Last year, I had planned to do my first Spartan race in Dallas (Granbury). But the Welcome2Running camp was that same weekend, which was the priority. With the camp earlier this year, the Spartan Trifecta Weekend (21K Beast, 10K Super, and 5K Sprint) worked. With guides (Jaime and Cheyenne) and support crew from More Hearts Than Scars in place, we headed out onto the course for the Beast race.
For this race, almost all obstacles that you failed had a penalty loop (usually about 1/4 mile). This was different from the Tough Mudder races, and both good and bad in its own rights.
While I won’t go into all of the obstacles, there were some early successes on some of the smaller walls (both with and without the harness). and failures on the grip obstacles, we made it through the first few miles at a decent pace. Then we headed into a long stetch of hills and rocks.
I slipped on one of these and tore myself up in a couple of places. Thankfully, the support crew had the liquid bandage stuff, which helped a lot. Once we had it out of that part and to an aid station, I ran into a sauna.
For those of you who have used port-a-poties during a race, you know they can be hot from the sun. Having one in the 90+ degree heat for 4-5 hours was like sitting in a sauna. But it was the only option… Once that was done, we moved on to the first of the heavy carry obstacles — and once through, onto more stable path. At least, that was what I thought…
Instead, we ended up in a gravel quarry followed by 1.5 miles of the remains of the quarry and hills. To say it was rough terrain would be an understatement. And to illustrate the point, it took us 93 minutes to go a single mile in it.
At some point within this area and rejoining “solid” ground, we came to a wall obstacle. At this point, I was mentally drained and wasn’t fully thinking about the initial plan. So instead of usin the harness for the nine foot wall, I went up without it. The group was able to help me get up, and was on the other side to help me down. But it took me a good five minutes on top of the wall to “settle” as I felt it moving and knew I didn’t have any support. (harness).
By the time we made it back to the more “stable” ground, we had been out for longer than I had planned. We still had three miles to go at this point. So after a grueling, long barbed wire crawl, we headed to the finish.
Even though the terrain was “better” than the rock quarry area, it was still a challenging 3 mile trek. This was topped off by a final climbing obstacle that you had to go over to finish. It took everything I had and help from the group to get over it.
While it wasn’t pretty or as intended, I did cross the finish line. I am extremely grateful to everyone for sticking it out with me. It was an extremely long day of course.
As I sat on stage post-race, all sorts of emotions went through me. The largest one being disappointment over how the race had gone. It took time, but I was able to work through all of that and finally enjoy dinner (lesson learned about buying food at the site…)
While my mind wanted to do the remaining two races the next day, my body did not. We decided as a group that it wasn’t safe to try and push it. While I didn’t complete the Trifecta here, I will try again before year’s end.
