Spartan Sprint

It was a beautiful fall day in Vermont a few weekends ago.  My best friend Dani and I lucked out because the day before was a bit chilly and the day after our race was cold and rainy.  Dani had asked me about the race about a month before it took place and I agreed quite quickly.  Guess I should have read the website a bit better since it was tougher than a Tough Mudder or Warrior Dash (their claim and I am not sure since I've not done either).

The race started with us having to tackle our first obstacle before even getting to the starting line.  We had to basically hop a barricade into the starting corral.  After that the race started and we jogged across the slight uphill at the base of the mountain through a smoke making item.  Shortly into the race we had a few more barricades to go over or crawl under before making our way up the blue ski slope followed by the black slope.

 I was feeling pretty good climbing the mountain.  It wasn't that bad.  Many people were stopping to rest and we figured there was no way we'd have to go all the way to the top, that was for the crazy people in the Beast race (8+ miles instead of our measly 4+ miles).  We were wrong.  The sprint went all the way to the top of the mountain and then immediately most of the way down.  It was so steep we basically had to crab crawl a good portion down.  Then we were slowed by a single trail through a small wooded area that was pretty gnarly.

I cannot remember the exact order of the rest of our obstacles but we had more than enough walls to climb over.  I helped Dani over most and then was able to get over them by myself.  One of the walls slanted back so you were almost upside down and had to get over the top.  I was so sick of the walls at this point.  Next up was a 5 gallon bucket filled with what we were told was 50 pounds of cement.  We had to use a pulley to get it to the top of a contraption and then lower it back down.  If you "gave up" you had burpees to do.  Later we had to drag a hunk of concrete down a small hill and back up.  The concrete was oddly shaped and was ready to take out some ankles.  We encountered monkey bars that were "up and down."  Reminded me of being a kid on the playground.

At some point I got super excited and started to sprint towards the rolling mud obstacle.  The people around us groaned loudly at my, "that look like so much fun."  It was a short, steep set of hills (3 or 4) in a row with a mud puddle at the bottom that was chest deep.  Dani and I had a blast jumping from the top of the little hills into the water pit and sprinting back out.  Then came torture.  Torture started out fun and quickly became not so much fun.  We had to basically army crawl under a barbed wire for 150 meters.  Fun until they decided to fill the mud pit with oversize rocks so you really couldn't "slide."

I was quite excited to finally be out of the barbed wire pit only to be frustrated quickly by our next obstacles.  We were given one chance to throw a spear into a bale of hay.  We both failed so we had to do 30 burpees.  That sucked a lot and I thought my arms would fall off.  Basically they had us do a squat thrust with a push up in the middle.  Ouch.  We finished our burpees and turned the corner where I saw a series of walls and verbalized my disapproval to the woman volunteer about how we should be allowed to skip it since I've gone over enough walls and I am not going to make it over since my arms are about to fall off from burpees.  Fortunately we only had to rock climb across (traverse) to the bell at the far end.  If we fell off it was burpee land for 30 of those evil little buggers.  I did not fail but Dani did since she is short and the "rocks" for traversing were really far apart.

We jogged through some more trail in the woods before seeing the finish line.  Before we could sprint for it was had to enter another chest deep mud pit with barbed wire over our heads and pull ourselves out with a rope onto a slippery and slanted slope (over the top and down the ladder).  And then we had to jump over some hot coals/fire pit.

We had a lot of fun and it will probably go down as the slowest 4+ miles that I ever run.  Not sure exactly how far it really was but I learned that I am stronger than I thought I was.  I figured I would have been pulled off the course or struggled terribly with all the strength activities on the course.  I survived and had a great time with my best friend.  We are event talking about doing another one together.