(Photo courtesy of Scott)
Over the last several years, I have had different guides tell me about this race. And their “notes” had included ‘froze my feet’, ‘almost lost a finger/toe due to frostbite’, and ‘I think doing this race in the Arctic would have been warmer’.
So after having survived 24 hours in the Florida weather, I decided to go play in the snow. I knew all of the above going in, and tried to prep the best I could (I like my digits!).
After going through packet pickup in the cold, we all connected at the start. Either Yogi or Jeff had already done their race, but joined us for another go round.
When it comes to running in general, I have been trying to run hills more. I’m still struggling with it, but it’s better than it was five years ago. This is important, at the race starts with a roughly half mile 30 degree incline run towards the forest. I went too hard up it, and was out of gas by about halfway up it.
Once we made it into the forest, there were both the actual obstacles (think of carrying, climbing, throwing, etc.) and the forest obstacles (like roots, steep ups and downs, and “pitfalls”). Because of the latter, we were at a slower pace for safety reasons. Because of this, we were passed by many — including a speedy Ty coming through the forest. 🙂
A few of the memorable obstacles were the sled pull (weighted pull through the snow), sandbag toss (tossing a weighted bag through holes — hard to do when you can’t see the holes), inner tube slide (sliding down the hill in an intertube — mental obstacle), platform jump (jumping from one platform to another about 6 – 8 feet in the air — skipped for safety reasons), and the hybrid climb into a cargo net obstacle. The preceding names are not the actual obstacle names, just my description for them.
One of the more challenging obstacles for me in Spartan and Tough Mudder is the Pyramid Scheme. Within the obstacle, the hardest part is getting the footing for the last boost to transition from the sloped part to the flat part. I have fallen off of it a few times at Spartan races, and I fell off of it here (part of the hybrid cargo net obstacle) on the first try before finally making it up, over, and onto the cargo net.
While it was challenging, it was also a lot of fun. I look forward to doing it again in 2026, and hope to see some of you there!
Thanks to BIll and the entire ASR staff for all their help and support. And thanks to the entire guide team for all their help!
