The Spartan Beast

Backstory: A couples months ago I posted about working out and how I’ve started to really actually enjoy it over the past year. Then July 24th rolled around and Xav decided that it was time to fulfill his long time dream of running an obstacle race (with me). The only problem was that the Michigan ones all fell on weekends that I had weddings booked. After a little searching, he found a Spartan Race in Indiana in early September and asked if I’d do it with him. I didn’t look it up or do any research… I just said yes since it was one of the only Saturdays I had open. I figured it would be hard, even impossible regardless of if I knew what was involved or not and Xav was fairly certain that we could train for it in 8 weeks. I got home from work that night and he had our running shoes all ready to go by the door. We ran four miles that night and I was positive that we had just embarked on a really bad idea.

Training: The Spartan Race has three main variations: a 5k, a 10 mile and a half marathon. Along with the running part of the race, they are known for steep terrain and tons of obstacles. Xav signed us up for the half marathon version which had around 30 obstacles. I learned all of this information after our first run when I panicked and looked it up. Not a great start to my mental disposition. Xav had us running 3 or 4 times per week, quickly building up to 9, 10 and 11 mile runs on Saturdays. Not only were those hard to find time to fit in, but they were mentally and physically exhausting on top of the 5-6 days a week we were lifting weights. I’m not a “runner”. Every time I think about running, I picture myself laying down in the grass wheezing afterwards, feeling like my lungs are being shredded. It’s not pretty. But because of our deadline, I was being forced to do the miles. Not going to lie, there were tears and some wheezing and more than a few cramps… but for real… at some point during the 8 weeks of training I stopped wheezing! I even started craving a run after a long or stressful day! It was insane! I never ever thought I could get to that point and I certainly never thought I could run more than 3 or 4 miles at a time!! The training was grueling and my attitude was often in a bad spot about it all. I don’t always love to push myself physically… it’s uncomfortable and super hard and I’m really quite lame. But Xavier was super consistent and patient and kept pushing us both right up until race day.

Pre-race : The course map and obstacles were released a few days before the race and Xav and I spent an evening googling all the obstacles it listed to get a feel for how it would actually look. The Spartan Races are designed to be physically hard to complete and for any obstacles that you can’t do or you fail at, you have to do 30 burpees. I was watching the videos, mentally calculating the number of burpees I would likely have to do and when we were done I was at a minimum of 300. A bunch of the obstacles were so obscure that I didn’t even know how we could have gone about training for them! When we showed up at the course on race day, it was raining and cold. The burpee count kept going up in my head as I realized how hard it would be to hold onto anything.

Starting line: We were super late getting to the sign in desk, I didn’t have too much time to think about how nervous I was. We just threw our stuff in a locker, jumped over the starting wall, listened to an announcer guy who was wearing a hoodie and a poncho try to get the crowd of people to say “Aroo, Aroo, Aroo” without laughing,  and then started running. I knew that my attitude was going to stink unless God changed it. I hate running, being cold, and being outside running when it is cold. And then the second the race started, I could feel my attitude change to thankfulness (AND IT WAS TOTALLY NOT ME). There were puddles everywhere. Most of the course was one giant puddle / river / muddy uphill slope. But Xav and I started running straight through them laughing so hard at the hilariousness of how intense it was already. I knew people were praying for my attitude, and I was reminded yet again of just how much God cares… not about a Spartan Race, but about getting His glory through my weakness. The weird, giddy, joyful spirit was all His strength.

Burpees: I failed 2/3 obstacles and had to do 60 burpees in the first mile. It was about on par with what I had expected. I slipped off of a slanted wall that was super wet and then fell off of my 3rd monkey bar. One mile in and I was COVERED in mud. Xavier had spent most of the first couple miles waiting for me to be done with burpees but he kept telling me that he’d go as slow as needed and stick with me (he even offered to do the burpees for me… sweet man ❤ but I knew I wanted to earn it).

 

Obstacles #3-#30: We hit some more walls, a barbed wire crawl, more walls, a couple cargo nets and all of the sudden we had done 8 more obstacles with no penalty burpees! Up to this point, Xav had nailed every challenge with no penalty burpees. Then we got to this obnoxious thing called the multi-rig (pictured above). There is a set of four hanging rings, followed by a horizontal bar, followed by four more hanging rings. I fell off right away, but Xav made it all the way to the very last ring and then missed his grip because of the rain and fell off. That was the only time we did burpees at the same place. Then the course got insane. We were carrying wet sand bags up and down dunes, dragging sleds full of wet sand over hills of wet sand, our shoes were filling with wet sand… it was a hot mess and probably the reason I still can’t move my upper back… but yet somehow still super fun. When we hit mile 9, our pace per mile was well over 20 minutes due to the mud and sand dunes.  Our hands were raw from the sand that had been everywhere during the pulling obstacles and while we were waiting in lines we were getting really cold. That’s when Xav started talking about food and a new blanket as inspiration to finish ;).

Finish line: We got to the dunk wall followed by a rope climb and I was starting to feel a lot of pain.  Xav’s left knee and my right knee were starting to hurt from the dunes. I got almost all the way up the rope and made it to within 6 inches of the top but I couldn’t quite reach the bell. I was feeling so defeated and tired and then someone on the ground started cheering me on along with Xav and it gave me the push to get one more climb. Xav strong armed it (climbed the rope without his legs… he is so crazy) and we were off running again. It was hard to remember all the obstacles we had already done and which ones were still coming up, but I knew there were two at the end that would be a challenge for me. We hit the first one, the “twister” with just a little ways to go until the end and I owed another 30 burpees. Xav had a bit of trouble halfway through it but he figured it out and completed it like a champ. We started to see people lined up along the side and knew we were getting close to the end when all of the sudden the finish line popped up out of nowhere! In between us and the fire jump was a spear throw. This is a guaranteed obstacle at all Spartan Races and one that is super hard to train for. We had only watched videos of it and had no idea what to expect. We watched a few people come up and miss and head to the burpee pit before Xav took his turn. He missed it by just a tiny bit over the top. I figured I would for sure be doing burpees with him but somehow the spear hit the target dead on!! I was so stoked!! Jumping over the fire and crossing the finish line felt SO good! Knowing that God provided joy over the course of the whole 5 hours made it feel amazing!

Guys… I SHOULD have been miserable. If you had seen how I ended 90% of my training runs, you would know that my natural tendency is not this… not even close to this. Especially not in the rain, mud, and cold. God provided circumstances that I often complain about, a situation that I had been miserable training for, and a joy that I can’t help but give Him the credit and praise for! God is so much bigger than I could ever comprehend. But this was just another super clear reminder to me of how much He is working through every day situations to get His glory.