The Marine Corps Boot Camp Challenge Obstacle Course kicked my ass. I was going to do a blog post where the title is “Marine Corps Boot Camp Challenge” and the body of the post is “I don’t want to talk about it.” That’s it. But Vicky told me to blog my experience because in the very least, I did it, I finished the course, and how many people could say that? “Uh, like a thousand this year,” I told her. =P Mr. W pointed out that of the thousand, there were many who finished after me, and even some who had to be taken care of by the paramedics on-site.

This was the worst race I’d ever run. I’ve felt bad in my own practice runs in the past, but I was never this far off the game in an actual race before, and that includes the Disneyland Half-Marathon that I ran without training for in which I developed a blood blister under a toenail and eventually ended up losing that nail. THIS race, I had to run while my period was going on. THIS race, I was anemic AND out-of-practice for after a week doing nothing in Hawaii. If you’re a distance runner you know about the first minutes of feeling like crap during a run, and then establishing and maintaining your rhythm where your body works efficiently with your breathing and you feel like you can run forever. I never got there in this race. After the first eighth of a mile, you hit three consecutive hay stacks you’re supposed to leap over as drill instructors yell at you to move it you lazy slow maggot. Mile two, you hit the obstacle courses all the way until you have about a half mile left of the race. The first obstacle was a series of hurdles, made of thick round logs and at a height of about my chin level, so I had to hurl myself over the top with one leg, swing my other leg over in a pirhouette and twirl off the log onto the next log, for about 5 consecutive logs. And then there were the over-under-over-under obstacles, and tunnel crawls. There’d be a 6-foot stack of logs you had to go over, then upon landing after jumping off, you run 5 feet to crawl under a cargo net as instructors scream at you to hurry up on the other side with encouraging words like, “Well you aren’t FIRST, let’s just put it THAT WAY! That’s great, just HOLD UP EVERYBODY ELSE! THAT’s a good strategy! When I talk to you I need to see your MOUTH OPEN IN A RESPONSE! It’s SIR YES SIR!” They pretty much didn’t pick on me, but one did yell at Vanessa, “TODAY, ladies, TODAY! Get OVER it, TODAY!” and with her Navy military training, she yelled back, “SIR, TODAY, SIR!” as I rolled my eyes at the drill instructor. Good thing he didn’t see me, I could only imagine what he would’ve said to me, considering this other time when one was yelling at another girl, Vanessa smiled and the DI caught her and ran next to her, yelling, “What are you smiling at? DO YOU FIND THIS FUNNY?!” “Sir, no, sir!”

It was a very, very humbling experience. I had an incapacitating pain in the midst of the course that felt like sharp cramps on either side of my stomach, and a few steps farther, the pain permeated my body and I felt it through to my back. I was afraid my kidneys were going to burst. All my organs were twisting inside of me. I had to slow to a walk as I gasped. Vanessa never left me. I remembered back to the beginning of the race, when we were standing by the start line after all the individual men had started and we were waiting for the individual women to start 15 minutes later. She turned to me and said, “If I die out there for ANY reason, keep going.” I’d told her, “If I die for any reason out there, call 9-1-1!” Little did I know how close I’d come, or so it felt.

Oh yeah. Fox holes. Deep holes in the ground, about 3 feet deep, 5 feet wide, you simply jump in and then jump back out the other side of and then continue on the course. There were water hoses and sprays, but no mud in the fox holes. The freakin easiest thing on the whole course was the pushup stations. You do 10 boy pushups (on toes) or 20 girl pushups (on knees). All the women around me did boy pushups cuz who wants to waste time doing 20 when you can do 10 and move on?

Vanessa’s boyfriend Jay and Mr. W kicked ass. They crossed the finish line together in about 25, 26 minutes. Vanessa mentally prepared me for a sprint-ending with “You ready? You ready?”, which we did and we turned the corner and burst through the finish line at full-on sprint when the clock read 45 minutes, so taking into account the 15-minute delay at the beginning of the race as they held all the individual women back to give the men a 15-minute lead, Vanessa and I did the 5K course in 30 minutes. Ouch.

I never did see Dwaine, tho, and as of right now, he’s still missing. I’ve left him a ton of voice mails on his phone and did not get a callback all weekend. =P