So a few friends and I did the Warrior Dash 2010 yesterday at Lake Elsinor in SoCal and I must say, it was quite overrated. It was nothing like what the website showed it to be. We went through and got an order of “4 shades darker” and a side of “sun burn”.

Joe Nguyen Upside Down At Warrior Dash 2010

The Course:
Green trees? Absent. Big Obstacles? Non-present. I completely did not expect the 3 mile course to be located in a patch of dried grass with a few crappy obstacles thrown together. It looked like they shoved some beat up cars and haystacks in various locations and had us zigzag through the patch of dried grass to stretch the course long enough to be 3 miles. The fire jump and cargo net climb. Lame.. Big disappointment. There were no staff to direct runners so some headed off course and ended up baking in the sun for a couple miles longer than they had to.

The Staff:
Those that I interacted were good (well the ones that weren’t baking under the sun). They were responsive and helpful. Friendly volunteers as expected.

Area Setup:
In a marketing perspective, this Warrior Dash set up was “Retarded”. You would think they would organize it so that they can maximize their beer sales and tailor to their sponsors, but nope. If you have an event that has 13 waves of 300+ people walking through, organize your booths in a way to maximize its effectiveness. Think about how much money you could have actually pulled in for charity in addition to your ticket sales and $10 parking per car.

The People:
Awesome. There were a lot of people and characters. I saw Willy Wonka and an over-sized Umpa Lumpa, the Braveheart Crew, Mr. Incredible and my favorite, Rambo, who the announcer called out for smoking a cigarette in the field of tall dry grass. Rambo actually had a second on the mic and gave an inspirational speech. It sounded exactly like this:

In the end, if you’re okay with handing over 45 dollars to run in an oven like patch of dried grass under the glaring sun to hop over a few haystacks and play in the shallow end of dirty Pond Elsinor, then this is the gig for you, or if you like Rocky. If not, leave it in your history book. You’re better off putting your money aside and doing the Rock and Roll 1/2 marathon in San Diego.

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