salisboss
RIP Jake 8/17/01-9/21/14
This is spot on man.I think this is an opportunity to introduce myself, since this is probably a thread I frequent the most here on THP...especially since I'm playing less golf than last year. I'm Steve. I'm a Staff Sergeant in the US Army, and while I'm not a very good golfer, I'm a pretty decent athlete. Always have been, honestly. Before I joined the Army 12 years ago I was an active practitioner of Karate, an avid cyclist, and just a pretty fit young guy. The Army introduced me to weightlifting, and some injuries introduced me to lifting weights properly. Funny how that works. I started doing Crossfit about 2 years ago, and stopped about a year ago, for a variety of reasons. I still think developing anaerobic endurance is one of the most ignored parts of overall fitness, and Crossfit is one way to do that, I just don't like some of the bad habits too much of the community has running through it, especially for good athletes like me who also don't compete or don't really want to. Yes, I just said I'm a good athlete. I'm not great, but I'm working on it. The Army says I have to be fit, so I try to be as fit as possible. I've tried a ton of diets, a ton of supplements, and a TON of weightlifting plans since I got into lifting actively about 10 years ago. I'm not trying to say I'm a physical trainer, a nutritionist, or a dietitian. If you consult those guys, please take their word over mine. Most of my advice I try to keep rooted in simplicity without being vague.
OK, so, got home a few hours ago from Phoenix...the Spartan Race has gotten to be an annual event for my family...my kids love the kids event, and this is the second year running I've done the Spartan Sprint. For those who haven't really seen these, a Spartan race is one of 3 distances (Sprint = 3+ miles, Super = 7+ miles, Beast = 13+ miles) with a bunch of obstacles and challenges along the way. The running is almost exclusively on trails, and the obstacles are unknown to the racers until the day of the event, but there are some common themes...Climb ropes, get muddy, climb over, under, through things, cargo nets, carry sandbags, scurry under barbed wire, those sorts of things that were awesome when we were kids. For the record, I don't really like running. Running is the stuff I put up with because they refuse to just put all the obstacles next to each other. Still, I accept it, because it taxes your reserves, especially mentally. I like Spartan Races for a few reasons...they're challenging, but rarely dangerous, and I don't feel like I need a tetanus booster before, during, or after the event. Failure to complete the obstacle results in a penalty (30 burpees). Lastly, there really is a sense of wanting to see people succeed. Even if you run alone, you'll still find yourself cheering, helping, offering encouragement, fist-bumping, and smiling through big stretches of the course.
So I got to the course a bit later than I expected and shuffled into the 1045 start time. There's a big spiel about being a Spartan, blah, blah, blah, and off we go. Temps were in the mid 70's (be jealous), and sunny. I'm glad, because I've done stuff like this in the cold, and it seems like they put some soaking wet obstacle early on to make you miserable for the rest of the course. Instead, lots of sunshine, and the first few obstacles are over, under, through type stuff. I've got more than an hour of head-mounted video to wade through (you don't want to just watch the camera bounce to my running, so I'll have to edit it) but it's all pretty simple. Fun, easy pace for the most part. First mile down inside 9 minutes.
Climbing rope is about technique. Climbing walls is about coordination. You have to be brutally fit to legless rope climb 20'. Go track down your middle school teacher and make her actually show you the right way to foot-lock the rope. Aside from those things, the first 1.5 miles are easy. A couple of obstacles demand some brute force & ignorance -- two of my favorite things -- but otherwise most of the first couple of miles seem pretty simple. At about 2.5 miles in, there's a board where you correspond the last two digits of your bib # to an 8 character code...I do some sign language and repeat it to myself a dozen times before heading back out...technical single-track, monkey bars, more singletrack...and then we get to the bucket carry...fill a 5 gallon bucket with gravel, and carry it a ways. In 9 minutes, I move less than 400 meters. My lower back is lit up, and I hate everything. Fortunately, after that was some mud pits to cool off in. I love mud. I think it's fun. It's sad, IMO, that grown men are fretting about how muddy they're getting, or that they're getting slop inside their shoes. I think it's awesome. But it's over all too soon, and they want me to recite that 8 character code. Simple enough, and then some more wall-climbing things, and a sandbag carry.
As flippant as I'm making this sound, I am gassed. The alternating between aerobic and anaerobic, along with the mental focus of coordinated movement, is brutal. It's supposed to be. Nothing about these things is too terribly difficult individually. Collectively, it's a fight. I have no idea how much longer it is or what obstacles are left. But I'm confident I can handle them. Don't let things psyche you out. Only stable failed involved going from one vertical rope to another as a sort of Tarzan swing. I grabbed a rope funny and ended up splitting open my left pinky (still not sure how) and fell. 30 burpees. Nailed the spear-throw, though. Crawl under some barbed wire, down in some more cool, sweet mud. Jump over some flames into one last mud pit, and that's all.
Overall, I love these things. There are people who will forever remember finishing, and people who will shoot to get a lower time, move faster, have a penalty-free run, whatever. They're an awesome goal. Next year I hope to do a Super in El Paso. Like I said, I'll have some video up in the next week or so. It's always a lot of fun, though a very tough challenge. I know if you live in a bigger city, there are pre-Spartan camps you can attend and do some preparation there, and many gyms offer classes on how to get ready and learn some of the skills you'll need. If I'm gonna play golf in my 70's, first I have to live to my 70's. And that means staying fit in my 30's and 40's.