Savage Race, Dade City 4/13/13

Sweet Spoils for getting our asses kicked in the most fun way possible.

When we were looking at available obstacle/mud races for the season and weighing the pros and cons on each, this one beat out Spartan Race on the “Dude….that looks like SO MUCH FUN” scale by a MILE. Spartan looked like a long, mostly boring run with gym equipment and burpee stations. I can do that at home, thanks. Savage Race, on the other hand had fire, rope walls, crawls, swims, mud, hay stacks, slides, sawtooth monkey bars, a deliciously green looking turf course and all the smile inducing fun we love about obstacle races, just maybe a bit more challenging than we’ve seen thus far. Also it’s much closer than Spartan so we could do it in an out and back day rather than having to get a hotel. YUP. SIGNED UP.

SAVAGE COURSE! More or less. Obstacle order was shuffled a bit.

This race is absolutely everything an obstacle race event should be. Definitely showed us just how well it could be done and how much the races we’d been to previously have yet to learn (aside from RFYL, they put on a rockin’ event as well). Despite the fact that this was the longest obstacle race we’d done to date at 6.75 miles, it didn’t FEEL like it at all. They spaced the obstacles perfectly so there were no long uninterrupted stretches of just running. Add to that the venue and course itself being GORGEOUS and you have a recipe for a very enjoyable day. And yes, a lot of the photos here are from their facebook page and advertisements since you can’t really carry a camera on course and the GoPro had mud on it a lot of the time.

We have a habit of being notoriously nonchalant about training for these and this was no exception. This week I went back and looked at the obstacles again…and realized these guys aren’t messing around. Some of these look HARD (sawtooth monkey bars! COLLOSUS!). We thought the course was like Superhero Scramble, in the 4-5 mile range, but when we got there and were wandering around the park getting ready we heard someone say the course was 6.75 miles long. We looked at each other with an “Oh, shit….did he say 6.75?”, then shrugged and went “Welp, I guess we’re runnin’ 7 miles today!” and lined our asses up.

pretty pretty places to run.

I know I have said past race venues were pretty….but they have NOTHING on this place. The course was green, lush and wooded with rolling hills, lakes and was covered in springy wonderful turf and packed dirt roads to run on. They provided plenty of water stations and port-o-potties at multiple points, didn’t pull the dick move of backloading the obstacles or calling stupid little stuff on par with cattle-guards an obstacle and the course was marked clearly and often. Overall course design was top notch

Start and track curling away to the right. Who wouldn’t want to run on that grass?

The race started right on the steeplechase track. Wide, groomed, springy turf with big sprinklers spraying us down. I wanted to kick off my shoes and run on the grass barefoot SO bad. It was SO inviting with it’s soft, springy green siren call, but my timing chip was tied into my shoe and I’d trip people if I dropped to roll around in it, so I just ran like an idgit. Left the track and went through a field before we came to the first obstacle: The Shriveled Richard.

Can you see me shivering in this photo?

Previous races had an “ice” obstacle, but it was mostly just chilly water and a barbed wire low crawl scenario so you could keep some of you out of it, not that you felt you needed to. This one went all the way. As we approach we see 3 huge wooden box tanks with a Reddy Ice semi-truck sitting next to each and a crew of guys dumping ice into said tanks in a steady supply. As we got closer and started to climb the ladder up, I noticed that the wooden plank with barbed wire above it sitting in the middle of the tank was sitting at the waterline. You HAVE TO dunk your whole self under the icy water and swim to get to the other side. No half-assing allowed. Deep breath and we jumped in. OMGLOB HOLY SHITSNACKS THAT IS COLD.

In his words “AHHHHH. That is the coldest thing in the history of ever.”

I had never been in water so cold it made my muscles instantly seize up. Now I can check that off the list of life experiences. As soon as I hit the water, my body went “AHH!! NOOO!”. And I still had yet to dunk my head and swim out. I was in the water for all of 10-15 seconds and had a bit of trouble making my limbs climb me out. All of my skin was tingly for the next couple minutes. Whoa. I now understand how people drown so quickly in icy water.

Bunch of over/under fence type deals, some swinging tires, etc and then the next obstacle that made me go “huh, these guys are for real. No being prissy about this.” It looked much like other mud/water crawls we’ve seen except once again, they’d placed the wooden “stay low” boards  sitting slightly below the waterline, so in order to get past, you had to completely submerge yourself in the mud water. I like it.

The race designed to kick your ass.

The first wall we came to also impressed me in the differences that upped the difficulty dramatically. First, it was about 1-2 feet taller than walls in Superhero Scramble. Stood at I’d guess 8-9 feet. I couldn’t grab the top without a solid jump. Second, no boards attached to the front for a toehold boost at all. Or gaps in the boards. Nothing. Just a solid 9 foot face wall for you to hoist yourself up and over. There were guys standing at the base of each acting as assistance for those who needed it giving a leg up and over. I refuse. Got myself up with a jump and a good hold on the top, but by the time I got that high I lost my momentum for hoisting over. Had to wait for the guy next to me to clear so I could swing my hips around and hike my leg up over. Made it without too much trouble, but definitely took a bit more doing than the big walls at SS that basically just took a good vault.

