Spartan Race

Event Date: August 16, 2014

I missed out on this summer's Zombie Survivor race because we were in Africa in July.  I had so much fun at last year's event, that I wanted to do another adventure run in August and that's when the Spartan Race presented itself.  My running mate from the zombie race, Rob, and I both signed-up for the Spartan Sprint, which is a 5km run with 15+ obstacles.  In hind sight, deciding to enter an adventure race 10 days after a month-long vacation may not have been the smartest idea, but I had already committed, so I was running it no matter what!

I was more than a little anxious the morning of the race since I only had a few training runs under my belt.  It was comforting to know that Rob had spent close to a week in Seattle watching Mariners games and eating hot dogs the week before the race, so we were basically on the same page fitness-wise.  

The race was held at the Wild Rose MX Track

We arrived at the track and learned that there would be 18 obstacles throughout the 5km course.  The consequence for skipping an obstacle, or leaving one incomplete, was 30 burpees; a fairly harsh punishment considering the number of obstacles.  After a brief spartan-themed pep talk from the master of ceremonies, our 200-person heat left the starting gate at 10:30AM.  We were off...

Just one of the 18 obstacles

Finishing the sandbag hill climb

Crawling through the mud under barbed wire

It turned out that Rob and I had to do burpees on the same two obstacles.  We didn't get our spear to stick into the hay-bale and we were unable to complete the rope climb, which resulted in separate sets of 30 burpees.  The worst part was that these were the final two obstacles on the entire course and we were pretty tired by that point.  

Happy to be done the burpees and finishing the race

Jumping over the fire that marks the finish to the Spartan Race

All of the Spartan Races are professionally timed using a timing chip attached to each participant's wrist.  All of the statistics are posted on the Spartan website after the race, so you can see how you finished and where you placed.  Rob and I crossed the finish line at the same time, completing the race in 1:01:24.  I placed 961st out of 3,181 participants in the open (everyone) category, 712th out of 1,627 for my gender, and 34th out of 89 in my age group.  Not too bad, considering I barely trained for this event.  I really enjoyed the Spartan Sprint and I'm already looking forward to next year's race.