This past weekend, me, Casey (fiance) and his old roommate/best friend, Allen, decided to road trip down to Illinois to compete in an 8-mile Spartan Race. It was an experience.
I don't know if you've ever done one of these, but they're hard. Basically, it's an obstacle race inspired by the movie 300, and it is as challenging as it sounds. You run 8 miles through mud and dirt, and run through a series of obstacles. If you fail, or chose to skip any of the obstacles, your punishment is to do 30 burpees. These obstacles are things such as: army crawling under barb wire, climbing over 10 foot walls, carrying a 20 pound sandbag a certain distance, etc. Most of these obstacles were not made to cater to little-old-5-foot-3-inch-stubby-legged-me. Oh, and it's pretty much all through mud. Did I mention that it was in 8 miles long?!
We began the day at 7 AM volunteering to help out because if you do that, you get to run the race for free. Casey and I were stationed at the Monkey Bars (which were not your ordinary monkey bars), which was toward the end of the race. I watched as person after person went through and they looked dead. One girl even had to quit the race once she got to us because she was obviously close to hypothermia. Oh yea, did I mention it was 30 degrees that morning? Yea. I grew more and more intimidated by the race as the morning went on, but with Casey's encouragement, decided to run the race anyways.
At 2:30, our heat took off. It had warmed up to around 40 degrees, but still felt pretty cold to us Texans. At first, I was pretty confident. We started out going at a decent pace, and Casey and Allen helped me out on the obstacles that I couldn't do by myself. For one of the obstacles, we had to drag a 30 pound cinder block with a chain for some hundred yards around a track. Casey, being the man that he is, didn't hesitate to grab hold of mine when he saw that I was struggling, and drug both of ours by himself the majority of the way. You could say it was one of his more attractive moments. Again, for one of the obstacles we had to carry a sandbag around an even longer track. I'd say it was close to 2 or 300 yards around. Casey and Allen grabbed hold of theirs (which was probably twice as heavy as the girl one that I was carrying) and took off. I was halfway through by the time Casey had finished, dropped his bag, doubled back to find me, and carried mine for me the rest of the way. He was literally carrying my burden as I struggled through the race. (Cue cheesy Jesus parallel)
And then the calf cramps set in. Two hours into the race, the sun began to set, and it got significantly colder. At mile 7, we approached a series of obstacles where we were jumping in and out of chest to waist deep mud, and waiting through long lines to complete other obstacles. We were running along a straight between obstacles when I was paralyzed by the twinge of my muscles preparing to clench. I stopped to stretch them out because I knew the excruciating pain that would happen if they fully cramped up. Casey stopped with me and Allen ran on. I tried to walk to the next obstacle, but when I got there, my calves fully cramped up and I knew I wouldn't be able to finish. Casey's body was apparently more prepared to handle the cold than me and Allen's. Allen and I had to quit at that point, only a mile from the finish line because we were nearly hypothermic, and my legs weren't going to go any further. The combination of the cold and being coated in freezing cold mud was just too much. I had literally pushed myself as far as my body was going to let me go. They picked us up in a 4 wheeler and drove us to the medical tent where they covered us in blankets and sat us in front of a space heater.
Casey finished the race because there wasn't any room on the 4 wheeler for him, and also because he was perfectly fine (which made Allen and I feel pretty lame). Once he finished, he raced to heat up the car and drove us to the nearest hotel, where we had the best showers of our lives.
One might say it was a disaster, but the trip really was an overall success. It made me admire Casey even more with how well he took care of me. I was literally a damsel in distress and he came to my rescue. It was great to just have a weekend to spend time with these boys because we always have so much fun together. Since Casey moved out to Hallsville, Texas in June, we hadn't spent that much consecutive time together.
I will, however, think twice next time I think it's a good idea to test my spartan-like characteristics in weather like that. I think I'll stick to attempting races like this in warmer weather.
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