Not sure what that duck-like squiggle is …. an attempt at lightning?
Today’s Training: Warrior Dash Reconnaissance.
That`s right. Reconnaissance. Recognition. To know again. We know the Warrior Dash Battlegrounds, the ski hills at Horseshoe Valley because we have been skiing down them for years. Running up them them in the heat of July, however, is another matter. So, today’s mission was to to get a renewed sense of direction. Up, instead of down. I was accompanied by husband and fellow-warrior, Sir William of Hay Fever (who sneezed all the long drive home).
Lyric of the Day: “The path that I’m walkin’, I must go alone,” Big Girls Don’t Cry, Fergie
OK, so I wasn’t walking alone today. On Dash Day, however, I will be. Even in the company of thousands of other participants – five of whom actually signed up with me – I will be running up that ski hill alone, at least in physical terms. There is no joint effort, I was thinking as I strode up the hill. No working together over the haystacks and through the mud. What about the emotional teamwork, though? What about the fellow racer who says, oh come on, you can do this… Well, I guess we shall test that theory, won’t we?
I have to admit that a mood of camaraderie, anticipation and subtle competition is buildingbetween my Warrior compatriots and I. These last two days the email have begun to fly between us: will the men defeat the women, would a kilt or tin foil would be appropriate race-wear (there is a costume contest), and holy cow, the weather forecast said it was to be how hot?
Appropriate, then, that it was twenty-eight degrees today when we arrived at Horseshoe. The Warrior Dash Team was there, too, unloading materials for Dash Day: bright orange Port-o-Potties by the dozens, peaked white rental tents, endless miles of metal fencing. There was a mini-excavator digging the trench that promises to be the race-end mud bath and heavy equipment carrying hay bales uphill. We wandered around contemplating what ski-hills might be the dreaded Hell`s Hill and which path might be the one that would carry us through the woods. The biggest challenge of the day may well be avoidng traffic (6000 participants en route on a two-lane road? Uh good luck with that) and finding a parking spot.
My husband jogged much of the way, but I walked, taking my time to investigate possible paths and consider where the shade might fall, intent on resting my irritable right knee. I finished up with an ice pack and the knowledge that in a few days time I will know whether three weeks of training is enough to make a Warrior, enough to reach the finish line intact, if a little muddy.