(Photo courtesy of Farm Experience staff)
“But I’m not gonna break and I’m not going to worry about it anymore.” – Counting Crows
If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you’re familiar with my MO by now. If you’re new, I’ll summarize it — if it looks or sounds like it could be fun, I’ll try it even if I’ve never done it before. That willingness to try new things has allowed me to participate in so many amazing opportunities.
In that vein, when I received the invitation from Joe De Sena to come to his farm, I immediately said yes. This was without knowing what to expect — and as we all found out in June, none of us would.
Between accepting the invitation and arriving in Vermont, I did the prep work that I could. I’ll admit that it was a little bit nerve wracking to not have any idea of what to expect. Sure, we had minor frameworks (like ‘practice carries and planks’), but nothing definitive. The only other two pieces of concrete information we received were a gear list and shuttle/meet up info.
I think the best way to summarize the weekend Farm Experience is “Death Race 101” (which I heard it referred to several times). The Hurricane Heat (24 hour), the Death Race (ended up being 46 hour), and the Mount Sparta Challenge (24 hours up and down the mountain) were all going on throughout the weekend. We ended up getting mixed in with all of these events and having an opportunity to experience parts of them.
I’m not going to go into the weekend in a lot of detail for a few reasons. The main one is to respect the hard work that is done by so many. Even though I’m sure that every Death Race is different (and thus any surrounding Farm Experience would be), I don’t want to ruin the specialness of it. What I will share is a brief overview of my time.
During the experience, I learned a lot about myself and being able to push my own boundaries. As I’ve talked about in the past, continually finding the ability to be “comfortably uncomfortable” throughout the different experiences. I also had a personal experience that in the past would have mentally broken me. But in this case, once I had some time to regroup, my answer to Carlos’s question of “how are you doing?” wasn’t “Ok” or “I’m better”; it was “Let’s get up the fucking mountain.” (as the group was getting ready to go up).
Because it had started raining Saturday morning (and then kept raining), Mount Sparta became a slippery mess before day’s end. As a result, I did respect and accept the safety limitations about not going up to the top and Shrek’s. I hope there will be other, safer opportunities to do so… Maybe Mother Nature will cooperate during my next visit to the Farm.
Even though I was unable to make it to the top, I was still there in spirit. The sunrise video where the group included me is one of my favorites from the experience. 🙂
While there were challenges for me throughout the experience, there were also a lot of successes. And I believe the latter far outnumbered the former. I am extremely glad that I accepted the invitation, and even more glad that I didn’t let some of the challenges “break” me. I also came away with a list of things to improve upon for the next time I get an opportunity to visit the Fram (like my Rubic’s Cubs skills…)
I am extremely grateful to Joe for the invitation and opportunity, and to Don, Carlos, and everyone else within Spartan who made the Farm Experience possible!
