By Jeremy Hannaford (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: October 16, 2013
The Reebok Spartan Race is a Tough Mudder equivalent organized into three categories: Spartan Sprint, Super Spartan, and Spartan Beast. Cascade reporter Jeremy Hannaford bravely sacrificed his body to get down and dirty with this ultimate fitness challenge.
Within the first five minutes of the race, I realized that I had not trained nearly enough for this event. Since the Tough Mudder back in June, I had increased my overall strength from working out at the gym and my cardio had also improved. But I had not done any hill running. This was the biggest mistake I could possibly have made.
For the first hour, there were hills followed by hills followed by more hills. Then once I thought I had reached the top, there were more hills. After only three kilometres, I honestly wanted to quit. I was tempted to fall to the ground and roll my body down the hill to the ski resort below. But my team captain, John, and the other members of “Team Domination” pushed me on.
Sun Peaks is a ski hill resort, so eventually we were going to hit some snow. It was a lot more than what even the Spartan Race staff had expected. Heavy snowfall forced them to shorten the race length for the safety of the runners, but according to everyone else, it was still long enough to get pretty cold. Maybe because I spent a winter in Quebec years ago, I found the cold to be the easiest obstacle. Running through freezing muddy water and into heavy winds with snow and rain added extra bite, but I still felt fine. When we came to a long underground trench covered by wooden logs, some runners found comfort in the protection from the cold. As some of our group waited for the rest to catch up, we huddled to keep our group members warm. One, Matthew, had jumped or fallen into a mud pit earlier and was shaking badly. We needed to keep moving to get off the mountain.
Most people would be fine with going down a hill rather than going up. After having gone up and down hills several times that day, I was seriously afraid I would lose control and fall and break my body. I had to stop myself and rest every 50 metres toward the end. The pain was incredible and my race became a crawl to the finish.
While the Spartan Race does serve up several obstacles, they are not as well spread out as on the Tough Mudder course, nor as inventive. The first few obstacles I faced posed almost no challenge. Later on, they were either extremely difficult or nearly impossible depending on what was left of your body strength. And for every obstacle you failed, you had to perform 25 burpees. One obstacle had participants walking along the face of the wall holding onto small foot-holds. My team members helped each other across as it was physically impossible to hold on to the wall due to all the mud and water from earlier runners. Sometimes there were large gaps between obstacles, yet five obstacles appeared right at the very end of the race. A wall walk, rope climb, spear throw, fire jump, and Spartan beat-down stood between our group and the finish line – all within 100 feet! I was able to get over the wall, but then I fell on my spine when I tried to climb the rope. The spear hit the target sideways, and I almost fell into the fire.
After our team captain tackled one of the “Spartans” who meant to attack us with padded weapons at the end, we finally crossed the finish line. We were not given beer as promised, but flavoured sugar-water. Still, after only receiving small quantities of water throughout the race, these drinks tasted like gifts from the gods!
My time was over four hours and I never want to hear the word “burpee” again. I wasn’t as proud of myself as I was after finishing the Mudder, but it has inspired me to get back on the track for next year. The Spartan Beast was probably the most painful thing I have ever done in my entire life.
