Sat June 23, 2018
Spartan Sprint!
My friend thought it was a good idea to get drunk on Friday night so he was hungover and dragging his ass on Saturday. The course was at a ski hill so had a lot of big hill climbs so I spent a lot of time waiting for him because we said we would do it together. The only obstacle I failed was the rings, and I got to the last ring but didn't have enough momentum to swing and hit the bell. Finished in 1:59 which was slower than I hoped and I also didn't feel challenged.
The race was at Brimacombe Ski Resort, about an hour East of Toronto so it had a lot of hills. It rained overnight and through the morning but stopped by the team our heat started. We did the Rookie Heat (for first time racers, it's cheaper) so it was later in the day at 1:45. We would have been screwed if it was a hot, sunny day. Let's see if I can remember how the race went...
EDIT: Found a photo of the map on Instagram. My memory of the race was pretty close.
- We started with an uphill jog to the top of the ski hill. About 2/3rds of the way up my friend said he needed to walk to pace himself. This was a bad sign.
- 4 foot wall - easy
- 5 foot wall - also easy
- Under a wall - yep easy
- Cargo net wall - easy
- Back down the hill, a bunch of the fancier apparatus were setup at the bottom
- Hercules Hoist - had to hoist a 106 lb sand bag via rope and pulley. easy.
- A-Frame cargo net - This was kinda freaky because it's pretty high but not really difficult per se
- Monkey bars - Thought these might be tricky but I breezed through them. My wife got video that I'll have to post
- Rope climb - Fuck technique, I brute forced my way to the top with a bit of body english at the end. I was pumped at this point.
- Rope pull/drag - had to pull a metal bin full of rocks towards yourself and then drag it back via a chain attached to it. It was really light.
- Back up the hill (climb #2)
- Sand bag carry - carried a 40 lb sand bag about 30 feet down the hill and then back up.
- Climb through a wall. Wait for it... easy.
- (something else here??)
- Back down the hill
- Bucket Brigade - carry a 80 lb bucket of gravel around a fence. Maybe 40 feet total. Easy except I think this is where I tore a chunk of skin off my finger
- Barbed wire crawl - tried crawling on my belly but it was hard to keep my butt down so I switched to sideways crawl, almost like shrimping.
- Olympus - A wall with a variety of holds that you have to traverse laterally with no foot holds. Lots of slipping but I made it across.
- Back up the hill (climb #3)
- 6 foot wall - my hands slipped a bit but recovered and got over
- Atlas carry - Carry a 115 lb atlas stone 15 feet, drop, 5 burpees, carry back. A lot of people seemed to struggle with this but I wouldn't have thought it was 115 lb but that's what I was told.
- Downhill descent
- Jog around a small lake (well we walked because of my friend)
- CInder block drag - Apparently earlier in the day there was a huge lineup for this because the distance was pretty far and there was no room for passing. By the time we got there they had shortened it to about 15 feet up hill and back down so it was a joke
- More jogging on flatland (again... walked boo)
- Bog - This was fun. I don't know how they got this part so mucky but a few people lost shoes and it was impossible to not get muddy. Thankfully I'm tall so I only sunk to my knees but some of the shorter people were muddy almost to their waist.
- Inverted wall - leaned back maybe 20 degrees? A bit tricky.
- (I feel like there was something else here??)
- Uphill climb #4 - This was the steepest one and I could feel it in my glutes.
- RIngs - A combo of rings, a monkey bar, a couple vertical bars, and a few vertical ropes. Thanks to my long gangly arms I was able to swing between the rings but I ran out of momentum on the last ring. I tried to grab the rope and pull myself up but no dice. I wonder now if I could have swing my legs up and kicked the bell? I'm not sure if that's allowed. Did my 30 burpees.
- Downhill descent
- Spear Throw - I nailed this one which was a relief. You only get one try so I thought for sure it would mean burpees
- Blackout - Crawling under a gigantic tarp through mud. Not difficult but rather unpleasant and obviously designed to get you extra muddy before the finish line.
- Slip wall - An angled wall with a rope to help you get up. You could run up and grab a shorter rope with knots in it but risk slipping and falling back down. I chose the conservation route which was the long rope with no knots. Despite being muddy I didn't slip and made it up easily. While at the top an women almost made it up and yelled for help so I grabbed her hand and help her haul herself over.
- Fire jump - Woot.
I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting some stuff. There were 4 full climbs (i.e. walk/run all the way up the hill which was over 100m elevation change) plus two where we went partway up. I can even see some of it on the pics my wife took but can't remember what exactly happened.
We are now discussing what to do next. There is a Trifecta weekend in September (Sprint, Super, Beast on Fri/Sat/Sun) that we will probably attend. I originally thought i wanted to do the Sprint so I could go hard and see how fast I could do it but it's a different course, much flatter, so the times from last year are a lot faster. Really, I want to redo the course from last weekend. So for that reason we might try the Super in Sept which has average times around 2:30 (compared to 3:30 at last weekend's course) and then do the Brimacombe Sprint in 2019. I feel like I have some unfinished business with that course
Made a small album with pics that my wife took:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/pjF2MM5wB8Fz17S19
The Spartan Sprint sent out a link with their own pics but it seems incomplete as their is only one picture of me and I know they took more. Hopefully more will be uploaded tomorrow and I can add them too.
Sun June 24, 2018
Hockey
I was expecting to feel wrecked for hockey but as the race wasn't too bad I felt okay. It was the drinking on Saturday night that hurt, lol. Long story short, it was a back and forth game and we ended up tying 5-5. I was hurting in the second period but got a second wind in the third period, scoring the 5th goal. Our goalie had an off night too and on a good night would have stopped 2 or 3 of the shots that went in.