I was thrilled and honored to be asked to be on a team for the Gladiator 5K with $Bill, Cindy and Tim. They are all super athletes as well as some of my favorite people.
Our team was dubbed the Mud Minions, and Cindy, $Bill and i have been preparing after a fashion through an 8-week Boot Camp at work. I’ve been looking forward to this race for a month, excited about the many different obstacles we would be tackling.
Lance planned to tag along and cheer for us and take pictures. He asked if Nugent was welcome. I trolled the website and sadly found a statement to please not bring pets. Too bad, Nug would have to stay home.
There were many different wave starts throughout the day; ours was at 9:45, so our team met at the WakeMed Soccer Park at 9. We hung around for a bit, joking about today’s expected Rapture. It was less crowded than i anticipated with 1500 participants, but the staggered start meant many weren’t there yet. There may not have been a huge crowd of people yet, but there were several dogs. Curses!
The first wave started at 9 and we were hanging around the finish when we saw the leaders finish in about 20 minutes. Huh? We wondered if they really started at 8:45, but no it was 9. That was the first clue that the obstacles didn’t slow you down that much. The race did not take place on the “real” soccer fields – but this big green field might have been a practice field. You could see a few obstacles from the start, as the race takes you up and down the field a few times before circling back through the woods.
After a few more dog sightings (sorry Nug!), it was time for our wave to line up. We lined up near the front and took off down a long grassy hill. Bill reminded everyone that Audrey always starts races too fast (true), but we wanted to get to the first obstacles before the crowd.
At the bottom was our first obstacle: 3 wooden hurdles, about waist height. We scrambled over with only a minor mishap as Cindy decided to go ahead and scrape BOTH of her knees. Next, down the rest of the hill to a turnaround, where we ran back up the same grassy hill. It was much easier on the way down. I was very pleased when the hill ended, back near the start.
Continuing past the start, where many people cheered (yay!) we found the second obstacle: an ab crawl. We crawled underneath this net thing for maybe 20 feet. Pretty easy, although my butt did get snagged on the bar at the end. And then we all popped up and were running back down the same field for the third time. This was in the downhill direction, at least.
The third obstacle was a cargo net climb. A large rope net was set up over a bar, creating a triangular appearance. You climb up one side and then down the back. It was wide enough for 3-4 people to climb at once. This was by far my favorite obstacle, even though it didn’t last long. The rope was tied into 1-foot wide squares so you could place your feet easily. Climbing up was relatively simple. Slightly tricky was going over the bar and getting your footing on the backside and turned around so you could climb back down. Our team managed it expertly. We are still ahead of the main pack, which is good because we had seen an earlier wave really get bottle-necked at the rope climb.
More running, downhill (yay) back down the field to the fourth obstacle: downhill balance beam. The slope was not too severe, and again the obstacle was maybe 20 feet in length (generous). I think there were 6 beams so more than one person can go at a time. No one on our team had any trouble.
We had traversed the big field three times, and now it was time for us to continue through the woods. The path was a packed gravel-and-dirt trail that winds around behind the soccer fields and the parking lot. The first part was pretty flat and we kept a good pace, though i started to lag a little behind the others. Before too long, we came upon the fifth obstacle: a 6-foot wall. The boards were nailed together horizontally, so you could just barely find a toehold to get up and over. I grabbed the top, got a toehold, slipped, got it back enough with my left leg to swing my right leg over. Then basically i just dropped straight to the ground. Onward.
More running, and now it’s uphill. Definitely lagging more and breathing extremely hard and much faster than my “comfortable” breathing. Usually i’m In-2-Out-2-3 (in pace with my steps) but now i’m doing In-2-Out-2 and having a tough time with it. But it wasn’t too long before we reached the sixth obstacle: the 8-foot wall. It looked a lot bigger than the 6-foot wall. Bill and Tim got there first and somehow climbed to the top and gave me and Cindy a hand up so we could grab the top of the wall. Same principles, climbed the toeholds and vaulted my right leg over and then the momentum sort of took the rest of me with it. Tried to find a toehold on the back side and failed, starting to fall, but my hands still had a grip on the top of the wall. Here is where the Boot Camp training over the last 8 weeks kicked in – all those (attempted) pull-ups had made my arms just strong enough to support my weight for a brief second so i could then drop comfortably the final few feet without breaking an ankle. Score! Definitely the most difficult of the obstacles.