I will say that the angled rope wall is WAAAYYY easier when it’s not greased down and crazy slippery. Like no problemo at all. We were both up over that thing in a couple seconds.

The “Colon Blow 5000” was fun and different. Drainage pipes, first up, then down. The up was harder than I anticipated since there’s not much room to maneuver and it’s slippery in there, making it hard to scoot up. Got a sideways shimmy going that was effective and made it through fine.

There were a lot of people in the water

The sawtooth monkeybars were definitely a challenge. I did much better than I anticipated and made it through the long up and the down bit, but when I got to the sharp “up” of the tooth, I couldn’t quite get enough oomph to grab the bar. I got my hand on it. I was SO close, but after the other climbing I’d already done on course, not enough to grip properly and I went down in the water. A few more days of pull ups and I SO would have had that. That’ll teach me to take mandatory rest.

WHEEEEEE

Lots of slippery slimy mud, Davy Jones Locker: always fun to jump off tall things into water (cap did a flip as you can see in the video. I did not…still worry about landing on someone), no sweat and haystacks, no sweat. Got to the top and helped another girl with a hand up.

taken on the walk in

The Colossus was intimidating and challenging, but I’m slightly disappointed in that I think I would have had it without assistance, but as soon as I got close to the top, the event staff dudes grabbed my arms and hauled me up. I know they’re trying to get people through there as quick as possible since there was a huge line and make sure none of the girls fall and hurt themselves, but still, I wanted a chance to try myself and felt a tiny bit cheated since I really felt like I had that one. Cap, of course, almost didn’t even need the rope and scrambled up that sucker like a monkey in less than 5 seconds. Show-off.

My Savage Souvenirs. Quite a few more bruises developed in the course of the week. Worth it.

After the race I realized that quite a few of the obstacles had pretty substantial lines…that partly being our fault for running the 11:00 wave behind the backlog of earlier waves and in the midst of the “slow” fun runners, but for some reason it didn’t bother me or make me impatient like I usually get. The scenery was great and the people were generally pleasant to talk to.

Best moments on course that weren’t caught on tape/edited out for time:

Wave before us as we were walking in started and one guy snatched up a smoke grenade off the ground and carried it like a torch for 100 yards or so down the track leading the charge.

We passed a team chugging Miller Lites they’d stashed in hydration packs on the side of the course in the woods about a mile and a half in.

When the Swedish (sounding) guy wearing a kids Superman costume (shirt was TIGHT with a big midriff and tights were ripping around his legs) with underpants over the top came running up from behind and yelled “Captain America! We have to team up! You get inmate 1, I take inmate 2! (there were 2 runners ahead of us in orange shirts with inmate 1 and 2 printed on the back) We put them back in jail! Let’s go!” and then as he ran by “High 5!”

Cap laughing hysterically and maniacally at me when I sank hip deep in a mud puddle in one of the obstacles while he made it through basically clean above the ankles. I decided to use my mud hands to put war paint on my face after that.

Also the part where he accused me of cheating by grabbing the top of the bouldering wall, but he totally did it too and you can see it on the video, so either we’re both cheaters or he can stuff it. Or both.

Somewhat cleaned off and finished.

There was also a whole set of walls and barbed wire X’s we didn’t film in the interest of saving the battery for the big obstacles at the end since they were the typical 4-5 foot high wall series you see at most of these. Cap tore his boardshorts on one of the barbed wire obstacles in that section because he tried to put his big booty through the small end of the X, but otherwise, we kicked its ass and moved onwards.

With that, here is a small amount of our video footage. I edited it down as best I could, but I get ADD with video editing…so…yea. We are getting better with the GoPro. It was all charged and no fogging this time, but I think whatever we cleaned the lens/housing with left some smears and so it’s a teeny bit cloudy. We’re getting better….maybe by next weekend we’ll actually have this shit straight for Run For Your Lives.

Here is us running Savage Race, headcam courtesy of Cap:

Now get SERIOUSLY HYPED. This weekend is Run for Your Lives!!

EA Sports Riverside Dash 15k, Sanford 4/7/13

First off, big news:
I made it in the lottery and am registered to run the 2013 Chicago Marathon. Eeps!! My first full marathon! Very exciting and scary all at once.

Anyway, on to the current race.

REALLY it was a LAKEside dash…but we won’t call them out on it since they gave us a really super sweet tech shirt.

Pro-tip: Deciding to run a 15k coming immediately off of a bad race, surgery and 4 weeks of recovery and rest with only a little over a week of real running before race day is maybe not the brightest idea. Did this stop me? Hell no.

At my post-op appointment I learned that it can take up to 3 months for anesthesia to fully leave your system and that the stitches under the skin would take 3 months to dissolve AFTER I registered for said 15k race (they DID have a 5k…but, no. I gotta go big). I also learned that those things were/are slowing me down still, regardless of how “back to normal” I feel for normal daily activities, so I need to stop being so frustrated with my splits lately.

