The trip to Warrior Dash New England started Friday after work. My mother in law and I drove up to Crystal’s work, so we could leave directly from there, saving about 2 hours travel time. (One hour for Crystal to drive home, and then an hour to get back to Crystal’s work.) So after waiting for about an hour for Crystal to get out of work, we got gas, and we were on our way to Amesbury, Ma. For some reason, our GPS took us through Boston. The traffic wasn’t too bad considering it was after 6 on a Friday night. Thankfully there was no sporting events happening in Boston to slow us down.

Plus I got to drive through the Big Dig. I really like tunnels for some reason. Crystal on the other hand, doesn’t. So she was a little nervous about them. The next time we go through Boston, I really want to be a passenger, so I can look around.

With a quick pit stop to use a bathroom, we were back on the road and making pretty good time. The hotel that we were staying at was *right* off of I-95 so we didn’t have to look around for it. We pulled in, and I called Frankie to tell her that we were there. She sounded annoyed and told us that she was 14.7 miles away. When she got there she explained why she sounded annoyed. She got on the Pike, and was stuck in a massive amount of traffic. She was actually supposed to arrive before us, but we made it about 15 minutes before her.

After we had settled in the hotel room, we were starving, so we grabbed a “where to eat in Amesbury” flier, and we were off. We knew where we wanted to eat, The Barking dog. But the flier didn’t have the street address. So after a quick Google we found the address, set the GPS, and were off. We found the place in like 5 minutes. It was packed, but we were shown right in, and ordered our drinks, and food very quickly. For an appetizer, I ordered the Kielbasa and spicy mustard. OMG that was so good. In practice of ordering some I usually don’t order, I ordered the Shepard’s pie. Again, super yummy. We drove back to the hotel to get ready for the next day.

The Next Day.

I work up about 10 minutes before the wake up call (that actually never happened), and was greeted with a downpour with thunder and lightning. I turned on the tv, and the storm was actually so bad, that we lost the satellite on the tv! After about 15 or so minutes it came back and we discovered that we were going through one fast moving cell of weather, and that there was another one coming. We thought ok, we better go now.

Finding the parking was very easy, and very well organised. After a quick trip on a school bus, we were at the Amesbury Sports Park. And it was pouring. We got our race packets, and checked our bags. With it pouring, we were soaked. We took refuge under the A/V tent, and waited. For an hour we waited for our wave to start. We were cold and soaked, so I came up with the idea to hijack the next wave.

I said, “Ok, when this wave starts to go, I say we run over and start.”

Everyone agreed, and when they started running, so did we.

The first obsticle was the HILL. This hill was muddy, and steep. Of course with every race, we forgot Crystal’s inhaler so after the hill we all silently decided to walk the course. That was fine with me, as it was still raining out. So hard in fact, I thought our second challenge would be to build an ark and find animals for it. We walked through the forest, sliding down a hill on our butts, and jumping of small rivers of rain water flowing down the hill. There were a couple of really cheesy “obsticles” not really worth mentioning only because they only required us to dodge hanging tires and ropes. The rain started to let off, and then just stopped completely. There were some climbing challenges that I didn’t think I would be able to do, but made it though.

Then there was FIRE.

The fire was almost at the end of the course. We jumped the fire, and were at the top of the hill that we first climbed up. we ran/slid down the hill, and there was the final obsticle; the MUD PIT. Up to this point the tutu’s held up. Not after we jumped in to the cake batter like mud. The tutu’s that held up were almost pulled off our bodies because of the mud. The mud added almost 15 pound to us, so we left them at the cargo net. Later after we got home, Frankie showed me a link where it looked like someone else picked up one of the tutu’s and was wearing it. It kind of annoyed me because it was ours, but then I thought, hey someone else is enjoying it too.

WE FINISHED!

We got our medals and a couple of cups of water, and we changed. Looked for the free beer tent, where we got our free Coors Light. After that, we checked out the merch tent and bought some shirts.

We hopped on a bus and went back to our truck, got cleaned up a little more, and had some lunch at Friendly’s and started the two hour drive home. This time only on 95 south. Got home, showered, and took a two hour nap.

I had to wash the clothes twice, they were so dirty. The first time I had set them to heavy duty, heavy soil with an extra wash and rinse. The second time, just a normal wash heavy soil, with an extra wash extra rinse. 4 hours in the washer, and the clothes were clean. Yay!