If you had me rate this event in the past years I have participated in it, I would have given it 5 stars. I do not know what happened this year. In the past, Warrior Dash has been a well organized, high energy, challening and fun event! The check-in lines were ran smoothly, the course was muddy, fun, and challening, there were volunteers at the finishline to celebrate your finish, hang a medal around your neck, and give you water and snacks, there was a place to wash off, and there was a tent to change in.
This year, we arrived at Warrior Dash, an hour early, as instructed. Then the nightmare started. There were no volunteers to direct parking traffic, so we were left driving through a field hoping we were going in the right direction. We went to the check in tents to only find mass chaos, and a massive..not a line...a massive blob that stretched from the check in tents, through the vendor area, and up to the stage. After 45min of waiting in the very disorganized check-in blob, we moved over to the equally disorganized bag-check blob. Everybody was missing their wave times which sweked wave numbers and caused back ups at the obstacles on the course. The course itself changed this year...not fun or challenging. Since there was a heat advisory for the day, it would have been nice to have water on the course, some water stations were unmanned and there were lines for those too. Once you got through this little trail run, you got to the end where you were greeting by another long line to get into the mud pit from hell. This mud pit killed my time, but could have killed me. It was like trying to make your way through a bottemless pit of tar. People were having panic attacks in the mud pit because it was impossible to move through, you would just keep sinking and sinking. I saw people being pulled out of it, and some people didn't even attempt it.
After you escape death, you go to rinse this drying cement mud off of you, only to find...there is no water! The water trucks ran out of water. So you say, I will just towel off in the changing tents...after circling the event area several times looking for the changing tent we ask a couple of runners if they knew where it was and the responses were "I don't think there is one." There was no changing tent and nobody was ever informed of this! So by this time you are caked in dry cement mud and you wait in line to get into a port-a-potty to try and scrape this mud off of your body and change. Most people were so fed up they skipped the changing and just left.
I feel sorry for those who had to experience this race for the first time this year. This is how the first timers will know Warrior Dash, and this is why many many peopel will not return. It was a horribly disorganized mess! With all of that said, I still had my friends with me, we still had the "brotherhood" on the course wtih warriors helping each other out, and we still mangaged to have fun. Since this was not my first Warrior Dash, I will give them one more chance to bring back the Warror Dash we once knew, and I will return next year.
I'm sure years and years and years from now, during an acriological dig, they will find the bodies of those we lost in the mud pit! read more