On the day of, my brother Kilian and I woke up around 7 and got ready, we left the house by 7:45 and went to pick up his friend Shanna who was coming to cheer us on. The drive was about an hour away so we got to Tuxedo, NY at 9. After parking and assembling our stuff we trekked the mile over to the race area where they had music, food, and the sun was shining bright. It was a perfect day for a race and my heart was doing backflips. I'm not sure why I was so anxious, I guess I wasn't sure what to expect although looking around I saw people of all levels of fitness and all ages. About 15 minutes to 11:30 we lined up at the starting line & did some stretches. The race began with a hefty inclined hill run, and we were both not sure how to pace ourselves so we just ran and ran. After the first 30 minutes my ankles were starting to hurt from the uneven terrain, specifically my left ankle which I've twisted many times & my feet were noticeably swelling from the heat! I'd expected to be waiting for Kilian most of the time thinking I was in better shape but I was way wrong, as I was always trying to catch up with him! We took our time, we weren't competing for any reason we just wanted to get through the whole race. So we stopped if we needed to and we weren't the only ones. Towards the end Kilian's calves were cramping up from all the inclines and declines so we had to take more breaks to stretch.
In total I was unable to complete 3 of the obstacles out of 14-25? I'm not sure exactly since the Spartan Races only hand out the map of obstacles day of & I've since trashed it. When you're not able to complete an obstacle you had to do 30 burpees. YEP 30 burpees... so I did a total of 90 although probably more since I kept losing track. No one actually enforces this burpee rule but I don't see why you wouldn't challenge yourself that way anyway! I wasn't able to complete the uneven monkey bars, the rope climb to the top to ring the bell, & the javelin throw.
I can't believe it's taken me this long to try out a mud race and to sum it all up it was AWESOME. I am hyped up even talking about it now. It's a great time, seems like it'd be fun with a big group of people as a team, and you get to do all these things you only dream about doing or see in the movies. & I really surprised myself with how well I could climb over the walls and a lot of the other obstacles.
Anyway here's some photos from the race!
Log carries
So this wasn't difficult but it was the height that got to me. I started getting really freaked out so as you can tell I'm holding on for dear life at the top, and I closed my eyes practically the whole way down.
This was fun at first, then army crawling got very painful so worming around the rest of the way seemed a better option...
One shot to pull the sandbags to the top, if you dropped it too quickly you lost.
By far the best picture of that day. Zoom in & voila!
Takin a break...
Kilian still feelin fresh
Beasting the rope climb
Not doing so hot...
Master walker...
Like I said... we took many breaks. This was after we both failed the javelin & did 30 burpees
DONE!
YIS!
WOOO! Also the best sibling photo we've had yet...
Tips / Things to remember next time
- Wear moisture wicking, tight clothing
- loosen pre worn sneakers if it's hot outside
- Gloves maybe?
- Train upper body harder / Trail run training
& the high socks saved my shins!
And lastly I ended the race with a fantastic flop... Like I mentioned my ankle was killing me most of the race & in the last obstacle which was to jump over fire directly before the finish line I jumped and fell on my ankle wrong & fell down the hill. People immediately came over to offer assistance but I couldn't stop laughing. Of course that'd be my grand finale. Normally you get a picture of you jumping over the fire however mine were probably pretty bad so they weren't even posted. Ha!
G'Day :)
