I did the Spartan Race today. This one was their “lightest.” It’s Called the spartan sprint. Its 3 miles of rock climbing, wall scaling, mud crawling, fire hopping insanity. Being that I havent even been to flywheel in a while, and I am not in the best of shape, this was an ambitious move for me.
My wife wanted to go, and we were meeting up with some friends. I sort of assumed that at any point, I could just throw up my hands and call it quits. Which turned out to not really be the case. When you are 1000 feet in on a 2000 foot rock scramble, quitting doesn’t really mean anything.
So, How did I get through it? I took a few small shortcuts. I did everything that I physically could, and I paced myself. Im scared to see what my actual numbers are. But they don’t really matter.
What I “cheated” on:
- Running. Running up the initial hill. I realized that I shouldn’t have even tried to do that as a run about 50% in. So, after I cornered off to the side and wheezed for a few minutes, I cut over to the other portion of this obstacle, omitting roughly 50% of it.
- Wall Climbing. I made it over one, under a few. Most of the walls tho turned out to be too much for me.
- Horizontal Wall Climb. I dont actually believe that this is humanly possible.
- Rock bucket. This one kicked my ass. I only got 35% done with this. I filled my bucket to 75% as per instruction.
What I did:
- Rock “Scrambles”. Going up an IMMENSLEY steep hill, via nothing but rocks. Rocks and trees. This wasnt hiking. This was borderline rock climbing. There were 3 of these, the last being the most grueling (probably about 3/4 of a mile, very steep)
- Rock Pull (just pulling rocks with a rope. not sure why)
- Barbwire Crawl. Going through this tiny little hole into a tiny little barbed structure, and then crawling my arse through the entire thing.
- Javelin Toss
- Balancing Beam.
- Fire Jump 1
- Mud Slide. Essentially going down a long ski slope that has water running through it. Much harder than it sounds.
- Yoke. I had to tow some crate full of stuff over a trail and then hot coals. JIKES!
- Mud Barbwire Crawl
- Wall of ropey thingy. Some 40 foot tall structure where you climb ropes up, climb em down.
- Soapy Rope Clime. I MAINTAIN that I met this challenge.. Even tho I fell off 4 times and MIGHT have cracked a rib. I tool a slick two rope approach.
- Mud, Ice and Barbwire crawl. Yeah, cause, ice made it so much better.
- Fire Jump 2. At this point, I didn’t give a %$#@. I just walked through. it was a much bigger fire. It was hot. I didn’t care.
- Gladiators. I walked right through them. I think they pitied me. or were scared off. Im going to go with scared off.
What I got:
- a shiny, fairly heavy medal that shows I completed the race
- a twisted ankle (nothing serious)
- 16 tiny little cuts. Mostly from barbed wire
- soreness, everywhere.
- A feeling of bad-assery.
Overall, a great time. Also allot of pain.
My group hung back long enough for me to catch up, on numerous accounts. Probably for much more than they would have liked.
Quitting takes more work than continuing, in allot of cases.
http://www.spartanrace.com/