Rugged Maniac- Chicago/Milwaukee 2013

It's been a little over a week since my race, and the race photos came out a few days ago, so I guess it's time to tell y'all about it.

I ran the Chicago/Milwaukee Rugged Maniac. It's a 5K obstacle race, with something like 25 obstacles. I figured it was only a 5k, and with that many obstacles, I wouldn't be running very long stretches, so I didn't start training until a couple weeks before. With CrossFit, I wasn't doing a ton of running. Some workouts would have you do a few rounds of 400-800 m run with different lifts in the rounds, too.

I was surprised that I could run at a faster pace. I was doing between a 7:15-8 minute mile, and some of my splits I'd do at a 6 minute mile. I couldn't hang onto that more than a quarter mile, but I felt like Dash from the Incredibles doing it. It was fun. I forgot how fun running is. 

Ross and I are running a race in September with a couple friends, so I was really saving the major training for that.

The night before I got some snacks for the drive and for my volunteer shift. (If you volunteer, you get to race for free!) I didn't sleep very well the night before. I'm not sure if I was anxious or excited or what, but when 4:00 rolled around, it would have been all to easy to shut my eyes and fall back asleep. Gratefully, Ross is my biggest cheerleader and told me to go have fun and good luck and that I could do it. (meaning I could get up, not actually do the race.)

Once I grabbed my clothes I was awake and good to go. I loaded up the car with all of my gear and started the 2 hour drive to Wilmot. Shockingly, no gas stations are open that early so I had to wait to get my massive Diet Coke. On the plus side, there were hardly any commercials on the radio and all of my favorite songs were on. And middle of no where Wisconsin has the prettiest sunrises over the corn fields.

We got the course map with the official obstacles emailed to us before the race, so I knew the first obstacle was an uphill run. What I didn't know was that the race was at Wilmot Mountain. Being from Utah, "mountains" here are more like hills. Well, this was indeed an actual mountain with ski lifts. And the entire race was up and down the mountain a thousand times all around the stupid thing.

Volunteers got a super comfy T, which is currently my favorite shirt, to wear during the shift. We were split in half; people to work on the course, and people to work in registration. The majority of volunteers wanted to work on the course, so I volunteered to work in registration. We were so busy, the time went by incredibly fast. The check-in tent was at the bottom of the largest hill, so we got to watch those poor people walk/crawl/climb up the hill. We were told how tough it was.

After the shift we got to race in whichever wave we wanted. We got ourselves another free T shirt, too! I went to the car to change and drop off my gear, got a snack, and called my sister who was on her way to Finland for her student exchange. After our chat I headed to the finish line.

I was definitely not prepared for the mountain. I ended up walking with my comrades up the hills, but ran on the straight and downhill parts. The obstacles were really, really fun. I'm looking forward to doing more obstacle races next year. I was wearing my 'baby on board' shirt and got a lot of "Wait, you're doing this PREGNANT?! huffs from fellow racers and a lot of "You go pregnant girl!" While doing the obstacles. I skipped two, out of this babe's safety: the balance beam over a pit, and the 12 foot wall with only two very small holds that we were supposed to climb over.

My favorites were all crammed in the last mile or so. The fastest water slide I've ever been on: You shoot down this tarp into a muddy pool. You're going so fast, you skim the water for a few feet before you topple over and get mud up your nose and in your mouth. Climbing up tunnels, jumping over fire, tunnel slides, cargo/wall climbs, it was all fun. The fire jumps were at the end and my legs were so tired, I was nervous. They had firemen on site manning the obstacle and I asked them, "so you just jump over it, right?" I'm sure I looked like an idiot and they told me I could jump, back-flip, cartwheel, what ever I wanted over it. I just jumped. But in the photos, I look like a dancing fairy.

The last few obstacles are in tar-like mud. You come out black and you don't even recognize yourself. They had showers at the end with a hose, but the lines were so long. I brought along a gallon of water, towel, and sponge to wash myself off in the parking lot. I probably should have brought along 5 gallons of water.

I changed into clean clothes, but the rest of me was still dirty. I'm pretty sure everyone at Ikea thought I was homeless and I half expected someone to buy my meatball meal for me. Ross was sweet enough to wash my shoes in the tub for me, and run them through the washer. Twice. And they're still dirty.

And now for pictures. I'll even throw in the awkward ones. Next time I'll try to look more awesome jumping over fire.