I have never done a Spartan Race but I have trained others to do them. The first time I was asked to help someone train for obstacle course races, race being the key word, was about 8 years ago. In New Mexico as a brand new personal trainer and aspiring Ninja Warrior I had a lot to learn. My client was an avid long distance runner and asked me to help train the obstacles which was my specialty.
It wasn’t until this year that I did my own Spartan mostly because I don’t care much for the running part. Obstacles all day long, I mean I did build this whole Superhero Fitness around having a Ninja Warrior course of my favorite obstacles. So how would my training measure up? An indoor gym 80 feet long vs outdoors in the cold, covered in mud, running a 10K (32,808. Feet by comparison)
Showing up I honestly didn’t know mud was going to be involved. I have been so busy I just said f*** it lets pay and show up. So I paid extra to store my phone and keys and got in line to run. I decided the obstacles were my best bet to get some distance from the crowd. I didn’t want to have to wait in lines for obstacles and lost time. So I ran ahead at the start using the extra energy to make sure there were just 3-4 of us in my pack though the two that took off were far superior runners and got some distance on me.
The Obstacles:
The first obstacle course race piece was a wall about rib high that a big step vault was enough to cover. This obstacle would come up like 5 times in the race. Some logs to climb over, a big sandbag to carry up a hill. Enough to break up the running which I was thankful for and it always gained me a significant distance on the other runners. I didn’t feel competitive but it was nice to see that the obstacle advantage was quite real. But then there’s mud and water. The first mud spot was just a pit filled with mud water that had an inflatable you had to dive under. That’s it just a time to get mud everywhere.
Yeah I paid a lot of money to do this to myself.
Muddy hills in more muddy water afterwards
4 different times the obstacle was just to carry something heavy.
I would say 5 of the challenges were especially challenging Ninja Warrior style obstacles, balance, swinging, and rings, the rest were some sort of feat of strength. I actually didn’t expect such hard obstacles to be included in a Spartan but I was pleasantly surprised, and the challenge of doing them while wet.
Overall it took me just over 90 minutes to run the 10k and 27 obstacles. I did better than I thought without knowing the results and far better than I expected seeing my rankings.
I am glad I did it to have that what are my limits feeling. I would do it again but it’s not something I’ll go out of the way for personally. I am happy with my obstacles. But I am excited to keep training others so they never have to do burpees on the track. I didn’t fail any obstacle so I had 0 burpees and that’s what dreams are made of.
To take classes with us in Parkour, Ninja Warrior, or ther Acrobatics that helped me beat the spartan race find us here. https://superherofitness.com/class-schedule/
In portland Oregon
Some of my favorite photos from the event
