Several weeks ago I ran the Spartan Beast race in Montana. How manly does that sound? Ran… Spartan… Beast…. AROO! Even as I am dictating this (I always dictate these posts) I’m using my best monster truck announcer voice… SPARTAN BEAST!!! Now for the uninitiated, the Spartan race is an obstacle course race with lots of climbing and plenty of mud (no electric shocking, those are some other clowns). The Beast is (roughly) a 14 mile version of the race with about 40 obstacles like wall scaling, log carrying, rope climbing, barbed wire crawling, etc. Now lest you marathoners say “14 miles? That’s easy! I run 26.(whatevere) Baby!” These are 14 rather unfriendly miles that reflects someone's unhealthy obsession with hills and the strange aversion to following any sort of previously established trail. In short a race designed by a bunch of twisted bush-waking sons of Rasputin.
In contemplating the Beast, part of me was extremely confident that I would kill it in this race; and yet and equally competent part of me was certain that this race would in fact kill me. The Beast seemed to bring out my schizophrenic racing personality. There are two strong voices in my head. The first is a bit of a cross between Ralphie from the Christmas story and Walter Mitty; the perennial dreamer who imagines surprising everybody by running so fast that companies line up to sponsor him. The other personality is the illegitimate love child of Eeyore and Tommy Boy (really don’t try to picture that); the guy who thinks he absolutely sucks, can’t do anything, and will let his team down. Whenever I do anything adventurous like this, these are the two voices that accompany and accost me. And while neither of these voices is never quite fully correct (I find that I’m splendidly and adequately mediocre), I figured I’d include both of their points of view in recounting my Beast adventure.
So where should I start… Oh ya, the training... I didn’t do any. Okay, that’s not entirely true, I do lots of push-ups and pull-ups in my basement each day. So the macho manly voice feels pretty Bad-A that I can do 10 pull-ups and a boatload of push-ups at the age of 42. I can also do a handstand (not quite sure how that is in any way relevant to a Spartan race, but I can). Yet on the “I think I can’t” side of my personality, I have done next to zero running training. Okay, I think I’ve run four times in the past year for a grand total of 7 miles. In fact, I’ve never run further than 2.5 miles without stopping. So I knew I would not be “running” this race. I would pursue more of hiking with style technique with a Monty Python-esque gallop on the downhill portions. So being neither physically nor mentally prepared for this race, I regardless joined the father-son the Malloy Spartan perennials (Clint and Tyler) on our headbanging drive up to Northern Montana.
As I entered the race venue early on Saturday morning, the two sides of me were scoping my fellow racers to see how I might stack up. Now the best type of Spartan racers are not these He-man type muscly builds. The best competitors are built like toned gazelles in spandex. There were loads of men and women so built who would be joining me on the mountain. Still there were the occasional chubby fellow here and there where I thought, “I can smoke this guy… if I can finish the race.” I tried to take my mind off the race by spending the last half hour debating with myself whether I should run (OK, hike aggressively) in just my biker butt-huggers or if I should wear my shorts over them. The “I don’t want to die” side was worried that my pockets would get full of mud, or worse, the shorts might chafe. Yet, Nervous Nelly didn’t want to look like the Pride-Parade representative to the Spartan race by wearing the cheek clenching spandex (no matter how taut my round buttocks was).
Well the time came and I refocused on the race as our start time was called. As we waited in the starting pen we were favored with a speech that was something like King Leonidas giving Aragorn’s Black Gate battle speech from Return of the King in which Leonidas concludes the speech by ripping off his stripper pants to show the troops his Stars & Stripes boxers. Well if that didn’t get me running from the scene, spandex or no, nothing would.
Eeyore took a deep breath waiting for the signal. Boom. We were off. I was feeling pretty good because it was flat... for the first 200 yards. My optimism, and running, ended abruptly as the first of many many hills loomed large right off the bat. Still I was keeping up with the Malloy boys who have more Spartan metals than I have aprons, kids, cars, bikes, and dates... combined. So I took that as a small win and the “hero” side of me was pleased. Likewise, I easily bested the first obstacles which consisted of jumping over a couple of logs affixed horizontally at about chest height while both simultaneously trying to look cool and trying NOT to get wood-chip slivers in my crotch.
Now back at the starting line I had observed a rather gruff and portly woman who was in the heat immediately before ours. She stood out as she was talking a pretty big game for a rather stout woman and she also stood out as she emphasized the certainty of this opinion by interspersing (or more truthfully, permeating) the colloquial form of the word ‘copulating’ throughout her sentences. As my heat was forging midway up the first of many hills, we came upon this same woman collapsed into a ditch and pleading to her race-mate, “This is not me! This isn’t (copulating) me!” Sadly, unless this was some sadistic out of body experience, it was in fact her and she was out of the race. Tough guy Brett wasn’t surprised and, hey, at least I was better than somebody. Still the other guy in my head retorted "Yes, but that one person you are better than dropped out in the first quarter mile! You're screwed!"
