I did my first Obstacle Course Race in ten years!

All done!

Medal collected. Showered. Clean(er). More sunburnt that I realised (eek!). But all in all, it was a good great day =)

But hang out... that's the end of the story. What happened before that photo, Caroline?

Oh! So glad you asked ;)

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I've been training for months to do an obstacle course race and I finally did one last Sunday. I ended up in a wave with two women I knew and two of their friends, and it was rad!

I loved soooo much about it, except getting muddy, disgusting water inside my body in places it doesn't belong. That was gross 🫣 Past me would have just said, "Suck it up, princess!" but now I value and respect my body more and I could hear my body saying, "What the f*ck are we doing getting in that crap?!"

Still, 95% of the day was AWESOME.

So, here are a bunch of photos taken by the Mister as he followed us around, conveniently staying OUT of the gross, wet, messyness :P

One of the first obstacles of the race.

Was this the easiest thing we climbed over the whole morning? It might have been! That's me at the top, on the right. I'm smiling which means I was having fun. I really like climbing up and over things and there was a LOT of that in this race.

Possibly my favourite photo of the whole morning.

I loved the creativity of this shot. Brad was super clever at following us around and getting into all sorts of spots to get good shots. This was just one of MANY times we had to walk or wade through muddy water that was so murky we couldn't see where we were putting our feet or how deep it was...

Oh, the slide.

I thought this would be fun but very quickly I worked out that I didn't like it one bit. I went too fast and it scared the shit out of me. I hit the water hard and it forced far too much muddy water right up my nostrils, feeling like it filled my scull!

Yuck. Yuck. Yuck.

The mud pit!

It was epically difficult. And epically hilarious. And thankfully I wasn't the only one who found it to be epically ridiculous (in a good way).

Stuck in the mud!

It was THE thickest mud I've ever been in, in my entire life! I seriously wondered if I was going to be able to get out on my own.

Washing off in muddy water.

Things I never thought I'd say: "Oh, yay! Now we can wash off..." in the muddiest water I've maybe ever been in in my whole life :P

Did I mention I love climbing?

There were sooooo many different obstacles to climb. Brad didn't manage to get to everything on the day because some of the course took us miles away! But this was one cool example of something different than I've climbed up in ages.

Up and over.

It's astounding how many different ways tyres can be used to create obstacles. I liked it!

Rope + wall = The strangest walk I've done since my abseiling days.

But in abseiling, you go down and on here you go up! I do have a fondness for ropes =)

This was the tallest wall we climbed over during the race. Holding on tight with my hands, I begin to walk my feet up the sides.

Stepping carefully up the side of the wall.

Hooking my foot on the top.

Throw a leg over!

At the top!

And over!

This wall looked small in comparison!

There was no easy way to get up and over this bar. Every version we tried looked completely unladylike.

More tyres. More muddy water. More climbing.

I liked this one because it reminded me of bouldering. But I was caught off guard when one whole column of tyres moved a LOT more than all the others!

Under the low beams. Over the high ones.

Of course, they had to make it difficult! Still, I appear to be smiling so it must have been alright ;)

Yay! I made it to the top!

Yet another weird obstacle unlike anything I'd ever climbed on before. And I like climbing things so that says a lot about how unique this course was!

Through the mud to get to the shower.

That's me on the left there. This was just one of several muddy, hilly things to climb over with muddy water to wade through to get to the other side.

Running, running, running. We did a lot of running.

There were 60 obstacles spread over 9+ kilometres in this awesome outdoor venue. We stayed mostly together for the whole race.

Everything underwater, except my hands and face.

Eeeek. I DID NOT LIKE THIS ONE. To get through the obstacle, I had to float backwards through the water, under the netting and use my hands to pull me along. There was so little room under there I had to put my ears under the water. And my ears were immediately disgusted by having to be in muddy water. Yuck!

Getting tangled in the swings.

I thought this one would be okay but I got so tangled the first time I fell in the water. I tried again and got stuck in the middle unable to reach anything! But I was determined, so I did a highly unconventional move, got down low, basically in the water to get the next swing, without losing contact with the last one, climbed back up, recommenced and got to the other side. Much to the surprise and congratulations of another of the women :)

Giant pipes for sliding down.

There were some of these kinds of pipes we had to crawl up, crawl down and climb over, but these ones were for sliding down! One of the easiest obstacles.

The look that says it all!

These swinging tyres were hard to get across. But I'm strong and patient, so I did it and it was done :P

In the drink I go!

By this stage, I was really, really tired. My legs are definitely stronger than my arms and I knew, the moment I looked at this obstacle that I didn't have the upper body strength left to do either the rings (which I always seem to fail) nor the bar. The two younger women didn't even bother, as you can see from them walking on the grass to the left ;)

Home straight! And there I go, running up the wall with as much speed as I can!

Up, up, up. I'm determined!

Celebrations at the top of the wall!

I was the first one to get up there and gratefully, with the yelling encouragement of the crowd, I managed to wrangle my way up and over the top. Then, in turn each of the others got up with a little or a lot of help. Except one young woman in the group who is super strong on this and found this wall height so easy she went back again after finishing the race and tried the medium height wall and also did that one easily!

Finish line sprint!

It was fun to be able to finish together like this after helping each other through many of the obstacles in the 2 hrs and 22 minutes prior to this shot.

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And that's it! Will I do an obstacle course race again now that I know how much I dislike hate having muddy grossness forced inside my ears, nose and god-knows-where-else? Maybe. But I might see if I can find a different race with a different set of obstacles, or just do the punishment option (burpees or extra running) for skipping the ones I truly hated.

We'll see.

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Three questions:

1. Which was your favourite photo or obstacle?

2. Have you done an obstacle course event before?

3. If you haven't and you could, would you?

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{All photos taken by the master photographer, @new.things.}