Muddy by Russ

Over the weekend I ran in the Warrior Dash.  It was wild!  I'm still finding mud in various places (well, dirt by this point) and muscle aches have only started to relent.  Those were not as bad as I was expecting, I was able to move relatively normally yesterday.  However, they are not going away very quickly either.

My back is definitely the worst of it.  That, I assume, is the result of me executing an obstacle rather poorly.  It was a simple pole slide and it was taller than I thought.  On the front side it looked to be about eight feet tall.  So I climbed up, sat down, and eased off the ledge.  While holding on to the pole, I let my body drop.  From there I was unable to regulate my speed.  I went from stationary to on the ground. 

The problem was, I didn't have my feet around the pole.  This meant that I landed flat footed and straight legged.  I felt every joint in my back crunch.  Needless to say it did not feel good, and did nothing to better my time (as I limped off to the next obstacle).  Whe I discribed it to Mr. B, he instructed me on how to properly slide down a pole and offered to demonstrate the next time we go to the park.  I have a very nice little boy.

The surprise was my shoulders.  When I left the race, they felt fine.  I wasn't until yesterday that they started to bother me.  It shouldn't have surprised me, considering all the obstacles that required upper body strength.

I relearned some important things for next year.  Hydration!  I about passed out at the first water station (at the half way point) because I wasn't properly hydrated.  The whole first half of the race was in the sun and the temp was easily in the 90's.  Water would have been a good thing.  Stupidity on my part.

Next.  Core muscles.  Swinging my legs over four foot high walls and hopping in and out of dumpsters requires better core conditioning than I had.  Note to self, do a fucking sit up or two before the next race.

Finally, Conditioning.  Just because you can do all 5k on a treadmill in the air conditioning don't mean squat.  Quite honestly, I knew that already, but I was too nice to my kids and dog when training.  I'd always get a few laps in at the track and it always look like more fun to play with the kids as apposed to do more laps.  When I was running with the dog, well, she is in worse shape than I am.  We'd get about a mile into it and she wouldn't run anymore.  She would try to pee on just about anything to get me to stop.  Which meant that I could only do a full route on the treadmill at the Y.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go pop some Tylenol.  Below are pics of me and my BIL before and after the race.