I AM SPARTA! – Spartan Sprint Rundown

Once upon a time there was a girl who had a VERY busy month and missed the gym all but a handful of times. And then she had to run the Spartan Sprint because she spent good money to sign up for yet another irresistible “sufferfest”, right before which she read this gentleman’s article and became simultaneously intimidated and more confident.

By the time Saturday came, I was feeling fairly confident about my ability to perform the obstacles in the Spartan Sprint, despite having read Scott Keneally’s article about how much tougher it was for him than the Tough Mudder (which for the uninitiated is a 10-12 mile obstacle run replete with obstacles designed to ensure your suffering, such as the “Arctic Enema”, “Electroshock Therapy” and the “Electric Eel”). I knew there were a couple of obstacles that might prove too challenging and result in payment in burpees (i.e. rope climb), but in the end I was surprised at which obstacles gave me the most trouble.

We ran as a team of 4: Buck Furpees (check out the awesome sticker they had with our team name on it, LOL). The race was just over 4 miles and included I-don’t-remember-how-many obstacles. When we arrived to park it was chilly enough to see your breath and we got ready right next to the final obstacle which they were filling with ice cold water into which we would need to fully submerge ourselves in order to go under a wall. The running part of the race was pretty cake, considering the uneven terrain, desert plants, sand and hills. There were one or two up-hill climbs that took my breath away, but I felt pretty good considering my lack of training. I don’t remember the exact order for the obstacles we participated in (and may have inadvertently left a few out), but here is a summary. I’ve linked a couple at the end to videos some bystanders took of participants doing the obstacles (I’m not in them). Here is a Go-Pro video someone took of the first part of the run too.

Obstacles

• low walls (over, under, through x2) – SUCCESS
• monkey bars – FAIL, burpees
• high walls – SUCCESS, with a boost from my teammates
• cement ball carry (60lbs) & 5 required burpees – SUCCESS
• sand bag pull (75lbs) – SUCCESS, I impressed myself on this one! You had to pull a rope to lift a sandbag to the top, then let it down easy to the ground
• rope climb – FAIL, got in the water to try but the knots were just too far apart for me to event attempt it, had to do soaking wet burpees with shoes full of water and mud
• barbed wire mud crawl – SUCCESS, nearly lost my race bib on this one and it was backed up a bit. rolling through vs. army crawl seemed to be most effective. Much less scary than I had anticipated
• castle wall climb (13ft) – FAIL, right here my right calf started cramping really bad. You were supposed to use a rope for support and climb up the side of the wall, which had small ridges your feet could balance in, but I couldn’t put the weight on my leg. I was really disappointed and I did burpees
• sand bag carry (20lbs) – SUCCESS, seriously, 20lbs for women? That was really light, even carrying it up a steepish hill and back
• cement block pull (110lbs) – SUCCESS (barely), thank you to my husband and a complete stranger who helped me. How are you going to have men and womens’ weights for the cement ball carry, sand bag pull and sand bag carry, and not this? I seriously thought I was going to vomit when we were done. This whooped me.
• reverse angle wall – SUCCESS, thanks to my husband and friend Jim, I made it over this one. But it was rough.
• muddy hills – SUCCESS
• higher walls – SUCCESS, this would have been impossible without the small 2-4xs they mounted near the bottom corners
• cargo net climb– SUCCESS
• wall traverse – FAIL, every time I tried to life my leg to place my foot on the foothold my calf started cramping, so I just did burpees
• javelin throw – FAIL, shitty javelins and overall an event that has nothing to do with strength and can’t really be trained for = burpees,
• uphill barbed wire mud crawl and slide into icy water – SUCCESS, calf finally cramped and I got stuck digging my hands into the mud (which they continued to hose down) to stay as far as I had crawled. Eventually my muscles stopped seizing and I made it up and over into the ice bath
• underwater – SUCCESS, had to dunk into the icy water to make it under a wall. This really wasn’t so bad
• wood wall/rope climb – SUCCESS with MUCH help! I actually started out okay on this one, pulling against the rope as I walked up the angled wall, but I started to slip near the top and started to panic, knowing my calf would not allow me to climb it again. Jim, another racer, and I believe a volunteer, helped me swing my leg over the top so I could make it over. THANK YOU a million times over for helping me finish this one!!!
• fire jump – SUCCESS – after everything else, this was nothing, and I knew I wouldn’t catch on fire soaking wet.
• gladiators – SUCCESS – you have to make it past two gladiators with big pugil sticks trying to knock you down. Doesn’t seem like they even tried, but maybe they could see the look on my face…

 Tips

• have an awesome team you can share burpees with. I did some to help my team, but they definitely did more to help me
• don’t stop working out the month before – you’ll need your endurance
• bring energy chews if you think you’ll need them – I wished I had after the cement block pull
• do not chug the protein drink at the finish line – yes, I was hungry and thirsty, but my stomach was not pleased
• do sign up to be notified when you can sign up for next year.

This run also left me with a LOT of bruises, so if you’re some kind of dandy who is gonna cry about it don’t bother signing up. I am black and blue, and red all over!