Doing the dash

When there was talk amongst the Ludus community about doing the Warrior Dash I didn’t even contemplate it.

I had completed the Tough Mudder which is billed as the “harder older brother” so I had honestly thought “meh why bother”

However as Rubes is the “face” of the Warrior Dash, Ludus “officially” got behind the event and the call went out for interested people.

I replied “Is Jared doing it?” (because he’s my savior when it comes to things involving obstacles).

And Jared replied “Yep Julz I’m in”

That was the length of the conversation – next thing I know .. I get an email telling me my voucher code for registration. I kind of just shrugged my shoulders and went “guess I’m doing the dash then”

This is the first year the Warrior Dash was held in Auckland so there were A LOT of teething problems.  Every wave left late because it took over 1.5 hours of standing in a cue to get your race pack so basically every person registered missed their own allocated wave and ended up doing whatever one was about to start once they finally got their race numbers.  As we had 25 people to get numbered and tagged it was an even longer process.

Hopefully the organisers will come up with another way of doing race packet collection next year maybe a turnstyle system so you go through race packet pick up to get into the waiting area as opposed to the cue taking up the entire waiting area.

Anyway as I said it was the inaugural event so teething problems are to be expected at least you could get a cup of coffee relatively quickly 😉 We managed to get the team tagged and bags checked about 10 minutes after our official wave time. Rubes came over and we got some team pics ..

then he got us all together and said “Right now its time for the Ludus wave” we all looked at each other and hesitated but he started the countdown and said run – so we did – who is going to argue with Rubes?

The course itself?

It was hilly, there were a lot stream crossings, there is quite a bit of distance to run before you get to an obstacle and it seemed to take forever to get to the first one, there are no where near enough obstacles and the obstacles are more “a hindrance” than true “obstacles” when you compare then to what you find on the Tough Mudder course.

The course is also very short and due to a fire ban they weren’t able to have the “signature” fire jump obstacle.

BUT the staff out on the course were amazing, super encouraging and handing out high fives to all who came by.  The course was well marked and  the water stops were plentiful, they may have even had more water stops than were on the Tough Mudder course which is about four times longer so thats a bonus.

I saw copious amounts of medical staff (which is good because we did actually lose one member of our team with an asthma attack at obstacle one), plenty of photographers (team Ludus loves photo ops)  and there were no bottlenecks anywhere on the course.

A certain crossfit gym was waiting at the start line when we started our “own” wave and we overhead them say that they were going to “take us”. They manage to pass us as we did one of our many team checks at the top of one of the hills.  However some time later the stragglers in their group made it to the top of the hill, looked at us and exclaimed “And THAT is what team work looks like”

See anyone can finish – especially on this course and if you wanted to gun it and get a great time it would be totally do able but our mantra for the day was ..

“It’s not about the time, it’s about the team”

We started together and we finished together

To quote my friend Brooke because I couldn’t have said it better even if I had wanted to .. 

“Its not always about being the fastest strongest or fittest individual, but more so about sticking together, working together, overcoming together, encouraging and supporting each other”

 In summary it’s was fun, but not “hard” and it would be a great “first time” event for those of you out there who have done some fun runs and looking for a bit of a change and I’d do this event again unlike the Tough Girl/Guy challenge which I will not do a repeat performance of – ever ..

Till next time