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Wednesday, May 19, 2010

What Can You Expect at Warrior Dash?



To get very very dirty.
We parked at a local's house, who provide a trailer ride to the event. Music playing, beer tents and turkey leg stations under a beautiful blue sky awaited us. It was easy to check in and we promptly received our goody bag--number and viking headpiece included. But we refused to don the horns since we had not yet earned the warrior title and went off to watch the festivities. The only spectator stand was at the last leg of the race where warriors were leaping over fire and crawling through mud under barbed wire. Someone's wig had gotten caught in the wire and was hanging there limp and defeated.
As competitors neared the muddy finale, the crowd would chant, "Dive, Dive, Dive..."
Mind you that the hog-heaven mud pit only had about six inches of water covering about 10 inches of mud. Most of the girls we watched would slide down on their tushes into the mud before crawling forward. Do wha??? My girl, Michela, and I just look at each with confused expressions. We did not come here to act like prisses. But the hillarious part came when these same girls are crawling through the mud, under the wire, in shorts. Let's just say it was a view most of us would not want to broadcast, although mud really is an excellent cellulite concealer.
Tip #1 Don't wear high shorts unless you can bounce a quarter off your perfectly toned, a$#.
We lined up amid 500 other nuts amid loud dance music and heckling from the dj. With a large fire blast we were off. Michela's ankel started hurting within the first 1/2 mile, but she soldiered on. Serious rock star.
I ran beside a skinny guy dressed as a beer can for a while only to find out this was his second time that day and we were about to get muddier than we could even imagine. After the 3rd mud hole, I found out he was right. This was the only time that day that my girly-girl side of me came out, because while the mud in my pants didn't bug me, my dirty hands did and because my whole body was covered, I couldn't wipe them off.
Probably the most treacherous parts were the 50 yards after a mud obstacle, because the combination of hard ground and slimy sneakers made it very slippery. Believe me, there is absolutely no gracefulness in trying not to bust your ass.
My favorite and most challenging part was the 'swamp'. On the website, it mentioned you had to go thru a swamp and under floating logs. (Yuuuh-uucckk) Well, they lied. You had to go over the floating logs. The water came up to my collarbone and I had go under water and push off the murky bottom to get enough momentum to roll over the log. And this had to be timed just right so the log would already be rolling in the right direction from one of the guys going over at the same time. There were four logs followed by a swim (it was a swim for yours truly since I am SHORT-not for most everyone else) in water logged tennies.
Tip #2 Tighten your shoe laces extra tight.
Running 3-point-something miles takes on a whole new flavor when your shoes weigh ten lbs.
The cargo net was easy-breezy, especiallly when you have been given the wonderful advice of grabbing on to the vertical ropes and not the horizontal.
Tip # 3 Bring a waterproof camera and take pix if you are not one of the weirdos actually trying to win this silly thing. (Oh and don't lose it if you do...more on that later.)
So we complete 12 out of the 14 obstacles and head around the last curve to the waiting fire, crowd and pit of muddy despair.
We are the only two runners around. We leap victoriously over the fire and the chanting starts. Very loud, very drunk chanting--clearly meant for us.
We speed up, look at each other and both dive head first into the muck. And the crowd goes wiiiiilllllldd. Or maybe that was my ringing ears and vibrating skull. Mud in my mouth, ears, eyes (I could barely see well enough not to get scalped), cleavage, crevices. Everywhere.
Mic stands up and, although my vision is blurry at best, I see about 5 pounds of mud drop out of her shirt. "I just had a mud baby!" she laughs.
We collect our much-deserved medals and decide to wear the mud proudly for a while as we go grab a beer. Besides, the lines for the water pumps were suspiciously long at this point.
Tip # 4 Do not attempt to hydrate with alcohol. Drink H2O FIRST.
After much picture taking and congratulations from strangers on our dirtiness, we head for the hoses...and they are not working.
We both manage to use the trickle of water to rinse our faces and hands.
Tip # 5 Bring eye wash to rinse out mud. (Yes, diving in the mud really was worth it!)
We wander around and have a few more beers before heading home. But seeing as I was not the one driving...and I was thirsty... I maaay have had a few more than Mic...without eating dinner...or drinking water. Thank God we left when we did. Aaannndd that's all I got to say about that.
We changed out of our muddy clothes at the car and while doing so I must have put the camera with all of our race footage on the ground and didnt' pick it up again. So pissed about that, but as Michela said, it's just another great reason to have to come back next year.
Tip # 6 Don't forget a change of clothes and maybe towels.
Tip # 7 Don't let the tipsy girl carry the camera.
Put aside my headache the next day, absolutely fantastic experience. Nothing better than feeling like a kid on a beautiful day with a great friend.
Warrior on!



Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Do I Really Have to Learn this Lesson?

This past Sunday at my wonderful little church, there was a gem of a sermon. You know the kind, one that starts you on a path to a new realization; the kind that is inspirational and a little uncomfortable at the same time. This one was about how does one go about loving God. What does that mean? (I am going to stop here and apologize to Fr Ron right now for my inadequate paraphrasing, not that he reads this. God, I hope not. Wait, am I allowed to say that? Oh hell...Doh!)
He tried to convey to us that Jesus told us that loving him meant following his teachings and actually walking in the ways of faith. It's that darned word 'obedience' popping up in its slippery way. Slippery because how often do we as adults actually think of obedience and how it relates to ourselves? I expect my dog to obey. I hope my kids obey. I wish my husband would obey, but me? Naaahhh.
In a long and beautiful connecting of the dots, he explained that obedience eventually--and naturally--leads to outward works that display our faith. And as we've heard, "Faith without works is dead."
But it seems that when I don't answer the door the first time, God will just keep knocking. The word obedience, I am realizing, has been bubbling up to the surface of my conscience for a while now in things i've read, thought and stumbled upon.
The most recent of these was a long overdue and much begrudged epiphany about money. Yeah, yeah, everything is God's in the first place, etc, but, man, is it hard to do. Several years ago, I listened to a totally different sermon (about tithing-insert groan here) by a totally different priest (whom I still love dearly even though he is far away) that has stuck with me ever since. He said that when we tithe, it is a way to break the hold that money has on our hearts and lives. It is a discipline that helps bring perspective and freedom. So slowly I have been trying to talk myself into this obedience by increasing the amount I give. Finally, at the beginning of this year, after being fed up with our workaholic situation that is totally dictated by money mascarading as security, I leapt. I cut the check first before all others, even when I know that month is going to be tough. (Even now I am struggling with this this month-so there will be a gut check here soon to see if I can keep it up. God help me if I'm wrong...HA, Ok, I'm a dork.) It's scary, but it turns out the priest at my church in Corpus Christi was right about loosening the stranglehold money has on you. Gripping onto faith provides a much more secure hold than clutching a checkbook. But as happens with all much needed lessons, they are rarely the endpoint in the journey, just another stepping stone. So it goes with obedience.
Because what is so painfully obvious is that even when we are struggling, we still have so much. And that makes me feel as though I don't do enough. So full circle, obey by loving thy neighbor through works? Is that the lesson I am coming to? I know it won't be my brain that figures this one out. But the painful truth is how easy--no not easy, how pathetic difficult it is to remember to look for ways to 'serve'. Hell (oh damn, there I go again), it's just too easy to be stuck inside my own head all the time. For instance, pathetic kudos to me when the sale at Kroger reminded me to pick up a few extra items for the food bank donation. But do you know how long that sad little $5 bag has been waiting to be donated? Two freaking weeks! Ridiculous.
It is so easy to obey my hunger, my wants, my emotions, but I don't have to guess that obedience without discipline, without a leap of faith, is just weakness.
He mentioned as parents we ask our children to be obedient, even when they don't understand our reasoning, because it eventually teaches them HOW to be good people. (My boys will tell you how many times I remind them that there are only two kinds of rules in our house: the kind that keep them alive and the kind that teach them how to be good men.) Our priest postulated, "Might not God be trying to guide us and teach us in the same way?"
I have begun to wonder if my going back to work is part of the obedience charge. I have had to realize that the path we have been searching for away from the oilfield is not about me. This is about where God needs and wants Kyle to be. I just look at the sky and say, "You're getting me out of the way? Seriously?!" And for some reason that sounds right. (Insert image of me sulking to my corner.)
So I'll try to stay open to the message obedience (submissiveness, good behavior, accordance, acquiescence, agreement, compliance, conformity, deference, docility, dutifulness, manageability, meekness, observance, orderliness, quietness, respect, reverence, servility, subservience, tameness, tractability, willingness--YIKES) can teach me.
Why couldn't He just have asked me to donate blood?

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Dancing with The Starts Impersonation

Waiting for my pictures from Warrior Dash for a full post coming soon, but suffice it to say we were dirty, dirty girls!
For now, I must share one of my weekly guilty pleasures: Aussie doing his Dancing with the Stars impersonations.
Enjoy :-P