The girl on the table next to me is a high-school cheerleader, a flyer who fell and broke her wrist. Her friend is with her, gum-chewing annoyingly.
The wrist girl asks me how I put my hair up in a pen, which I did because it's a f*cking mess today. So I show her how to do it. And then I tell her if she has fine hair, it works best on 2nd-day hair, because the pen won't slide out as easily.
Gum-chewer: Tsk. I could never go a day without a shower.
Me: Well, I shower every day; but I don't wash my hair every day because it would get too dry.
Gum-chewer: Tsk. Tsk. Omigod. I could never go a day without washing my hair. I would just feel too... filthy. *looks at me meaningfully*
Me (pleasantly): Well, I guess you can't put your hair up in a pen, then.
It should be noted that during this exchange, Soulful Physical Therapist is nearly choking with laughter.
Also of note today: The physical therapy group is planning a skit for their Christmas party. So far the plan is to put Soulful Physical Therapist in drag and make him perform Britney Spears' "Hit Me Baby, One More Time."
Warrior Dash
In case you are not familiar with the Warrior Dash, it's basically an exercise in pain and fear masquerading as a good time. With costumes. But there's also beer, which frankly was a major draw.
The race itself is a 5k. Which, no problem, right? Only they throw in twelve obstacles, consisting of some of the weirdest sh!t this side of ComiCon. So this is how the race went:
Run run run run run, over grass and gravel and really terrible terrain. It reminded me a lot of cross-country in high school, where the goal is essentially to make you run on entirely un-run-able surfaces.
At mile one or so, there's a water station.
Obstacle one: Run up a pile of hay bales and down the other side. Which is easy, which gives me a huge surge of confidence, which is just plain mean of the race organizers.
Obstacle two: Run through some tires on the ground for about ten yards, climb up and over a few junk cars (girl beside me: "People were, like, conceived in these cars. People had sex in them"), then through some more tires (guy to the left a few yards: " *FACEPLANT * ").
Obstacle three: A giant felled tree, which was probably just nature f*cking with me.
Obstacle four: four-foot walls you have to get over, followed by planks you have to go under. Repeat about six times. At the end of this I realized I could feel my heartbeat in every part of my body and wondered vaguely if anyone had ever died on the course.
Obstacle five: a GIANT F*CKING WALL. You get to scale it with a rope, which I haven't done since gym class in the seventh grade (and I didn't make it to the top then) and climb down a ladder on the other side. The climbing part was actually okay; what wasn't okay was getting up there, then straddling the top, then looking down. Let me tell you, my fear reflex? Is clearly operating just fine. Hyperventilated for a minute, then realized that my fear of falling was slightly surpassed by my fear of having to be airlifted off the top of a g*ddamn wall. Climbed down. (Note: This is not me in the photo. I probably looked a lot worse.)
Obstacle six: A pitch-black tunnel you have to crawl through. I think they purposely put sharp rocks on the ground. Tear up knees, mental note to wear stockings to work all week this week.
Obstacle seven: Another f*cking wall. This one is slanted, Matt tells me, so no problem, right? Only it's slanted on both sides, like an inverted V. Which means when you get to the top, you throw your leg over ... into total nothingness. You have to slide out and down in order to get to the first rung of the ladder down, which means you have ample opportunity to look down between them and realize that if you fall, you're hitting like six struts on the way down before even landing on the ground, presumably paralyzed for life.
Obstacle eight: Crab-crawl your way across a rope net suspended about five feet above the ground, which is hard, but also the most precarious and humiliating pose to be in, ever. HEY BACK THERE! LIKE MY ASS? IT'S STICKING WAY UP! IN YOUR FACE!
Obstacle nine: Climb up some steep bleachers, slide down a fireman's pole on the other side, chafe the sh!t out of the thighs.
Obstacle ten: Wait, another wall? I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS MANY WALLS, YOU F*CKERS. This one is constructed of a frame, and then a rope net on both sides. This one was oddly comforting after the previous climbs; at least a rope net gives you something you can actually wrap your hands around.
Obstacle eleven: Jump over fire. Which is JUST the thing you want to do after running three miles, because everyone likes heat at that point, right?
Obstacle twelve: Leap down into a giant pit of mud about three feet deep, and crawl across on your hands and knees. Realize not only have they covered the bottom of this pit in gravel that is further shredding your kneecaps, but also, you've started running at 4:30pm, which means this same mud pit has seen about five hundred sweating, disgusting bodies before yours. They may as well have named the twelfth obstacle You Just Try Not To Catch Something Nasty In This Sh!t.
Then, the glorious finish, where you slog across in your ruined shoes. The cameras capture you as you cross the finish line, and you realize you've just been photographed trying to fish gravel out of your bra.
In short, it was actually kind of awesome and I'm glad I did it. But I believe somewhere around mile two and a half I deliriously and violently told Matt that next year we're taking a nice trip to a f*cking beach somewhere for our anniversary, and he is not to listen to any hare-brained schemes I have about this sort of thing, ever again.
I also ran the Warrior Dash, but in the DC metro area. While we did not have nearly as many walls as you did, I can definitely sympathize with you on the gravel in the mud pits, what was up with that?!?
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