I partly signed up for this knowing it would be a kick in the ass to get my running shoes back on and not get all comfy, take too much time off and be all out of shape for the other races in April I want to rock faces at. I want to KILL all the obstacles at Savage Race next weekend and I want to blow past all the zombies in a blur at RFYL later this month, so a nice easy distance run along the water to make sure I have enough steam for the others seemed like a good idea. Plus the first turnaround was in the Central Florida Zoo.

How I mostly felt after mile 7.

I just re-read those first 2 paragraphs and they make it sound like this was a Gasparilla repeat. It wasn’t. It didn’t go that bad. Or bad at all really. I certainly didn’t set any records and was very solidly medium, but I finished pretty comfortably and was able to run more of it than I anticipated. I wanted to stretch my legs coming back into training and practice running a race maintaining the pace I’ll need for Chicago (about 9 min miles) and in that I was pretty successful. Had to walk significantly less than I planned for, hit my goal average split even with the walk break I did take and finished feeling hungry but otherwise just fine.

2 steps later, when I noticed the photographer. Everything’s fine here! We’re all fine!

I was nervous before this race and I think it’s because I knew I had really conservative goals and wasn’t in top form yet. It’s just the competitive part of me that wants to wail out of the gate every race as hard as I can and set a new PR every time that wasn’t on board with the “easy race” plan. Every race has a goal, and I was successful in this one on that regard, even if I was relatively slow for me.

I know it says finish, but this was starting line-up. I was closer to the front. Went out this way and finished coming back under the arch the other way.

I have to say, I’ve been to a few races at this point and hung out at a lot of starting areas by myself now. This race was one of the friendliest and most inspiring I’ve been to in a long time. It was a relatively small field (700 runners split between the 5k and 15k) and the race’s inaugural year. I chatted with at least half a dozen runners before the race, talking about favorite races, shoes, triathlons, injuries, crazy pro stories, etc. Everyone was amiable and looked glad to be there, even though the line for the port-o-potties was CRAZY long. Things went really smoothly for lineup and gun for both races. The only thing I can really nitpick on is that the emails pre-race said there would be “an over-abundance of water stations”. Clearly their definition of that term and mine differ. 5 water stations for 9.3 miles is adequate. Not “over-abundant”. The volunteers were friendly and did a great job at the stations that were set up, and as I said, there were enough, so not a big sticking point. 😉

Super nice shirt and a pretty solidly done medal. Plus all kinds of sweet coupons in the bag. Well done, guys.

Apparently all the super fit older people in Central Florida live near Sanford. My 25-29 bracket was the slowest until it got to the 65-69 group. And they weren’t far off. Chatted with and paced a couple of older ladies on course that eventually passed me and kept going at a seriously impressive pace while I took a walk break. These ladies were not messing around and they were awesome to talk to and run with. There was also a girl on course in the 15k running in full fire gear for Seminole County FD. Made sure to high five her and tell her she was a rockstar both times I passed by her on the switchbacks. That wins the badass badge for the race. If at any point I was about to complain about it being hot or hard in my paperweight shorts and shoes, I could pretty much cram it up my arse since she could keep moving through the course and finish with more than a whole additional person’s weight in hot itchy gear on her.

What I got to look at all run. Not too bad.

I drank my new superdrink of limeade and chia seeds before the race and so for the first 4-5 miles I felt like a golden goddess and sang along with my music. Even stopped to take a picture of the sun coming up over the lake in the first mile and still hit an 8:12 split for that mile. BAM. I slowed after that ’cause that’s way too fast, but you get the point. I started feeling tired at 6 miles, out of breath and hungry at 7 since I apparently didn’t eat enough breakfast, and walked a good chunk of mile 8 taking puffs on my inhaler, before finishing out the race and sprinting the last tenth of a mile or so home through the finish.

I had my bagel in my mouth and was trying to do the self portrait thing and a very nice guy immediately offered to snap one for me. Like I said…friendly group of racers. Bet you can’t tell my mouth is full of bagel.

Reconnected with all my pacing buddies at the breakfast area to say congrats and good race and all before they wandered off and joined their families to eat. The post-race spread had pancakes and bagels and fruit and coffee and big kiddie pools filled with iced down water bottles. Walked around a bit and ate some before deciding to pack it up and head home. They also had a ton of parking literally RIGHT next to the start/finish and it was really easy to get in and out. They planned things pretty well. In the overall, while my performance in this race was not noteworthy in any sense and the race itself wasn’t particularly unique, just a nice flat waterfront road course, it was just what I needed to get back into the swing of training. Been restless and stressed and this was a nice long run, my body felt relatively good and recovered REALLY well and it was a good reminder to get back on focus and work harder on getting where I want to be for the races later in the year because I have NO excuses compared with more than half the people running that course faster than I did.

This was just a nice reminder of why it is sometimes worth it to get up at 4:30 in the morning and haul your sleepy, stiff carcass to line up and run with a bunch of other crazies. Now get excited, because next weekend is Savage Race and it is gonna be AMAZEBALLZ.