Gladiator Run

The Gladiator Run is, in layman's terms, fucking brutal. It is a 5K that has 20 obstacles throughout the course, including not one but three mud obstacles. I had signed up last minute to do this course with my friend Nikki in an attempt to shed some of the pounds that my strict diet of Chardonnay and Taquitos had caused.
But it's funny how people train differently. Nikki got a good night's sleep the night before... I partied for my friend's birthday until 2am. I then woke up the next morning with horrible cramps and to find another friend curled up behind me in the twin bed so that my face was against the wall. Nikki had a breakfast of fresh squeezed orange juice, coffee, eggs and toast. I grabbed a handful of M&M's and popped a couple of Advil. I highly thought about ditching the race for the comforts of my bed. It was cold out, and all you got out of the race was a free beer and a lousy t-shirt... but I didn't want to flake on my friend so I forged ahead.
We ran the 9:30 heat, and as soon as we took off running I twisted my ankle. This literally happened as I was crossing the starting line. My very supportive friend Nikki started screaming "Are you serious? We just started? Come on! Shake it off!"
The first obstacle was running up and down the stairs at the Irvine Center Arena followed by running through tires and carrying 20 pound bags of sand to a buddha statue. The run itself was hard after a night out on the town, but the obstacles were hellacious. I slid head first into the first mud obstacle that we came to, and was covered head to foot. I imagine that I looked like Will Ferrell in Old School after he got shot in the neck with a tranquilizer dart. I was lunging left and right with my arms in front of me yelling "I can't see. Where am I?" The mud had literally sealed my eyes shut, and every attempt at wiping them only resulted in them becoming re-sealed by more mud. As it started to dry, caked heavily onto my eyebrows and eyelashes, and in my nose, ears and mouth, I could see that I was going to have to army crawl through the mud and under barbed wire to the other side. I dove back in and was immediately greeted by the sweet tingle of hypothermia. The muddy water was freezing! Its funny the things that you think about as you believe that you may be on the brink of death: wow, all of these people cheering me on are about to watch me die... why are the paramedics just standing with their arms crossed and gossiping instead of helping me? Can't they see that I'm not going to make it?... this is never how I thought I'd go. I thought it would be something much classier like in a Vegas hotel room after a drug overdose... and did I turn my hair straightener off before I left my apartment last night?
We finally finished the race in just under an hour and I was exhausted. I got my free beer (I've done much more for a free beer so I took that small present in stride), and then went home to nurse my sore ankle and sleep for 16 hours straight.