Race Review - Warrior Dash, Copper Mountain 2014

Warrior Dash.
Warrior Dash, Warrior Dash, Warrior Dash... What can one say that's not already been said?

This was my second go around at this iconic event. We decided to rent a condo for the night, as we felt we missed out on a significant amount of partying last year. And make no mistake, Warrior Dash is a party. This year we even witnessed a group of runners hauling a 1.75 of vodka with them, drinking all the way.

A fair representation of the event.

Much to my disappointment, this was not a timed event this year. The winners were based solely on gun time in the first heat. I guess it makes sense, considering the party nature of this "event" (no longer a race without timing across the board), but even though I can time myself, I do like to see where I fall amongst the other competitors. All that being said, it wasn't a big deal as we ran together with a friend who doesn't run, so we were in do danger of breaking any PRs that day.

It is a pretty place for a party, though.

We had a later heat this year, and didn't get running until about 11:30. The course started same as the previous year and was just about exactly the same except for a few things. The long balance obstacle was absent this time, and a new large climb/net/water slide obstacle was in play and a snowy area about 100 yards long, that was new as well.

Snow field was new, but not difficult.

All went pretty well until we got to the high climb up and over wall. This thing was backed up pretty good and we waited around for a good 10-15 minutes before getting our shot at it. After that it was cruising along pretty good again, up some hills, over some small obstacles, etc. Until we came down through the village, where we knew we were getting close to the end, and ran smack into the largest obstacle backup I've ever seen.

It was at the new super-slide-climb thingy, and there were literally hundreds of people piled up. We hemmed and hawed a bit, then worked our way through the crowd to see what the deal was. Towards the front of the line we got info that the water level had dropped too low and it would be "an hour or two" before they got the obstacle up and running again.

This line went way back, around the corner and down the block.

An hour or two? No thanks. Thus marked an OCR first for me, I skipped an obstacle. As we walked around the impressive looking structure, we saw the finish was literally 20 feet from the water pool exit. This made for a really anti-climatic finish, especially for us. In my opinion, there should be at least a little sprint to the finish line to make you feel like you've earned it.

Looked like it would've been fun.

We walked away feeling a little empty. Our non-runner friend at least got some exercise, but with all the walking and waiting we did, I think Dave put it best when he said "I don't feel like I did anything." It was true, my daily workouts and training runs are harder than that. Granted, it would be different running solo for time, as we didn't really get to push ourselves, but the obstacle backups were depressing, especially skipping one... The biggest one... And the last one.

So what else could we do but drink and eat and drink and drink. So we did. We wandered around the fairgrounds after getting cleaned up, watched some of the stage contests, drink a lot of beers and did a fair amount of people watching. Warrior Dash definitely brings out some interesting people.

Women's push up challenge contestants.

We were actually surprised at how early the crowd petered out. In my mind, I had expected the party to go late, but it was all but done by about 5:00. We wandered back to the condo and hung out in the hot tube with some other competitors and chit chatted and drank (too much) and were all in bed by 9:00.

Final thoughts:
Warrior Dash is a well organized event. It prides itself on the party. It's getting taken less and less seriously by the competitive OCR crowd each year, and the timing removal won't help that. It needs to be run either in a big group of partiers and taken lightly, or sprinted solo. Run late for the former and early for the latter. I had a decent time, but I didn't have a great time. I don't know that I'll run it again next year.