While waiting for the next Spartan race in the area, I took my beloved wife with me to the Tennessee Warrior Dash this past weekend.  It was her first obstacle race and she was slightly nervous about what the experience would be like.  Like me, she doesn’t run and hadn’t run even the short 3.2 mile distance in almost a year.  I know what kind of shape she is in and the amount of competitiveness in here so I had absolutely no doubt she would do well.  However, there wasn’t much that I could say to convince her of that fact.  We lined up near the front of the 2:30 heat and I told her that when we were 2 or 3 minutes from start time I did not want to talk anymore (had to get in the zone).  When we reached that point, I told her my favorite saying before a race “Let’s go compete”!  Compete she did!

I’m a lone wolf runner and will only run by myself and she is of that same caliber.  I didn’t see her again until she reached the final fire jumps and mud pit crawl at the end.  When she came out of the finish area with her muddy legs, water, and banana, beneath the look of post-race exhaustion, I could tell that she was happy.  I asked her if she enjoyed it and she exclaimed it “It was awesome!”  At that point, I knew she was hooked and would be ready to start preparing for the Spartan Sprint in Marseilles, IL next month.  She told me how she rocked the obstacles on the course and had chicked several guys along the way.  She really liked how she impressed some people as she motored over the walls.  There was one story about how she had been going back and forth with a guy and girl for awhile until she decided that she had enough.  She proceeded to run off and leave them!  She placed 58/716 in her age group and 450/4642 of all females.  Remember that this is the first time that she had run this far in a year.  Before we even left the grounds she was talking about how she wanted to train with me for the Sprint…..hill sprints, lunges, honey badger crawls…she doesn’t care.  She just wants to get better.  The whole point of this story is that in about another month, Carrie Adams, you will have a brand new Spartan Chick on your hands!  You can read about the race from my vantage point at this link.