My VSG Journey - A Year of Change: Comfort zone

Last Saturday I did something that I am still having a hard time believing I did. Certainly the 225 pound me of 16 months ago would never had contemplated it (let alone actually do it). What is this "thing"? The Warrior Dash 2016. A 5K obstacle course that has you running, jumping, and climbing...through water, mud and FIRE! I signed up with my daughter and a few coworkers on a whim. My daughter was trying to put together a team and said "c'mon Mom - you could do this" and in a moment of insanity I said yes!

Fast forward to the day of the race...it was a cloudy cool morning and I have learned that no matter how cold you feel at the start of a race, you always end up wishing it was cooler! We started on the 9:30am wave and it was crowded and the excitement was high. I was talking with another woman in the starting area who had done the race the year before and she bolstered my courage by explaining some of the obstacles I would be encountering.

The race starts with a 1 mile cross country run and of course the evil race designers thought how fun it would be if half of that mile was uphill, and the other half through uneven sandy soil ! LOL The first obstacle was called "Trenches" and it required us to crawl through two sets of dirt tunnels that had been dug underground. I crawled as fast as I could (which wasn't very fast) all the while wondering if there were spiders in the tunnels! Then we came to our first climbing obstacle...and my first brush with death (or at least with a broken hip - LOL). This was a 6 foot wall with a cleat nailed halfway up to "help" you get over the wall. That was it...no step ladder...no rope...just this piece of wood. Well of course my other teammates (who are all in their 20's) hit the wall running and basically vaulted over. Then my daughter and a coworker named Jenna balanced on the cleat on the other side and, hanging over my side encouraged me to jump, and they would help me over. Easier said than done...but I managed to climb and get dragged to the top of the wall. So far so good I thought...wrong! I was supposed to turn around at the top of the wall so that I was going down the other side feet first...put my foot on the piece of wood halfway down to push off the wall and jump down. Sounded like a plan...but my foot missed the piece of wood, my arm came crashing down on the top of the wall (ouch) and I fell the 6 feet to the dirt, scraping the outside of my calf on the wood on the way down. Jenna was right there (I think she thought I was dead) asking if I was OK. I assured her that I had landed on my pride and just needed a minute. All the while I was thinking - crap, I have only reached obstacle #2 and already I am wounded! But I picked myself up and started running with them to the next obstacle.

After that, the rest of the race went well. I skipped one obstacle - a 30 foot wall climb with a rope - as I knew how much it hurt to fall 6 feet and didn't want to experience a fall from 30 feet! But other than that, I completed all the obstacles. We had a few more crawling obstacles, a couple of balance beam walks (complete with water spraying at you), a disgusting mud bog - mud hill up and over and under one, and a fire jump (which we all did holding hands and I was sure I was going to trip, fall, and cause us all to burn up). Before I knew it we were at the last two obstacles. First "Goliath"...a 30 foot wall climb followed by a 30 foot slide into a water hole (OMG I was terrified - see pic) and then a mud crawl under barbed wire to the finish line. We crawled out looking like creatures from the black lagoon!! What a race! Tired, happy, and strangely giddy we posed for a couple of pics before heading to the "Warrior Wash" to try and hose off the worst of it before the hour car ride home. I still can't quite believe I did it! Life is so different for me now...and I couldn't be happier!

Our Warrior team - before the race.