Dane goes to Warrior Dash

Yesterday we all got up early (5am) and drove to Joliet, IL for the Warrior Dash. Larissa and Dane cheered while I raced. This was no ordinary race.... 3.75 miles which included climbing over walls and crawling through barrels. The last 3 obstacles involved 1) running through a knee-deep water/mud pit, 2) jumping over a fire pit, and 3) doing the army crawl through another mud pit. It was like 52 degrees when the race started and the race announcers laughed as they told everyone "You'll only be cold until you crawl throught the mud...then you'll be freezing!" My run went really well for the first 3-ish miles. The problem occured when I hit the first mud pit. About 2 steps into the knee-deep water/mud, I got one shoe stuck in the mud and ran right out of it. It was somewhere at the bottom of this knee-deep sludge and I had no chance of finding it quick. So I threw off the other shoe into the bushes and ran the rest of the race in my socks...which would've been awesome had it not been for the stretch of gravel path. Anyway, after finishing the race (only ~30 seconds slower than my goal time! They haven't posted the "official" times yet and I'm waiting to see if my time is almost an hour slower than it actually was, because the shoe I lost had my timing chip laced into it, so my timing chip crossed the line almost an hour after I first crossed the finish line...) I went back and found the shoe after wading through the mud for a bit. As you can see in the photos, I got a bit dirty... Luckily, after a quick rinse off in some dirty curb-water, they had one hose for all the 2000 participants to wash off with (I wish you could read the sarcasm in that statement...the line was forever long. There had been a fire truck to help hose people off, but it left as soon as the race finished so I waited in line for the hose.)



Notice, I'm running over the fire in just socks...

I knew my shoe was somewhere in there...

A quick rinse in dirty curb-water...

And another great part from the day was how well Dane did. He was a complete angel for the hour drive there, the race, an the hour drive home. We are also including some cute pictures of Dane.



And last but not least, we painted another wall in the apartment this weekend. The first two walls we did several weeks ago and now this new wall is in the 2nd bedroom (currently for the Grandmas when they visit, then for Dane and/or any friends who might visit us...)