THIS IS THE SPARTAN!!!!
To start, let me say this is the single hardest thing I have ever done in my life. More challenging than running the 1/2 marathon, harder than my toughest Taekwondo test, more grueling even than hiking to the top of Deseret Peak or the 18.2 mile round trip up Timpanogos. WE ARE SPARTANS!!!
James says in over 20 years of being an athlete and fighting at an elite level, he feels ACCOMPLISHED having earned our "finisher" t-shirts and medals! :) Thank goodness he was by my side!!! This was absolutely a team event, and I literally could NOT have done it without him! We trained for an entire year, and actually did what we started last year!
The Spartan course is in Soldier Hollow in Midway, UT on the Olympic cross-country site at 5,000 ft elevation, but that didn't help cool the incredible 100-degree heat and still air... the dust and of course, MUD!
Our course was just over 8 miles with STEEP grades up the mountain and down, and of course, up again. I did NOT wear my FitBit as it would've utterly killed it as one obstacle was going under an UNDERWATER wall! (Yes, we had mud....everywhere!) Two days and four showers later I found mud in my right ear still!
We leapt into mud pits, crawled through mud under barbed wire, went over cargo nets, threw javelins, hauled atlas stones... and for every skipped or failed obstacle, the penalty was 30 burpees. To protect my injured shoulder I skipped the rings and monkey bars, and could not complete the rope climb, and much to my utter distress, my spear skiffed off the edge of my target and I ended up doing my 30 penalty burpees. James threw his spear so hard it vibrated the entire target but didn't stick as he hit the frame, so 30 burpees for him too!
The trail portion was single-file and so so so steep both up and down... at some points you just sat down and slid down the trail and tried not to knock everyone down like dominoes. About mile 3 I had brutal heat headache - and we ended up walking and though they had around 6 water stops on the course and we carried water with us in our Camelbacks, there was heat shimmer off the ground and even dousing myself in water didn't keep me cool enough.
At the Monkey Bars, I got 20 burpees into my 30 (for skipping the obstacle - my goal was to avoid wrenching my shoulder...) and I got pretty gaggy... ended up having to lie down in the shade for a bit to recover... then finished my 10 burpees and off we went. However, I was FAR from the only one bent over in the bushes.. even quite fit athletes were struggling with the intense heat. Thankfully I didn't actually throw up, but the heat and exertion both were a lot for most people. And one guy dislocated his shoulder and medical hauled him off the mountain in a dune buggy.... ouch.
As for me, I wasn't AFRAID of any obstacle - though James definitely helped me with a lot of them... like the inverse wall, or the 6', 7' and 8' walls (which were all painted BLACK- YEOW! Sizzling hot!!!) and I helped him with the "Hercules Hoist" - a sandbag pulley and to get over the 8' wall he used my knee as a jump-off point. I also got a butt-boost out of the mud bogs by a very nice gentleman behind me so I could grab James' hand and he could haul me up out of the mud as it was a vertical clay wall and I wasn't able to jump high enough to catch the edge. Spartans work as a team! Even unknown Spartan um... "boosters!" HA!
The vertical cargo net wall, however, did give me a moment where I realized that "Risk of Death" waiver was serious. Here I was 30 or 40 feet in the air straddling about a foot-wide metal frame and my little legs straining to reach over and catch the net on the other side.... and realized I really DID need to watch what I was doing. Just a split-second of being VERY aware, but I obviously got through safely and that was my only point of hesitation. One woman froze over the final obstacle, however, and my very sweet husband sat on the top with her to encourage her to put her leg over, and she finally made it down. But she was genuinely afraid. He is so kind to help her out! (And me! He literally did nearly every obstacle twice - first throwing me over it, and then having to do it himself!!! He's amazing!)
And I learned that I don't really like going under water that you can't see through very much. Not afraid, just don't really like it. I also lost my weightlifting gloves on that obstacle - they were velcroed to my waistband and didn't survive the thick mud. And my sunglasses I threw away after the race as they got cracked and weren't worth trying to save. In all I did 125 burpees (the REAL kind, with a full pushup!) including my 5 mandatory burpees on the Atlas carry.
After dousing ourselves repeatedly (the BEST part was having the spigots they use for snowmaking turned on with glacially-cold water that we soaked ourselves under) and scrambling up, down and through obstacles, we were dirty, gritty, grubby, fatigued and sooooo accomplished!
We held hands and leapt the fire wall at the end to go through the finish line arch, collect our SHINY finisher medals, hose off in the "showers" (freezing cold spray nozzle hoses) and get our SPARTAN FINISHER t-shirts... James wore his to morning workout, but I actually wore mine to work! (I can't wait for casual Friday - and we'll be in the Tetons by then anyway!)
I AM SO VERY PROUD OF US FOR ACCOMPLISHING WHAT WE SET OUT TO DO!!! We came in at 4 hours 15 mins and while I would've loved a better finish time, the point is that we finished - especially given extreme heat and course difficulty. (By comparison, another set of our friends spent 9 hours, 11 mins and 51 seconds on the course.)
I am very excited for them to post our on-course pictures... James was fried and we didn't get our free finisher's photos at the end - which I would have liked... but he did grudgingly stand for a photo at our car (JUST as the blasted clouds rolled in and the wind picked up! MURPHY!!!! It was brutally hot and still the whole time we were on the course!) So for now we only have the photos at the beginning and end as I had to (obviously) leave my phone in the car. I also was sad I couldn't wear my FitBit but I would've destroyed it in the mud.
The obstacles for our course:
1) Mud bogs x3
2) "Over, under, through" set of 3 walls to go over, under and through a keyhole (and the rest of the following mile+ was straight uphill! Though the cactus were blooming! SO PRETTY IN PINK & YELLOW!)
3) Cinderblock chain drag
4) Sled pull
5) Rings
6) Rope climb from moat
7) Hercules Hoist - Pulleys
8) Zig-zag walls
9) Underhand rope climb "Tyrolean Traverse"
10) Atlas stone plus 5 mandatory burpees and carry back (Atlas = big rounded granite stone)
11) "V" cargo net
12) Inverted wall
13) Tire flip
14) Vertical cargo net wall
15) Monkey Bars
16) Underwater wall
17) Sandbag carry
18) Bucket Brigade (carry up and down a hill)
19) Javelin Throw
20) 6', 7' & 8' walls
21) Cargo net & "Comb"
22) Barbed wire mud slide
23) Run-up incline rope wall
24) 7' jump up ladder wall
25) Fire Jump
Next up is training for the elite Sprint - 3 to 5 mile course!
Next up is training for the elite Sprint - 3 to 5 mile course!
BOOYA!
