obstacle course like no other. Okay, let me be honest. No one talked me into it. I was the one who approached them. I have no idea what possessed me to gather a group of friends and willingly put myself in one uncomfortable situation after the next, but I have a feeling it would cost me many dollars and many hours on the therapy couch to find out.

There are certain things I knew about myself before the dash and certain things I found out while out on the obstacles. For example, it was only when I was twenty feet in the air, trying to figure out how to turn my body around so I could climb down the other side of the wall I just scaled, that I realized I was afraid of heights. I was also afraid of falling backward, landing on my back and dying, but I already knew I had that fear. As I sat atop the wall wondering whether they would take me down by fire truck or crane and how much the bill for that would be, several women I didn’t know started cheering for me from the ground. Apparently in my scared stupor I didn’t notice almost all of my friends had completed the climb and were willing me on from the other side. They soon had a chorus of people joining them in a supportive and genuine “You can do it Aimee!” I looked at my husband who was still waiting to take his turn. He was enthusiastically cheering me on, too. Before I knew it I was safely over the wall.

Later, I crawled on hands and knees across a series of slippery wooden planks, called the Teetering Traverse. I was impressed not by my strength or agility, but my ability to recall all 206 bones in the human body. The recollection went something like, if I fall to the left I’ll break my femur, but if I fall to the right I might just get a few phalanges, if I fall at a 25 degree angle I will spare my legs, but likely break a rib. By the time I had reached the clavicle in brace scenario I was dismounting the traverse holding the hand of an encouraging friend.

There were some obstacles I found fun, like jumping on old cars and crawling through dark trenches. I loved watching my more confident friends scale walls and jump hurdles like they were superheroes. Some of my favorite moments involved slinging mud, watching friends fall in the mud and slinging mud at said friends while they were falling in the mud.

After climbing yet another huge wall, this one made of cargo ropes, and jumping over two rows of fire we approached the finish. All we had to do was crawl through mud about two feet deep while ducking under some barbed wire. As I slid under the first row of barbed wire, nearly an hour and ten minutes after I had begun, I caught a glimpse of the finish line. That’s when I felt something. No, I wasn’t caught on the barbed wire, and no, my knee hadn’t hit a rock under the mud. What I felt was good old-fashioned pride. I had done it. I was a Warrior.