Wow. What a day.

Start...we ran across a field. I said "are we done yet?" and everyone laughed. It was all downhill from there...well, not physically, but maturity-wise. About a mile in, came the "ass tricks" comment and that's where we started gaining fans. One guy was like, wow, are you guys always this crazy and obnoxious...and we said...yep pretty much! He was impressed! The first 5 or so miles were in the dark, it was 630am. We had decided that we wanted to do a 25run/5walk thing, but that went out the window since we didn't actually stop to walk until after the first 10K which took us just over an hour to complete. We stopped at the first aid station, I ate some PBJ's and had some awful Ultima sport drink. Lots of water. We continued on...

Second leg, the first river wade. We were like...OMG we have to walk a half mile down the river? AWESOME! So there we were, not even an hour and 15 minutes into the race and we were wet and muddy. Shoes and everything. Pictures taken, fun fun fun. Then Fit did her fall. Trix was like "Hey Shannon, watch for the poison ivy there." So she did...she watched it too much cuz she tripped and face planted. OUCH. But she got right back up and kept on going! Whoop whoop!!

As the race went on, we hooted and hollered, joked, laughed, picked up some other runners, and came across Bill...an ultra runner from Ohio. He had fallen and we were amazed to see he was still ok. Bleeding, but doing just fine. Then Fit ran into a tree. Bill said a tree ran into him last year in the same way. OK. Yeah.

We ran into the downtown area (if you can call it that...there's like two buildings) of Hell, Michigan and the devil was there to greet us. Yay. We were gonna get a picture with him, but we were on our way too fast.

Every few miles, we'd scream...AMERICA!! F*CK YEAH!! And people would laugh. Then I'd start doing the Cartman stuff. And people would laugh. Then it was Austin Powers...and people would laugh. I think the only person we really freaked out was this one really tall girl. We said something about our DIRT ROAD shirts and I think she just wanted to die.

At the halfway mark we were still happy. That's when we got lost. Leg 7. The name of it was 'THIS SUCKS'. And it did. But it was really pretty along the way. We ran thru this forest of pines, looked alot like a scene from the first Mortal Kombat movie in the forest with Johnny Cage. Well anyway, we kept losing the ribbons, and by the time we joined back up with the right path, there were all these people there asking "where have you been?". Oops. 2 extra miles. Yay us. Up til that point, and I think for a while after, we really were clippin' along...probably 9:30's to 10's. Our averages were from slowing down to walk some hills, the two half-mile river walks, and a lot of climbing.

We thought we got lost again later on, we had been looking for our "ULTRA BYPASS" and we thought we had ended up on the 50 mile course by mistake. Trix and ran down a hill of what looked like wheat, singing the Little House on the Prairie song and right in the middle of it, I was like...uhhhh...where's Fit? Fit? Fit? Hello? Oh shit. Nowhere in sight. Turned out Bill had fallen again and she stayed behind to wait for him. He got up and kept going. Bleeding again. We finally found our bypass.

By mile 20 we were starting to feel the miles. But still happy. Unfortunately there was this horrible false flat road that hurt. But after that, we were happy again. Then, the dirt ladder. OMG. 150 feet almost straight up. The sign at the bottom said "Elevator out of order, use dirt ladder". Yeah, funny. Watch me laugh. So up we went. Quads and calves burning like no tomorrow. Right after that, we went straight down the other side...slid down is more like it.

Mile 23, ready for more river crossings. This time they were waaaaay muddy. Trudge trudge trudge. Still lots of fun. The hills were starting to hurt though. Less being funny than earlier. But we were still stoked. We realized at mile 24 that we still weren't even at marathon distance yet...well WE were, but the race wasn't. Then we got to our last aid station. I was hurting. Bad. My legs were stiff, cold, and my PCL felt like it was just gonna shoot out the back of my leg. My left knee was hurting. Last aid station. Mile 27.1. Holy crap we were in ULTRA territory!! Only 3.9 or so to go! That renewed my mental state, but not my physical. I fought the pain to get there.

On the last leg, the thunder came...and it came loud! It started to drizzle but never really rained hard. The hills seemed harder all of a sudden. It turned out the last leg was the second hardest leg of the race...second only to the first leg. OUCH!! Trix and I decided to run the hills cuz it seemed to be easier than trudging up the hills making our legs hurt. Some were just too damn big to run up after doing 30 miles. We stopped seeing ribbons again. Oh crap. Were we lost? Then we found some people. Bill had gone on ahead but missed the turn we almost missed so we were back together again. We couldn't hear the finish line. Where the hell was it? It seemed to be taking forever. There were alot of trees to run around, alot of branches to climb over, rocks to climb, stuff like that...all a mile from the finish.

Then we heard it. Run faster!! Let's get there! So the four of us banded together again and made a break for it. We came back out to the parking lot where we started. Trix took off! I took off! Bill was ahead of Trix...she tried to catch him. I sprinted with everything I had left but couldn't keep up with Soopertrixie, she's so fast! So she came in about 10 seconds before me. About 30 seconds later, we were screaming for Fit! We all finished within the one-minute span of 6:23:00 - 6:24:00.

What a total blast!!!!

Nothing. This was the best race, best event, best time I've ever had at a race.

When I finished I looked at Trixie and said, completely seriously, "I don't have to run anymore...I don't have to run anymore." She patted me on the back and smiled.

We got our medals, put our names on the standings board...Trix got second in her AG, Fit got third, I got fifth. We all got camping-type folding chairs with the DWD logo on it as our hardware. Yay!

Then we went for some refreshments. They gave us an ENTIRE pizza and some soda. I sat and devoured it. Well, a few pieces and then I just gobbled the cheese off of the rest of it.

After that we went into the lake and washed up. Get all the poison ivy off with Burt's Bees Soap. I wasn't naked. :)

After some socializing, we packed up and headed back to Trixieville.


Uhhhhhhh the fact that it was 33 miles???


I think this was a great race. Awesome organization. The race volunteers were just absolute angels. I can't wait to do this again next year, I had the time of my life. I wish they'd do this one more than once a year.