A couple weeks ago, I finished the Indiana Spartan Sprint, and it was easily the most physically challenging feat I've ever completed. It started out as just an idea from a coworker, then three other coworkers signed up, so I did, too. I convinced my sister to participate, so we had quite a big group trekking to Laurel, IN to get muddy Spartan up.
The race started out with a group of 200 people in a start gate. To get into the gate, the first thing you had to do was jump over a 5-foot wall. That seemed like sort of a filtering process. People who couldn't make it over that wall weren't going to get very far at all. It was all crazy terrain and obstacles from start to finish.
The race was 3 miles with 12 obstacles. That's what we thought at least. We get to the start of the race and find out it's 5 miles and 18 obstacles! I thought it was a trick to psych people out, but looking back, the website says "3+" miles. For me, 5 miles is a long run! The most I had run beforehand was 4 miles--and that was on flat land. The Spartan Race was on rough--I mean ROUGH--terrain. Nothing was flat. Everything was hilly, muddy, covered in rocks, or all of the above!
The obstacles were my favorite part about the race--with an exception of one; I'll explain more about that later. If you skipped or failed to complete an obstacle, you had to do 30 burpees. I only failed 3, which was better than I thought I would do.
These are some of the obstacles we had to overcome:
- Barbed Wire Crawl: a crawl through mud under barbed wire. Participants must stay low to the ground as to not get injured by the wire. Crawls range from 20-100+ yards in length. This took us about 30 minutes to get through because there were so many people trying to get through it and if someone in front of you slipped down a hill, they took you down with them. It became a team exercise because we had to help push each other up the steeper hills.
- Over-Under-Through: a series of obstacles in which runners must first climb over a wall, then under a wall, then through a tire or square hole placed in a wall. This obstacle is often repeated three or more times in a row.
- Fire Jump: participants leap over flames. This was at the end of the race and made for a pretty cool photo op.
- Traversal Wall: the traversal wall is similar to a bouldering wall, but it's caked with mud and made of wood.
- Slippery Wall: a wall built at an incline (roughly 45 degrees) that is covered in soap or grease with a body of water at the bottom. Runners may try to sprint up the wall or use a rope for assistance.
- Spear Throw: from a distance of 10-20 yards, athletes must throw a wooden spear into a target in one try or it's a failure.
- Wall Climb: as the name suggests, runners must climb over a wooden wall. Walls range from 4–8 feet and are often in sequence. This obstacle may be repeated throughout the course. I surprised myself by making it over the 8-foot wall without any help.
- Sandbag Carry: carry a sandbag weighing between 30 and 70 pounds. I tried a variety of techniques to carry it and holding it out front worked the best for me. My shoulders slope too much to carry anything.
- Herculean Hoist: athletes must hoist a bag of sand off the ground using a pulley system. This obstacle is similar to the "lat-pull" exercise machine, but is more difficult because the rope is was muddy and slippery. Most of the time two people did this obstacle together. I partnered up with a stranger.
- Rope Climb: a rope is hung over a body of water/mud with a bell installed at the very top. Participants must "ring the bell" before climbing down.
- Cement Block Drag: a cement block is wrapped with a chain, and the task is to drag it around a course.
- Tire Flip: the task is to flip a tractor tire four times. Men and women had different-sized tires and I didn't know that until it was too late. I flipped the smaller tire. I did some burpees to make up for it.
- Mud Pit: wade through a 4-foot deep smelly mud pit. I secretly liked this obstacle because it cooled us down. The worst part was getting out and having an extra 40 pounds of mud on your body.
- Cargo Climb: climb a 30-foot cargo net, up and over. The whole thing shook and made me kind of nervous, but it was one of the easier obstacles.
- Monkey Bars: swing across one set of monkey bars, about 30 feet in one try. This was especially difficult because we were still wet and slippery, but I made it.
- Pond: swim through a pond. This was nice because it got most of the mud off--for a minute, anyway.
I know I only listed 16 obstacles, but that's all I remember. The whole race felt like an obstacle because of the logs we had to jump over, the holes we had to leap across, and the river beds we had to carefully work our way through.
I only failed three obstacles: Spear Throw, Rope Climb, and Traversal Wall. Apparently I suck at throwing a spear and I have less than ideal upper body strength for climbing a rope. The Traversal Wall was impossible because of all of the mud caked on it.
At the end of the race, we were given our medal, a protein bar, banana, and protein shake. I had never felt like I was going to throw up from physical activity until then. My body was beyond exhausted and muddy. Thankfully, they provided hoses and sprayers for us to wash up and a tent to change clothes in.
I sustained my share of cuts, scrapes, and bruises from this whole ordeal. The worst obstacle was the Barbed Wire Crawl because of the slippery mud. I had a bigger girl in front of me and she took me down with her every time she slid down this one hill. The mud had little rocks mixed in, and that's why my knees and elbows are so scraped up, as you can tell in the photos below.
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We may not have had the fastest times or passed every single obstacle, but WE FINISHED!
I'm proud of myself, my coworkers, and my sister for pushing through and dominating such a difficult obstacle. As a group, we finished in about 3 hours and 3 minutes. I definitely want to participate in another Spartan Race. Next time, I'm going to be faster and complete every obstacle with flying colors.
Are you ready to Spartan up? AROO!
