Spartan races.
A Spartan "Beast" Race is a 14-15miles race thru the dense vegetation and 35ish obstacles with thousands of participants. Yes, thousands. Most of the obstacles are pretty damned challenging. An obstacle could be, for example, 4x 8' walls that you have to climb over by leaping up, getting some fingers over the top, and hoisting yourself up and over. Another obstacle might be to take a 75lb piece of tree and hustle down a 100yd trail and then back up. Later you'll do the same sort of thing with a sandbag. Some of the obstacles are so hard as to be practically impossible.
There's lots of steep downhills to go flying down, rocks and roots looking to trip you up with every stride. One bit of bad luck and you go sprawling, at full tilt, and maybe some branch sticking up spears you in the gut. The uphills were often so steep I had get down into 4 limb drive to pull myself up.
I got dragged into my first Spartan Race in 2016 by Savannah buddy Jeff Matthews. I wasn't so sure how it would work out because I was just coming off 6months of achilles problems so no running. So, of course last year the last several miles of the race were a death march.
Every time you blow an obstacle you get sent to the "Burpee Pit" for 30 Burpees, which are, somehow, much harder than they seem. You get down and do a pushup, then get back up and do a little jump while clapping your hands over your head. Kind of a combo push up and then a deep knee bend as you stand back up and do your little jump. 30 Burpees are an ass kicker. Do a couple sets of those and the added wear on your reserves of strength makes the obstacles a lot harder. Fail more obstacles and you do more Burpees. Doesn't take long and you're in a death march.
To my very great surprise, despite many decades of running and cycling, the hardest part of the Burpee for me was the deep knee bend. Fitness is darn specific.
Last year the burpees wore me out so badly that in the burpee pit, after the last obstacle I blew, I was reduced to doing my 30 burpees in sets of 2. Sets of 2! But I was just so exhausted last year.
Last year was rough because I was in the "general public" class of about 5000 people. My start group of ~150 was near the end of that start group so over the course of the race I had to pass 4981 people (I came in 18th). Passing people was brutal because most of the course was thru heavy vegetation so I was constantly hollering "ON YOUR LEFT" as I dodged off and tried to get by people. I must have hollered "on your left" 10,000 times. Having to constantly dance off trail as I ran by made the race much harder because of the additional concentration necessary to watch my footing, and it added a lot of risk.
After the race I, unwisely, started thinking "if I trained for this damned thing, I could probably do pretty well". So in Nov16 I signed up for the Nov17 race.
9 months later I started doing some Spartan specific training to prep for the 2017 race. Mostly lots of Burpees, which I immediately grew to loathe. I spent some time hanging from things to build grip strength and prepare for obstacles that would require that sort of thing. I bought a couple bags of rocks from Home Depot. One bag of rocks replicated a sandbag, and the other bag of rocks got put into a Home Depot bucket, both known Spartan "carry heavy thing" obstacles. Then at night I carried them around the neighborhood, my lunacy cloaked by darkness. Finally, I made a "Spartan Spear" and practiced with it. The Spear throw, getting it to stick in a distant hay bale, being one of the obstacles I failed the first year. I was determined to do as best I could in the obstacles because each failed obstacle meant losing a lot of time and getting worn out in the burpee pits.
The 2017 race.
I raced in the "Competitive" category, where folks are serious. It was an absolute delight not having to battle to pass 4981 other competitors in the heavy vegetation. I was in the first start group of ~1300 serious competitors so I probably only had to dodge past, in the heavy vegetation, no more than 50.
My running was much better. I ran pretty hard for the whole thing and then got surprised by the finish, thinking that we had a couple more miles to go.
I blew 3 total obstacles so 90 total burpees over the course of the race. It was painful to lose a bunch of time doing burpees because of the failed obstacle, but 2 of the 3 were so hard that I wasn’t even close to being able to do them. All my failures were in the last mile of the race, a problem because not only does failing an obstacle burn thru reserves of upper body strength, but the follow on Burpees are just brutal.
