Warrior Dash

So after Angela, Keith & I finished the Fayetteville 1/2 Marathon back in Dec 2010, Keith would periodically send suggestions for future runs. One of the ones he suggested was the Warrior Dash. After checking up on it a bit I knew I had to do it! I mean, I'm not the biggest fan of running. Running an obstacle course though... that's a different story! The Warrior Dash is a 3-1/4 mi course of numerous obstacles connected with short runs between each... almost makes the runs feel worthwhile :-) So I signed up! It took place last weekend 4/16 & 17, and me and a friend from work signed up for one of the waves on Sunday.

They start a limited number of people every 30 minutes all throughout both days... This is mainly due to the obstacles since they slow everyone down. You see, it turns out that 14,000 people ran this thing over the course of 2 days... if all those people were trying to go through each obstacle at the same time... well, lets just say the wait time would be uninspiring :-(

All in all, we had a BLAST! We got dirty! And I wore a video camera, and got some really cool shots! I plan to upload video in the next couple of days... for now, here are a few pictures... Oh... there are prizes for the best costume so some people dressed for the occasion ;-)



The friend I ran with from work, Gwen, is in front of me in this picture... Good pic going over the fire! I'm behind shooting video!



The last obstacle on the course is a mud pit that you're forced to crawl through due to barbed wire being suspended only a few feet overhead! After that, it's a short dash to the finish line!

Whoops... Cowtown 10K... DONE!

Was scanning the old blog tonight and noticed I never published the results of our 10K efforts... my bad! We did it! Yea for us! Results can be found here (put our name in the field at the top). Keith finished in 1hr 1min 19sec, Angela and I ran it together this time and we finish in 1hr 6min 34 sec (and that was with a stop at one of the port-a-johns along the way :-) you know... 10Ks are more my style!

New Tree

I've kinda been lax on this... meant to post a picture a while back... sorry about that. Good thing is the tree is at least blooming now :-)

So here ya go... our new Gala apple tree. It's our understanding it'll need polinating from another apple tree so we're hoping there's another one in the neighborhood somewhere so the local bees can do their thing!

Tree Change

Something happened to our peach tree at the end of the season last year and it was looking like it had seen better days. Angela decided that a change was a good idea. So, a couple weeks ago I took the chainsaw to it and made some firewood :-) This past weekend it was time to remove the rest of it, so I spent a little time diggin'er out! We plan to put, more than likely, an apple tree in it's place, so I needed to remove as much as I could. First step was to get access to the roots...


Once the roots were exposed it was time to cut 'em loose...


Once all cut, the remainder of the tree basically removed itself :-)

Training Update

Well, I suppose it's time for a training update... Only 20 days left until the Cowtown 10K, and training is picking back up (cramming I guess). I've been a little lax but have started to kick it into gear here lately. Weight training is going well, but running is hit & miss... mostly miss. I'm still having issues with my knee. Nothing major, but enough to make me find excuses for not running. I'm going to do my longest run to date (10K training-wise) tomorrow night. I'm very curious to see how that will go. Angela now has soccer on Monday nights so we rearranged the schedule so I can run while she's out running on the field.

It's COLD!

It's 10 degrees outside at 7:00am! Angela & I stayed home from work yesterday... most of the roads were frozen over and all the major school districts were closed (even the ones that "never" close). I mananged to take advantage of it by getting our taxes done (yea!) Unfortunately we're not scheduled to get above freezing until Friday... yikes! We have a lemon tree in a really large pot (it's a really small tree). Since it'll be left outside we had to come up with some way to protect it for the next few days. It's not exactly convenient to move so moving it inside wasn't an option. We looked for alternatives... a quick internet search suggested Christmas lights... now duh! Why didn't I think of that! The older style incandescent bulbs do produce a bit of heat. So we wrapped the tree with 2 strands, and then covered it with a couple of sheets to help keep the heat in. Ta-da... Christmas in February... plus the glowing red blanket in the middle of the night looks pretty cool ;-)

Hope it's warmer where you are!!!

10K Training

Well, so far so good... legs are sore! Did my first run last night. Actually felt pretty good for being over 3 weeks since the last time I ran. Knee didn't really give me any issues until afterwards (but in a different spot... go figure!), and I was able to make the full 3 miles with only a short bit of fast walking about 2 mi into it. Oh yeah... my arms and chest are sore!!! First time I'd done any upper body since last summer... yikes, has it been that long!

Angela was trying to get sick again yesterday so she opted out of the run... that's ok... I'm the one who needs the head start ;-)