Spartan Race!

Well, we tried something new - obstacle racing!  Whew, it was hard!!

This group - Spartan - puts on quite a show - a huge expo area

 

 Here we are before the race.  We signed up for a sprint, which is 3-5 miles, and approx. 20 obstacles

 It wasn't pretty - but we finished!  We stayed together for a while, but Chris was killing it, so I told him to go ahead.  I couldn't do a lot of the upper body obstacles, and had to do 'burpees' instead (a jump up; lay down; jump back up exercise, which kicks your butt!)  Chris was flying through the upper body obstacles, and it would take a while to do the burpees - so we went our separate ways.  He finished about 15 minutes ahead of me, so I'm glad I told him to go ahead.  We both actually finished in the top 10 of our age group, which was surprising.  Our exercise routine has been pretty lacking since Ironman Texas.  But these races are very challenging.  Ours ended up being 5 miles (through slick muddy trails, through rivers -crazy)  and over 23 obstacles (like 7 or 8 wall jumps (of which the easy ones were 7 feet high!); rope climbs; javelin throws; barb wire crawls...)

 They give you a free drink after (yay), and one option was beer, which was greatly appreciated!

 Athletes recovering after

 This was one of the obtacles - a very easy one, fortunately.  The only scary part was crossing the top, since it was slated - so any fear of heights would cause issues.

 The course map - I'm glad I didn't look at this before....
Chris did really well, and is ready to sign up for another.  They have longer distance ones - like 10-13 miles; and even some up to 30 miles!  I think I need to practice a lot more before I go back!  The part I disliked were the muddy trails.  I don't mind getting dirty, but these trails were so bad, my shoes kept slipping and a few times, the sticky mud kept my shoe and I took the next step in my sock.  Yuk. 
So I think another sprint distance would be good to do again.  It is nice to do different things, and boy, you really can feel how your body is trained for certain activities.  We've been training our bodies for endurance for years now.  During this race, my body was telling me I was not in shape for these 5 miles, and it would rather be doing an Ironman!

 Medals!