Mud, Fire and Armour: My First Obstacle Race!

Notice how I’ve never done a triathlon as an Experiment? Or channel swimming? Or deep sea cave spelunking diving?

While I’m really good at pushing myself to try new things, I lean towards trying new things that I think are fun.

And also, if you look at my list, things that don’t involve swimming. We’ve gone over why I don’t like to swim. Short story: I can do it. It’s fine. I hate being wet and cold.

This reticence may not be a bad thing – I’m sure there is an excellent evolutionary reason that I am mortally afraid of deep caves under water – but sometimes my fears keep me from trying something I might really enjoy.

Best case scenario: I find a new adventure to love! Worst case scenario: I get good blog fodder!

And mud up my nose . . . because I am officially training to do my first mud run/obstacle course! It’s called Warrior Dash and it is described as “a mud-crawling, fire-leaping, extreme 5k run from hell.” Well good, because while swimming is not on my list o’ fun, hell totally is.

No seriously though I’m really excited about this. Which is weird because it does look like there is a lot of swimming through mud involved, and if there’s anything I dislike more than being wet and cold it’s being wet, filthy, and cold.

But! I get to climb a big wall (love climbing!), rappel down a cliff (LOVE rappelling!), run through a pile of wrecked cars (love tetanus! Kidding! I just love tetanus shots, one of which I will be sure to get beforehand!) and even jump over a fire (but my hair will be wet so it won’t singe!). Oh and there will be a lot of other crazy people involved which really is my definition of a good time:)

In the remaining time between now and the Dash, while I’ll still be doing different Fitness Experiments I’m going to focus on training to increase my agility, grip strength, sprinting and upper body strength. Oh and my ability to tolerate ick. To help me in my training goals, I’m partnering with Under Armour and their “What’s Beautiful” campaign. This is awesome for three reasons:

1) This is Under Armour! What says modern day warrior better than Under Armour?! It’s actually a part of their name! I’ve long loved their clothes for their durability and versatility (best base layers ever) so I’m excited to put them through some serious work.

2) The What’s Beautiful campaign is all about what we women can do and not about how we look. On their site you see stories from women working to finish a race like me but there’s also a woman aiming for her black belt in karate, a mom determined to “come back from a c-section and a herniated disk” and even one girl who wants to “respect myself and my family.”

Sometimes you see a woman and think wow, she’s beautiful! but sometimes you see what a woman can do and are blown away by a beauty that you hadn’t recognized before.

3. I get to wear cute stuff like these slash capris:

Holy crap I love them so much I want them in every color! (Although I might love them so much I won’t want to wear them in the Dash because I won’t want to ruin them? Hmm.)

And you know how I love my penguin feet shoes and I don’t own any turquoise ones yet so these Charge RC Storms will be perfecto! Of course Under Armour doesn’t want you to be left out of the fun either so you can declare your own personal challenge on their What’s Beautiful site now and enter their competition, where you can win almost $1000 in Under Armour gear!

What Under Armour item are you interested in trying? Let me know in the comments, and you will be entered for a chance to win a $500 Under Armour gift card.

SWEEPSTAKES/GIVEAWAY RULES

Rules:

No duplicate comments.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post

b) Tweet (public message) about this promotion, including exactly the following unique terms in your tweet message: “#whatsbeautiful” “#sweepstakes”; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post

c) Blog about this promotion and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post. To comply with FTC Guidelines (see http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm), entrants’ blog posts must disclose that they are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post.

d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.

This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.

The Official Rules are available here.

This sweepstakes runs from 5/10-5/21

Be sure to visit the Under Armour page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ posts!