Warrior Dash in Sagamiko Japan

Warrior Dash, a set on Flickr.

I politely declined my friend Dan's invitation to take part for free in Japan's first Warrior Dash. But I got signed up somehow anyway. I was dreading it. There was a typhoon scheduled for Saturday — phew, an out! But alas, it fizzled. Nobody on our team got injured during the week. No train wrecks on the way out there. No last-minute earthquakes when we arrived. No choice! We had to do the 5K obstacle course! This was my mindsest. So I am surprised to say this: It was a lot of fun!

We jogged maybe a third of it and walked the rest. That's fine. It's not too competitive. Everyone is chipped, but it's not obvious how you find out what your time was. Jim was tracking it independently, and put us all at about an hour and 20 minutes. (There were lines at a few of the obstacles.) His satellite watch also pegged the course at a little over 4K. I'm fine with calling it five! We weren't sure how much mud to expect. The muddiest part, where you crawl through a tank of dirty water, is optional. You had to make an effort to get really dirty. Some did: One shirtless guy belly flopped into a stinky mud patch in the festival area. Whooohooo!

The front end was well organized. There was a marked bus at Sagamiko train station to the venue. Sign in was easy, and they had a decent system for stashing your change of clothes. The start was casual. We missed our assigned time and just headed to the corral for the next block half an hour later.

The race itself was also very smooth. There seemed to be plenty of chipper staff at the obstacles and spread out along the trail. I'd love to have had another water station or two. We got an overcast day. More water would have been a must if it had been any hotter — especially considering what a pain it was to get a drink afterwards.

The back end felt like a disaster to me. The worst obstacle of all was getting to the food. There were way too few food trucks, and lines for a chicken leg or steak plate (no veg options) were an hour long. Unacceptable! Especially when bringing in your own food is prohibited. There was a complicated money system that felt like a rip-off. You have to stand in one line to exchange your cash for "warrior bucks" and only then get into the food lines. Unused warrior bucks could not be traded back for money. Hungry, tired people were standing in the food line for ages and then finding out the hard way that their cash was no good there. You also got one free drink. I saw someone try to exchange her free beer card at a food stand that was selling beer, but that stand was only taking scrip. The beer cards had to be exchanged at the drink trucks. Are you kidding me? For 80 bucks (the fee people paid to participate [!!]), I want them to hand me my beer and chicken leg at the finish line! More or less, you know. Just make it easy. There seemed to be plenty of shaded tables to sit at once food was finally procured. That was good.

And then getting out of there! There was a shuttle bus to the parking lot. The attendant said it would be an hour wait. (The buses back to the train station seemed better — but we were headed for an onsen where the shuttles were going to get cleaned up.) We walked the 40 minutes instead, in true warrior fashion.

Overall, the race was a lot of fun. There were a few obstacles that I thought I couldn't do (4-meter vertical rope wall!) but then did, and that was a rush, as promised. I would not want to pay what they're charging to do it. And I'd be furious at how hard it was to eat and get out of there if I'd paid full price and run it seriously. (Sounds crazy to put "seriously" in the same sentence as "Warrior Dash mud run," but there were some people definitely going for broke.)

Should you do the Warrior Dash? Sure! It's worth it if

• You like doing active stuff
• You like getting out of town and doing something different
• You're into fun runs, costumed or not
• You like mud (It had rained a lot recently. I'm not sure what Warrior Dash's plan B is if they're cursed with nice weather)
• You do real races (Jim) and would like to do a race-like event with your non-athletic friends (the rest of us)
• You dig drinking beer in the sun with loud DJ music. (I don't, so this isn't a value-add for me. People seem to like it, though — takes all kinds.)
• You are the kind of rule-breaker willing to smuggle in your own onigiri and Gatorade. (Don't tell them I told you that!)