I did the Spartan Beast 12+ miles with 30+ obstacles. I had so much fun doing this race last year that I immediately signed up for it again. Last year I was nervous because I didn't know what to expect and this year I was nervous because I knew what it was like and I felt underprepared. Then Josse's friend Tie said the race was harder this year, she works with the Spartan team, and she was right. The trails were steeper and the obstacles more exhausting.
The route and order of the obstacles was all different this year. Lots of steep trails, climbing walls, crawling under things and through muddy trenches, dragging heavy tires and cinderblocks, flipping tires, carrying sandbags, carrying cinderblocks, carrying buckets full of rocks, climbing ropes and rope ladders, crawling under barbed wire, walking on poles, etc. If you fail and obstacle you have to do 30 burpees and your chest had to touch the ground. I failed four, falling off the poles, my javelin throw missed it's mark by inches and I couldn't climb the two ropes.
On my last set of burpees less than a quarter mile from the finish my sister Sandra was standing next to me yelling, "Come on, you can do it. Speed up, this girls doing her burpees twice as fast as you." On about 20 I said, "I feel like I'm going to cry." Then I rolled and crawled under about a 100 yard stretch of muddy barbed wire, climbed another wall, ran through fire and past the gladiators banging you with big poles and across the finish line. I put my arms in the air with a feeling of gratitude I was even able to do it and at the same time felt very glad to be done.
The Elite men started 15 minutes before the Elite women so I never saw my brother. He finished 15 min before me beating me by 19 seconds. I wish we could have done it together. The first thing I said to him was, "This was so hard." He agreed, it was harder than last year. My arms were so tired I could hardly lift my banana to my mouth. I rode home in a daze, saying, "It was so hard Brent, It was so hard. I can't believe I did that." Then I said, "I don't think I'll do it again next year," and my husband said, "Well good, you got that out of your system."
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