It seems I'm always behind on blogging... I still need to cover my sister Kimmy's wedding, being a leader at Girl's Camp, maybe I don't need to dedicate a whole post to it, but Brynn's ear drum burst (poor thing, it really hurts her :( ), our family trip to Raging Water's (which is now Seven Peaks Salt Lake but I don't really want to stop calling it Raging Water's) where I don't have any pictures (I know, what is wrong with me? What good is a waterproof camera if I don't use it?) but my dad, Brent, was an amazingly good sport. And I mean amazingly. And now our awesome 4th of July celebrations.
BUT these things will have to wait.
Right now I'm wanting to talk about something that is NOT near and dear to my heart. But I have such a strong urge to tackle it. I'm not a runner. I could be. On the few occasions where I've joined others on a run (and they have been very few) it hasn't been hard for me at all to slip into a runner's high. I could keep a steady pace forever if I wanted to. But getting me going on running... I just don't like it. Having said that, there are now two things that have landed on my bucket list and I feel I really want to do:
The Dirty DashWho wouldn't want to run in a 10K that starts out with this description:
"Have you ever said to yourself, “Marathons are too easy, and Triathlons are for sissies?”
We haven’t either…those races are really hard. Think about it…the first person to run a marathon actually died. HE DIED!...and he probably didn't even have fun along the way!
Well let us introduce you to the new race in town…THE DIRTY DASH. This race puts all other races to shame. The Dirty Dash is a mud run obstacle course where a military boot camp meets your inner five-year-old’s fantasy and subsequently converts boy to man and then…man to swine."
Once I posted on facebook (because it isn't official until the facebook world knows about it, right?) my cousin then introduced me to the idea of "the worlds largest night time running event", the Rock N' Roll Las Vegas half marathon.
I don't know what's wrong with my brain. Calling the dirty dash a 10K hardly counts. Seriously, it's just a giant obstacle course in the mud and I'm down with that! Plus, 10K is only 6(ish) miles. I can wrap my mind around that. And did I mention it's just a big obstacle course in the mud??? Yes! But for some reason, the thought of doing a half marathon suddenly intrigued me when placed before me.
I just listened to a motivational speaker (more of this coming up when I finally get around to blogging about Girl's Camp) about her experience in her first half marathon. It was gruelling to say the least. But her recap of the finish line... plus she got a medal.
I'm going to do it.
And thus I'm embarking on the start of my running career. Which, I might add, will also be the end of it. I just want to check it off my bucket list (and get my medal), I don't need to repeatedly torture myself with it.
I got to do my first Dirty Dash yesterday with my friend Jen who is pretty amazing.
Jen has a bunch of runner friends who let me join their team for this.
The proceeds for entering this 10K went to support our local homeless shelter. And I got to play in a lot of mud. For those of you who don't have something like this in your areas, it's a giant obstacle course in the mud. Being September in the mountains of Utah, the morning was starting out at a blistering 44 degrees. But as the sun came up it quickly got to 70 (THANK GOODNESS, because not only was the air chilly, but the mud and water was too! And there was a lot of submerging up the waist and crawling around that took place). We decided next year we need to figure out how to take a camera with us with out getting it mucked up. We saw some people had cameras sealed up in baggies. We crawled over haystacks, crawled through tubes, climbed over or under wooden walls,
where sprayed with icy water,
walked across planks, waded waist deep through an actual marsh (stinky gross), climbed a large spider net,
slid down a giant water slide,
and...
That's us climbing out in the pic above (and we're in the middle of the bog above that). Below, we made it out.
Above, "I think you have something on your face..."
My "handy" dandy artwork on Jen...
Next year... I'm doing it again. With a camera all the way through. A huge thanks to my most amazing hubby who waited around to take pictures for me. Next year I think he'll be joining me now that he's seen how funny it is.
