The Spartan Sprint consisted of four or five miles of muddy hills, rocky mountains and, of course, obstacles.
How I trained:
Some friends invited me to sign up for the Spartan Sprint about six or seven months prior to the race, so I thankfully had plenty of time to train, both at home and at the MMA gym I have been going to.
At home, most of my training consisted of running up and down the stairs in my building for 10 minutes every day. To make it more fun, I would take my dog with me, since she could definitely use any exercise she can get and I enjoy her company.
To add some variety, I would stop at the end of top of the stairwell an do five strict push-ups and then run down to the starting point. Back at my apartment, I would do deadhang pull-ups to failure.
On weekends, I would go to the park with my doggie and run one or two miles. I have never considered myself much of a runner, so I tried to focus on this aspect and learn how to pace myself. Sometimes I would run on the asphalt, and other times I would run on the grass just to get that cross-country feel.
Shortly after I joined my MMA gym in March, I casually told my trainer that I had signed up for the Spartan Race. He then designed an obstacle course for me, which I ran for 10 minutes. He would have me run and jump over strike pads he had stacked one on top of another. I would jump over a single pad, then two, then three, then one, and keep at it until the time was up. Ten minutes might sound like a short time, but this was very exhausting. It definitely improved my cardio.
Afterward, I would focus on upper-body work, which is extremely important if you want to be able to overcome the obstacles without any help. My upper-body work consisted of pull-ups on rings, rope climbing (without using legs for support), and a very cool type of pull-up my trainer taught me where you drape an old gi (a jiu-jitsu uniform) over a pull-up bar and pull yourself up grabbing the gi instead of the bar. It is difficult, but it will make your grip stronger.
This was followed by a whole hour of Muay Thai striking and kicking, a great cardio workout. The trainers always added some squats, sit-ups and push-ups (with boxing gloves on!!) to make sure you were completely wiped out by the end of the workout.
If you plan on training by yourself, I would recommend subscribing to the Spartan WODs (workouts of the day) that are found on the Spartan Race website.
What to wear:
Stick to spandex and lycra. Do NOT wear cotton, as the mud will stick to it and make your clothes heavy. You don't want to have to worry about your pants falling off in the middle of the race.
If you can, take knee pads and a pair of plush wrist bands. Remember that the ground is very rocky and crawling over rocks can be a pain in the ass (well, in the elbows and knees, really). I did not use knee pads, but I did take wristbands, which I used to cover my elbows when crawling under barbed wire.
As for shoes, I just used my old beat-up running sneakers and they did just fine. Remember, your shoes are going to get wet and muddy. Do you really want to buy a pair of Vibrams or Innov-8s just to ruin them? That's your decision, I just think it's unnecessary. Actually, after the race I gave my sneakers away as donation for some pediatric cancer charity they had going on.
In addition, remember to bring a backpack with an extra change of clothes, an extra pair of shoes, a towel and a few plastic bags to put your muddy clothes in. Also bring a bottle of water. You may not want to take the bottle with you on the race, but you will want to hydrate before and after he race.
The Spartan experience:
The best way I can describe it is as a challenging mountain hike on speed. At Tuxedo, the course was so rocky and muddy that I didn't run as much as I probably could have because I was afraid of twisting an ankle or slipping on a rock and breaking a leg, which, in all honesty, did happen to a few people.
The obstacles were the most fun part of the whole race. All the pull-ups and push-ups I've done served me well and allowed me to jump over walls that were taller than me without much effort. The rope climb was my favorite of all the obstacles and I got to the top without any problems.
Some of the obstacles require a lot of strength. There's one where you have to pull a concrete block up a hill...and the block is attached to a heavy freakin' chain! There's another where you have to drag a tractor tire down a hill with your hands and then pull it up by a rope up the hill and bring it to its original place. There's also the sandbag carry where you carry a 40-pound (it felt like 40 pounds to me) sandbag up the rocky mountain. If your legs were not burning yet, this will do it for you! The obstacles I did fail at were the spear throw, the traverse wall and the darned tree stubs. My spear flew directly to the ground and I slipped on both the wall and the stubs, having to do 30 burpees per failed obstacle as a penalty. By the way, you do not want to do burpees. They exhausted me more than climbing miles of rocks. And I'm pretty good at burpees.
As a bonus, after finishing the race, I decided to give the pull-up challenge a try. I am proud to report that I tied for first place with another lady with 11 reps! I couldn't even believe it!
The outcome:
I loved it! Finished in 2 hours and 12 minutes, and out of all 2,098 women, I came in at 613. Not bad for my first time!
As a team, my friends and I placed 277th out of 435 teams. Our average time was 2:25, with one of our guys finishing in an astonishing 1:30!
Spartan Race combined a challenging workout with the beauty of nature and a bunch of fun, silly people proving they are badasses.
Also, I think I will take running more seriously from now on. I already signed up for next year's Spartan Sprint, also in Tuxedo, and plan on completing the race in under two hours. Now that I know more or less what to expect, I plan on going all out.
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