I Am A Spartan!

Well, maybe I am…. 🙂

Yesterday was the 5km Spartan Sprint obstacle course in Calgary. The Spartan Sprint is part of the Spartan Race series of crazy obstacle courses meant to challenge even the most daring of athletes. It’s all about challenging yourself and overcoming any and everything. It sounded like tons of fun, so a bunch of friends and myself signed up for it.

Admittedly, leading up to the race, I was pretty excited, yet slightly nervous. I knew my fitness wasn’t up to par with where I would have liked it to be, but I was going to give it my all! I was just worried that I would injure myself. After all, I do have a bunch of hikes coming up that I need to complete for The Kidney Foundation as part of Banff National Park’s Big Mountain Challenge. But I think I was just psyching myself up.

We arrived at the Wild Rose MX Park and waited for our 1:00 pm heat to begin. With about 10 minutes to go, we made our way to the starting line. The sun was beating down on us, and though it was incredibly hot, everyone was pumped and ready to go. The energy in the air was awesome. The announcer came on and said “We have a new word for the Spartan Race- AROOH!”. “AROOH!!!” everyone screamed. And we cheered it some more- “AROOH!!!!” It made everyone that much more pumped. And before we knew it, we were off!

I’ll say right up front that the Spartan Sprint was much more grueling than I thought it would be. I had a strong start, jumping over fire and heading through the course; crawling over, under and through a series of walls; hopping onto and into gigantic tires, and running up and down hills. I soon realized that my cardio was quite lacking, and only a few minutes in, I was very tired. Then came the balancing obstacle where we had to balance on zig-zagged wooden planks that were roughly 5 cm in width. Yeah, I fell off of that pretty quickly, so my punishment? Do 25 burpees :S. I so was not a fan!

Then it was on to more hills, running through some trees, trudging through some mud, and then carrying a weight bag down and then up a hill. I slugged it over my shoulders and persistent onward. The weight seriously felt like 50 lbs, though I’m pretty confident it wasn’t that heavy. At this point, there was exhaustion. Where’s the water station!!, I thought. Finally, at the half-way point, I saw the water station in the distance. But first, another obstacle. And this is where things really went downhill…

The task? Traverse horizontally across a ‘rock wall’, where the rocks were actually blocks of wood. Okay, easy enough, I thought. But once I got up there, I had no idea how to proceed! After a minute or so, I tried a bit of “hopping” from one block to another. It wasn’t easy, but it worked. And I hopped more. And then I was almost there!… And then I had one wrong step and I fell. Now, the wall wasn’t particularly high. Maybe about 2 feet off the ground or so. But I fell the 2 feet, landed right onto the side of my left foot, and crashed to the ground. I didn’t hear anything break, but if you’ve ever had a sprained or badly rolled ankle, you know it could be worrisome!

As soon as I fell, I knew I was injured. I tried to stand up, and pain shot through my foot. My first thought was “OMG! I have to hike 3 mountains in about a week for $25000!” I even said before the race that my worst nightmare would to be to injure my foot. I flagged down one of the volunteers, who directed me to the medical station. They examined it and thought it was rolled and that I hadn’t broken anything, which was awesome, but they did recommend me sitting out. And this is where Trini stubbornness kicked in- I had to finish the race. If it was significantly worse, maybe I would have bowed out. But I knew that I had it in me to finish. Even if I didn’t run it, or if I skipped the remaining obstacles, I was going to finish the remaining 2.5 km!

And so I persevered onward. Jean passed me, asked if I was alright, and gave me a boost in confidence. If you know me, you know that I was not happy with myself. At all. But it was awesome to have friends and random people pass me, ask if I needed medical attention, and then encourage me to continue and cross that finish line. If there’s something extremely cool about the Spartan Race, it’s the level of support that racers have for one another. I reached a wall climbing obstacle which I knew I couldn’t do, so the punishment again- 25 burpees. This would be my second set of burpees, but this time they were one-legged. *Sigh*.

Shari caught up with me and we walked together for a bit. Thanks Shari for being my walking crutch! Another obstacle required us to pull a concrete block around a lap, and once that was done, I told Shari to charge ahead. I knew I was almost done. And that’s when I saw Robbie :). He was so supportive and asked if I was okay. He gave me some Advil and water, which would help with the pain. It was uplifting and he showed up just when I needed the support. Then I saw my other friends who had finished the race and they were cheering me on. At that point it was time to crawl under barbed wire and through a bunch of mud. 

The next obstacle was a wooden lattice and rope incline to climb and descend. There was a bit of impact on my left foot, but nothing too bad. Then after one more corner, a spear throwing event. I hoped to make the target, but sadly I didn’t, which resulted in my 3rd set of 25 burpees for the race (and my second set of one-legged burpees :S). Thank you to the random gentleman who counted my burpees and cheered me on! Those were tough to complete. Then, after one more turn, I dashed pass the jousting gladiators, though they took it easy when the saw I was injured, and the Spartan Sprint was over and done with. I claimed my finisher medal, which will go down as one of the most worked-for medals of the many races I’ve done. It was an intense race, and I completed in a well over an hour :o|. 

Overall, despite injury, it was a fun and incredible event. There was so much support all around, with lots of cheering and helping. It was great to get so many friends together and endure an event like this. And it felt so good to get all of that mud off afterwards!

And now, as I write this, I’m nursing my left foot back to health with lots of ice and rest. I have to be back in fighting form in just over a week, eek :S.

It’s funny. The website does say under the “All Racers Receive” section that I would get:

* a Finishers Medal

* a Free Spartan Race T-shirt

* Scrapes and Bruises

* Stories, stories and more stories.

I certainly received all of those!

UPDATE: I was 2134/2225 overall, with a time of 1:22:48.55, and a pace of 16:33. Ha! In my heat category, I was 73/74 (at least I wasn’t last!), and in the male category, I was 1156/1176. Whoohoo!

I definitely hope to sign up for this again next year if it comes back to Calgary. Or maybe I’ll go one step further and do the 10-12 mile military-style obstacle course on July 20/21, 2013: Tough Mudder. It sure looks like a challenge. Geeze, there’s always another race. Who’s in??