Spartan Race Recap

On August 18^th I drove to Calgary with a couple of coworkers to run in the Spartan Race.

First off- NEVER RUN THIS RACE WITHOUT TRAINING! And I mean this. I did a sprint triathlon without training  last year and this was harder.  I meant to train all summer but somehow never made the time to make it happen and I paid for it.

Again, I’m waiting on photos to show all the different obstacles but I’ll share a few details now.

Dusty Hills- The first half of the race was running with a few obstacles here and there. It was all hills. Dusty (we ran on a motocross track), STEEP hills! I swallowed so much dust and walked so much on the first half. I kept repeating in my head “Fun! You thought this would be fun! You idiot! Are you having fun?” The answer to which was “No.”

Monkey Bars- I made it out two bars and fell down. Embarrassing much? This should have been an easy obstacle. In the Spartan, when you can’t complete an obstacle you have to do 30 burpees. You should have seen how bad my burpees were getting toward the end.

Mud Wall Jump- I was very proud of myself on this one. The women’s wall is 8 foot high with a skinny beam to fit a toe on near the bottom. It’s on the other side of a huge mud puddle so it’s covered in mud. I was stoked when I was able to pull myself up on the first try. Probably my proudest moment of the race.

Balance Beam- This obstacle was super easy for me because of my years in gymnastics. I couldn’t believe how much some people were struggling.

Water Slog- We did quite a bit of slogging through crotch-high water. On the last stretch of the water slog I tripped and fell in all the way up to my neck. I hopped up and looked around for a camera, sure enough there was one right there so I struck a pose and kept going as if nothing happened.

Rope Climb- I could never climb the rope! Not in gym class or gymnastics as a kid, I am hopeless at this obstacle. It doesn’t help that they have you start over a pit so the rope is swinging as you try to climb it.

There were several more obstacles, but these are the few I remember most.

In the end, I am very proud of myself for doing it.  I finished in 1:09 which, well, is not a good time at all. But I had expected to do a lot worse. I’ll do it again next year, but this time I’ll train. Man, it sounds like I end a lot of my race recaps with those same fateful words.