Spartan Race

On Saturday, Brad and I competed in the Spartan race, here in Edmonton. It was a 5K race, with more than 15 obstacles and over 4000 racers. It was fun!

Here's us before the race.

Here's a glimpse at one of the hills. From this point, we ran into the trees and followed switchback trails up to the top of the hill.

This is the start of the race. You begin by running up the slope of the ski hill. This thins out the crowd nicely, so there's not a lineup at the first obstacle. It also makes your legs feel like jelly right off the bat.

In total, we ran up and down the ski hill 5 times, went over walls, swung across monkey bars, bogged through mud pits, carried weighted sandbags, drug a cinderblock up and down a hill, threw a spear, crawled under barbed wire, flipped tractor tires, jumped gates, went through gates, went under gates, navigated net ropes, climbed a 20 foot rope from 3 feet of mud, crossed a bouldering wall, jumped over fire,  and probably a few others, but these are the ones I haven't forgotten.

And for every obstacle we couldn't complete or slipped off of, we did 30 burpees. Unfortunately, we did some burpees... but it was fun and we're both looking forward to next year.

But, we got muddy! Here are some after shots.

The first obstacle required you to jump in a mud pit up to your armpits, so that added a few extra pounds to the weight you were carrying up and down the hills and over obstacles, plus it made you and each obstacle nice and slippery.

And the hosing off station. In the background, you can see people climbing over one of the walls. This side had a nice ladder, but the other side was slick panels of wood, so you had to climb and pull each other over.

This is the garbage can full of shoes that people decided weren't worth cleaning because of the mud. We ran into one guy whose shoes got sucked off in the first mud pit. He ran the rest with his dad's shoes, complete with orthotics, while his dad watched the rest of the race in his socks. 

Does this make any of you want to join us next year? 

;)