| 2019 Obstacles |
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And so, we sign up. Jeremy and girlfriend and Jessie (hoping medical issues should be ok) and yours truly who signed up for the multiple loop option to get miles in.
Well, 2 weeks before the race, we made the decision that Jessie can not participate in this. Sucks. It is what it is. I asked around and no bites. Enrique at ymca was a strong maybe but no. Same goes for Val. Joey was "I will think about it" but finally a no. Dan was an immediate YES! Apparently, he always wanted to do this but never had a chance. Nice! The best part for him was that it would cost him 10 bucks to transfer it over. If he would have signed up at that point, it would have been close to 100 bucks.
The plan was for me to start at the 9am Elite (yeah right) wave and for the other 3 to start at 9:15. I had to be back at 11 and so I decided to only do 1 loop and for us to take 2 cars as I didn't know how long it would take the kids. Dan was driving there himself. We got there early and walked around some. Jeremy's stomach was giving him issues and he finally agreed to use the indoor plumbing to take care of the issues. Smart!!!
I started. I was leapfrogging with this girl and a few guys. The girl, by the way, was awesome. We were running on road and trail and got to our first obstacle. It was a marine hurdle thing with a spinning log on top. I wasn't sure how to deal with it but the girl came, and almost flew over it, ending up with head down and legs up to a successdful feet first landing. WOW! Mine was a modified copy of what she did. Hers looked much better than mine in case you were wondering. Some more obstacles. The way this course is configured, you pretty much have about 1.5-2 miles of running with very limited amount of obstacles and then the obstacles are constantly on top of you. Climbing up the pyramid went fine and again was a treat to see the girl doing her flip over thing to the downstairs side. I am probably not doing this acrobatic maneauvar enough justice but hopefully you get that I was in awe of her.
Some interesting obstacles worth mentioning include: There was a tank of cold water with a net on top that you had to go through. The water was freezing and people were trying to go without commiting their head into it. I swam breasttroke through it. It wasn't that long but my approach was fast. Also, there was a balance beam over water. It was funny that just the night before, I tried walking a tightrope for the first time in my life and was able to do it which was awesome. I had no problem here. I did have problems unfortunatly with monkey bars kind of obstacles. I have a huge pain in the crook of my right elbow. I did catch up to awesome girl constantly and we went throught the mudpit together approaching the next obstacle together. I knew she would barrel through it and so I did too. Eventually the warped wall but I had some problems with it this year which was interesting. I finished.
Jessie and I walked together and found Elizabeth and then went to look for the other kids.
First up we saw Dan who was loving it. Had the biggest smile on his face. He told me he was passing people from other waves and thanked me for this.
We also saw Johnathon Schulman which was nice. I was commenting to Jessie that "that" guy looks just like Jeff when I realized it was Johnathon.
We then saw Jeremy and Min. They adopted a run-walk strategy which a lot of people did.
The water tank was still cold. The balance beam was interesting. On the way to them, the volunteer there told us that only 3 people fell into the brink. Now the count was 18 wet. Min was scared and started but eventually made it through crawling on all 4. Jeremy also had issues suprisingly. He took my suggestion and spider walked it using 2 beams: one for the arms and the other for the feet. A lot of people then started copying him after that. Nice.
They eventually finished holding hands. I then left and got to the YMCA with about a minute to go. After my shift, I checked my phone and to my horror... After I saw him, Dan got through a bunch more obstacles. He then finished another and landed on the apron. From there, he took a step down to the ground and twisted his ankle. Major pain but soldiered on with the pain to finish and then to medical. He apparently had Elizabeth paged who didn't hear him. They went to medical to get Jeremy a band-aid and missed Dan who also missed them. SUCKS... He had to wait a few hours until his sister could arive to get him and take him to Urgent Care. Meanwhile, if they would have connected, Elizabeth could have driven his car. Oh well. In any case, they thought he broke something.
The good news is that he didn't. Either a bad sprain or a pull or a twist and the fact that the first aid guys over tightened his bandage. His foot was colorful and swollen and it could all have been due to the over tightening. He's much better now.
That's it. Next year perhaps something else...