My friend Mary had the crazy idea to sign up for a Spartan Race 5 months after giving birth to twins. She somehow convinced her hubby, Tim, and me and a few other friends to join her in the "torture" I mean fun. I'm kidding but seriously training for this event was like nothing I've done before. I love running and have competed in many running races, but this is all about strength and endurance and mental toughness. We just so happened to be doing it on the hottest day of the summer and our wave started at about the hottest part of the day....between 12:30 and 1 pm. Ha ha! I was just hoping I didn't pass out due to heat exhaustion or dehydration. Tim and I hydrated A TON leading up to the race because we knew how hot it would be. We got proper rest and hopefully did decent on our nutritional needs.
Here is Tim getting amped up for the race. This race consisted of almost 5 miles of running and up to 20+ obstacles. If you weren't able to complete an obstacle you had to complete 30 burpees as a penalty. Let's just say that I was extremely motivated to complete as many obstacles as I could.
Here is our team. Team Stripling Warriors! Elliott, Wence, Cheri, Me, Tim, Mary, and Travis. We had an awesome group of people going through this together. We were definitely not going for the fastest completion time, but more of a have fun, do the best you can, and don't die approach!
The first mile of running was literally up the side of a ski mountain. Let's just say I ran about the first quarter mile and then had to walk the rest of it......No one else was running at that point either. Many people had to stop and even a few turned around and didn't keep going. Then we started into the obstacles. The first obstacle was throwing an arrow at a target, there was monkey bar crossings, there was one where you had to fill a bucket full of small rocks and carry it down and up a hill. That wasn't too bad until the going up part. But I did it!! There was an obstacle where you had to climb these tall ladders, you had to jump over walls, you had to climb a rope and get over a 30 ft wall, there was one where you had to carry a small log down and up a hill. That was extremely hard on the strength aspect but I went pretty dang fast on it. I was proud of myself. One obstacle you had to pull an anvil across the ground using a rope. Another one you had to climb a rope and then cross monkey bars to the other side. I did not complete that one. The grossest was going up and down these small hills into big moats of water that smelled like sewage. I almost vomited on those ones. We also go to cross a lake by swimming. That was my favorite because after sweating my butt off it felt nice and cool.
Here I am crawling under barbed wire. It wasn't too bad other than the ground was totally uneven and sometimes the space between my body and the barbed wire was more and sometimes it was less. I rolled for parts of it until I got too dizzy and then I army crawled it other times. There was rocky terrain which killed my knees and hay that got in my eyes, but I made it.
And we chose to do this for fun! Ha ha!
Before our last obstacle we had to go under a wall into another pit of water that smelled like sewage. I actually had to put my whole body and face into that nasty water. Oh my goodness! Coming out of that water was the most disgusting thing because it was on my lips. All I could do was to not taste or lick the filth. Bleh!
And finally, after over 3 hours of testing our strength and stamina, we had reached the finish line.......We jumped the fire together.
We survived! We completed almost all the obstacles! And we didn't give up. This was such a great experience pushing our physical abilities to the max. It truly showed me that I'm capable of more than I think I am and I AM A SPARTAN! I'm so glad I did this. It was such a great feeling to say that I started it, I didn't give up, I dug deep, and I finished it.
Go Stripling Warriors! We rocked this day!
Now off to celebrate our accomplishment. We went home to shower the nasty off and then headed over to Mary and Travis's for some pizza and a Chewbacca cake (made by our amazing friend, Lori Lawton)
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