Warrior Dashing
Last Saturday was Australia's first taste of the Red Frog Events "Warrior Dash", a "mud-crawling, fire-leaping, extreme run from hell". A merry band of us warriors made the trek - just an hour drive from Newcastle - and discovered an enormous, well organised and super fun event. Perhaps more like a fun, dirty run through paddocks than an "extreme run from hell", but you have to excuse the hyperbolic marketing efforts associated with these things.
On arriving we discovered a huge makeshift arena bordered by a creek on one side and the race track on the other. Marking the entrance to the arena was a narrow bridge, with a constant stream of ridiculously costumed, wide-eyed and keen racers heading in, with an equally constant stream of muddy, dishevelled and grinning finishers heading out. Inside the arena we found the check-in tents and collected a t-shirt, a timer chip, a horned warrior hat and a numbered bib. The arena also sported a tent selling huge turkey legs for gnawing on, a beer tent and a rock band on a stage.
By the time we made the starting line for our half-hour wave there were already hundreds of people lined up ahead of us as we counted down the minutes to 12:30pm. My hangover had been building steadily to this point and reached a particularly unpleasant crescendo just before our race started. Feeling decidedly unwarrior-like, I swallowed breakfast for the fourth or fifth time and did some light stretching.
Soon the flame cannons erupted over the starting line and the crowd shuffled forward. With so many people, adorned in so many awkward contumes, all funnelling through the start gate it was hardly a blistering start. But as soon as I crossed the start line my hang over cleared and I began 2 kilometers of weaving, skipping and squeezing through rows and rows of walking warriors. It proved an excellent chance to banter with a huge number of fellow competitors, if not an excellent chance to get into a stride.
The obstacles that followed included walls to be climbed over, barriers to be crawled under, rivers to be swum and mud pits to be stuck in. There were slippery balance beams, A-frame rope nets and arrays of tyres. Particularly good fun was the series of cars, pairs of which were parked nose to nose, which had to be scaled, slid over or crawled through.
The final two obstacles were the two fire pits and a long, deep, mud pit with barbed wire over it. The mud pit was lined with spectators and one gave me all the encouragement I needed, calling out "dive!" as I approached.
I amazed, and glad, that this photo was captured and identified, because it represents the last second in the life and times of that magic green wig.
After a search through the unidentified photos I tagged another one of me at the A-frame rope nets. While I was searching I was also able to repay the identification favour and tagged one of Byron in the final mud pit.
But of course, the main reason for this post was to offer an analysis of the results of the race. When they were finally posted all that was available was two PDFs, one with results overall and one by age category. Neither PDF offered anyway of grabbing the data for further analysis, so I thought I'd save everyone the trouble and do it myself. Below you can see the distribution of overall race times for all participants. The pattern is quite remarkable I think. I've overlaid my result to give it some context. Congrats to Dyl who smashed it in in 26:04:45.
