I Are Spartan

     A few weeks ago I participated in my first Spartan Race.  It was a Super, an 8-10 mile 25+ obstacle trek that ended up taking my teammates and I almost 6 hours. I'm not going to lie at first I thought it would be a horrific experience.  In fact most of the way through I was not convinced that it was a particularly good idea on my part.  Let me break down why I thought it was such a horrible life decision.

1. 8-10 miles.  This should have been enough.  This is cardio. I don't cardio.

2. 25+ Obstacles.  Most of which I had no experience in. On top of that if you fail an obstacle you have to do 30 burpees...that's alot of burpees.  See previous cardio comment.

3. It was at a ski resort which means it is essentially straight up hill.  Ski resorts were meant to go DOWN not up! That's why they have lifts!

I was right for some of it.  It was cardio.  However, it wasn't awful cardio.  It being uphill most of the time played to my teammates and my strengths.  We were all, generally, more sprint trained than endurance trained and had a pretty decent ability to go hard for about 30 seconds and then recover very quickly for another hard bout.  The obstacles were more strength based than we had expected so we did much better on them than we expected.  It drove the point home for me that being strong is infinitely more important than being able to run a million miles.  I've never had a time in my life where I NEEDED to jog, but there are many instances where I've needed strength.  Important things I realized during this race:

1. Go with a team.  Seriously, it makes the trek more fun plus you can teamwork all of the things including the burpees.  This makes the burpee told much less overall.

2. Pack snacks.  Many people had a camel back for water and/or some way to carry gels, snacks, or other intra-workout supplement.  I DO NOT recommend putting packets of gummies in your sports bra as you will pop them when you do your burpees.  Though it was one of the funnier points of the race for us.

3.  ENJOY YOURSELF.  It's a fun time! Smile for the pictures.  Work hard. Enjoy the experience.  Cuss at the hills, at the obstacles, at the burpess, but try to remain jovial throughout.  Its a process. No sense in being miserable through it.

Below are some pictures from the race I found.  In truth I was waiting for them to come out before I made this post.  Enjoy.

And yes. I am totally doing another one, a sprint this time.  If that goes relatively well my teammate and I are probably going to finish the trifecta and do a beast (the longest). It will be fun to see how much we improve over this endeavor. :) Happy Training! Take care!