I missed getting a beer mug by....

This past Saturday I participated in the Mills Adventure Run with my husband, Travis, and older brother, Mikey. Here are the key facts you need to know about this dastardly race:

• I was able to run the 5k without my arches or knees hurting in the slightest from PF.
• Unfortunately, I completely COMPLETELY COMPLETELY underestimated the rapid deterioration rate of fitness sans running. Apparently when I don’t run for two months, a three mile obstacle race is the equivalent of Badwater. (I don’t know if I’m allowed to ever compare the level of race difficulty between a ‘local fun run’ and something ultra marathoner Scott Jurek called “hell on earth”, but here we are).
• I greatly enjoyed the atmosphere of a small race, approximately 100 people signed up and 70 showed. And of those 70, about 64 of them looked really bada**. I just looked like someone who should have slathered on some tinted moisturizer.
• My brother smoked before and after the race. This fact isn’t pertinent knowledge, but it still blows my mind.
• Mikey also has the worst shoelaces ever, he had to stop and retie them six times in the span of thirty five minutes. Trust me when I say that other runners took notice and murmured in agreement about sailors’ knots.
• The obstacles were much tougher than the 10k Merrell Mud Run in Philly, which surprised me because this event was so low key. An eight foot wall hurdle is quite intimating when you’re only 5’4.
• I assumed someone would be manning a water station at the end of the race.
• Water station? That was adorably naïve.
• I didn’t properly do my race research (yet again) and wasn’t prepared for the water obstacle. I thought it was, at most, treading through ankle deep water – it was actually sloshing through waist high water on slippery rocks.
• I took an embarrassing fall in the water obstacle. Dukes!
• My dad caught the fall on camera. Double dukes!
• The first forty runners across the finish line got awesome beer mugs.
• Naturally, I was #41.

Even though I missed out on the beer mug by one person – some girl, who shamelessly flirted with both my brother and husband, passed me (skaaaaaaank) – I had a great time. My only complaint with the race organization was lack of water at the finish; otherwise it was a pleasantly intimate and well run race. Without hesitation I will run this event again.

I never expected to run the entire race without any hint of pain, much less get so close to being in the top forty (and I’m quite aware that being in the top forty out of seventy is not worthy of an Olive Garden celebration, but that’s a discussion between me and my future waiter). My dad, little sister and brother, were all in attendance as well. Swweeet!

And, for those interested, I did beat my arch nemesis, Mikey. But I’m pretty sure he let me.