As soon as i hit ground i took off, knowing the others were faster and would catch me. It took maybe 5 seconds before i was lagging again, and there was yet more hill. Did we really come downhill this much? I took a brief break and walked on an especially steep part (i’m walking to that tree) then kept going. Bill is leading the way and soon after yells “Tunnels!” Cindy relays it back to me “Tunnels!” We see four parallel tunnels in front of us and get on hands and knees to slide through. They are just small enough that i can’t crawl comfortably, so i sort of scoot forward, remembering to keep my butt down so it doesn’t snag on anything. The tunnel was maybe 15 feet in length. We all emerge and Bill comes out with a bonus – someone else’s timing chip had fallen off. It doesn’t belong to the 3 girls just in front of us – oh well.
More running – it’s clear now that this really is just a 5K trail run with a few obstacles thrown in. A bit of a flatter and downhill section here – finally! – so i didn’t have as much trouble in this section. Cindy made sure to point out every dog we saw. (Nug, you should have been here!) Our eighth obstacle is hard to describe: a wooden triangular structure that resembled a sawhorse. It was about waist height and you had to climb over it.
An uphill section again. Tim is hanging back with me a bit while Bill & Cindy lead on. We all took a walk break at some point in this section. When it flattened out a bit and i had caught some of my breath we ran to the next obstacle – the Mud Pit! A tarp was thrown over an area maybe 20 feet long and 12 feet wide. A volunteer was holding the tarp open for you. Tim dove in ahead of me and tried to get as wet & dirty as possible. I followed his example, recognizing an opportunity to cool off. Hrm, it was mostly water, though i guess there was some dirt in it. More resembling a kiddie pool than a mud pit. Up and out and onward.
The next section was a flattish grassy section and i had no idea where we were, but we were meandering back over and around the parking lot. My shoes were thoroughly soaked, but the squishy feeling in my feet was actually pleasant. Then we rounded a corner and there was the parking lot. We ran along the edge towards our tenth obstacle: the tires. You had to do the army-style stepping into horizontally-lying tires while also dodging a bunch of hanging/swinging tires. Again the entire obstacle was maybe 20 feet in length and was traversed quickly.
Now we can see the finish, but psyche! You must turn the other way and run to the gate and back before you can head to the finish. Tim is running with me and encouraging me. I’ve no idea how fast we were going; it felt slow to me but then i was also still breathing hard. We turned around and caught up with Cindy & Bill who had slowed so we could catch up. Then we headed to the finish line together. Bill gave the order of when to sprint to the finish, and we all finished strong.
I’m not sure yet what our time was. There was a clock at the finish but i never can remember to look for them at the end of a race. Lance says we finished around 10:15 by his watch. A big thank you to my team for pulling me through the whole race!
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I had fun with my team and appreciate the teamwork to get over the big wall especially. They were very encouraging to me, the slower runner, and i appreciate that. I also am happy to contribute my $80 entry fee to the Special Olympics.
But.
I was a bit disappointed in the race itself. I didn’t know exactly what to expect from this race, but I was definitely thinking it would be more obstacle-oriented. Their marketing clearly indicates such. A quote from the race website regarding the Tire obstacle: “You’ve never seen tires quite like this. Make your way up, around, and through a never-ending valley of tires.” If never-ending and 20 feet are equivalent, well, ok, then. And where was the mud?
I trolled their fb page and learned that either the town of Cary or the soccer park was not allowing mud. Shouldn’t someone have known about that? The list of obstacles on their (Raleigh-specific) website are much different than what we encountered. We did see an 8-foot Glory Wall, balance beams, one cargo net, something that might have been an ab crawl, something with tires and one tunnel crawl. But conspicuously missing were some of the more interesting ones such as monkey bars, the rope bridge, the tire valley, an area littered with walls of varying heights, additional cargo nets, the series of tunnel crawls and the 80 feet of cammo nets. And that’s just on their website. The info sheet i got at packet pickup listed 16 total obstacles, including some that were not on the website such as a skeleton wall and hang man, whatever those are.
There were only 3 port-a-johns, no water on the course, no water bottles at the end. We did find a cooler of water with “cone cups”, but it was just a gulp and there was a line when i wanted a refill. I didn’t see the rinse-off hoses that were promised, though with no mud perhaps they weren’t needed. No music at the end, no snacks such as oranges or bananas that even the smallest of 5K events have (and i’ve been to one with only 32 runners).
I’m not the only one who was disappointed – lots of people are commenting on the event’s Facebook page about the lack of promised, challenging obstacles. I had fun, but what i really wanted was to GET DIRTY!
