Spartan Beast 12 + Miles and 30 + Obstacles! This race was awesome! My brother Mark talked me into doing it. As we stood at the starting line of the "Competitive Heat" with 300 other "Spartan's," the announcer yelling, "Who are you?" and the crowd yelling, "I AM A SPARTAN!" my heart was beating so fast and I wasn't sure what I had gotten myself into. I've never felt so unsure of myself at a starting line and realistically didn't know if I would finish.
The race was three different loops, 90% on trails, approximately 4 miles each with multiple obstacles each mile, climbing over walls, crawling under things, muddy trenches, carrying heavy things, monkey bars, jumping along a stretch full of tires, balancing walk along poles, shooting a quarter from quite a distance, and a lot of crawling in mud under barbed wire (the longest stretch probably 100 meters uphill). If you fail and obstacle you have to do 30 burpies.
My sister Tracy (www.tracyandersonphoto.com) although wedding photography is her specialty, came to the race and took some awesome pictures:
The long muddy uphill stretch!
This part seemed to take forever and I wished I had elbow and knee pads. I'm pretty scraped up.
Mark was faster at the obstacles, but I'm a faster runner. We were near each other for the first two loops. Kept seeing each other at the obstacles.
The third loop had longer stretches of more running and that's when I passed a lot of people.
Actually feeling really good here at about mile 11. At this point I had only done one set of burpies when I couldn't climb the 25 foot rope out of the water filled mud pit that went up past my knees. My javelin throw right near the end came up short, another set of burpies, and I fell off the wall with little 2" x 4" wood hand and foot holds that we had to scale along the side off, another set of burpies. These were ugly burpies with some stopping and standing after every 5 or 10. I was glad I had managed to complete so many of the other difficult obstacles as I was doing those last burpies only a few hundred yards from the finish line. Of course I then had to go through another long muddy barbed wire stretch, a few more mud pits and past the three big men with padded poles knocking people down as they ran toward the finish line.
Here is me and my ever so supportive husband.
My brother Mark and I at the finish. Huge sense of accomplishment. It was so hard and I was glad to be done, but I immediately thought, "I can't wait to do this again next year." It was the most fun I've had in a long time. I was just going for a finish and it was awesome. However, when I realized how close I was to being in the top three I wished I would have pushed it more. Next year I want to win.
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