Now I will honestly admit that neither of my personas can remember much of the obstacles the first few miles of the race. I only remember one thing… Hills! Hills! Hills! I have never hated geography so much in my life! It was quite obvious that the course designer was walking along and said, “Hey, this looks to be the steepest possible slope on this mountain with no trail on it. Let’s send them up here.” And why would there be a trail there anyway? No one in their right mind would want to go up by that route. Yet, that is where they sent us up and then sent us right on back down again. It seemed rather pointless to conquer a hill and then just run back on down it. Yet that is what we did over and over and over again. But why make it boring? Let's give everyone sandbags to heft up and down the worst possible hill they could find on the mountain. So sandbag in hand, I went up again. The I-can-do-this side of me refused to set the sandbag down on the entire assent or descent. The I-am-going-to-die side of me knew this attempt was risking my own incontinency.
After the sandbags and a few more hills later, we came across some beach ball size concrete balls. Roll them? I think not. We were to pick them up, carry them, drop them, do five burpees, pick them up again, carry them again, and drop them again (though not on your toes please). I did this challenge well enough last year, but that must have been all first-time adrenaline. Because this year, when I picked that sucker up, I thought my spleen was going to shoot out the side of my abdomen. Still red-faced and grunting, I hefted this concrete sphere hither and thither as directed. And still more obstacles followed. There was climbing, shimmying, crawling, jumping, and even some memorizing (this engineer/lawyer liked that one). Each step of the way, despite my faltering confidence, the challenges got done.
Just as I was starting to feel good about my performance, I began to notice that the mile markers were still under 5 miles for this 14 mile race. Somebody had to have fudged the sign spacing because we had already been at this for several hours. Right or wrong, our group carried on. At one point we did manage to pick up the pace as our three-person team of single dudes (aptly named the Wolfpack) was overtaken by a rather attractive woman in a bright yellow tennis skirt. Without a word passing between us, our pace picked up to match hers, but never enough to overtake her. Eventually, however, our leg muscles overruled our other more base instincts and we had to let her go… didn’t even get her bib number.
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Courtesy of Despair.com: Ironically this was my wall calendar picture for the month my divorce was filed. |
Through the mud and walls and logs and ponds, the miles ticked on. We plied ourselves with all sorts of magical sports concoctions of gummy electrolytes, salt tablets, protein bars, magic energy jellybeans, and some flavored goo with a consistency and flavor of pudding that had been coughed out of someone’s nose and then was put back into ones mouth for a second go at it. Yet, I was willing to try anything as this race kept going on and on and on (kind of like this blog post).
A 15 foot rope climb, an inverted horizontal ladder climb, inverted wall climbs, and lots of log carrying later, the mile markers got into the teens. We took a few rests for leg cramping and dumping rocks out of my shoes, but the end was in sight. I knew I was going to finish the race and I’d only failed one obstacle so far; that miserable "javelin throw." Javelin? I know javelins. I threw javelins in high school for four years. These are no javelins. These are garden rake handles; garden rake handles! They fly through the air with the same amount of grace as a llama being shot out of a circus cannon. So yeah, I failed that sucker for the second year in a row. 30 burpees were required. Grrrrrrr.
Yet, this was a distant memory as I approached the last mile. I was almost there. Unfortunately, no one told me that a quarter of that last mile would be spent crawling under barbed wire that was suspended at times a mere six inches from the hard dusty rocky ground. That crawl went on forever. Nor was it supposed that another quarter of the last miles would be spent carrying a Home Depot bucket full of rocks up and down… you'll never guess it… a hill. And even though the sights and sounds of the finish line was in sight during the bucket carry, it taunted rather than inspired. At one point I was told by my fellow racer that my bucket-on-my-shoulder carrying method might be illegal and I could be asked to repeat this hill,no one your life. So gripped that bucket using the old-fashioned bear-hug method and waddled down the hill.
There was nearly nothing left in the gas tank at this point as my hardest obstacle loomed large. I don’t know what it’s called, it's the rig or jig or something this that. So I'll call it "Richard" for simplicity. Richard consists of a 10 foot horizontal hanging poll that you have to shimmy across with your hands only, a couple of rings, rope, couple more rings, another rope, a few more rings, and finally a bell. We were expected to swing across Richard's hand grips like Tarzan heading on a hot date with Jane. Well this Tarzan only made it 10 feet across the horizontal shimmy before he fell. I guess I wasn't too interested in Jane... now maybe the yellow tennis skirt gal...? But it wasn't so and I failed. I hate you Richard! 30 burpees just in sight of the finish line and my second obstacle failed!
Though they took forever, I knew that once I finished the 30 and jumped over the fire pit, I was done. I got my legs back under me and took off running toward the fire pit in order to strike a cool pose for for camera man stationed there. I thought I would try a jumping “I just beat YOU Spartan Beast” pose. Instead I only managed a poor impression of a rather dirty Captain Planet.
Not falling into the fire and being lit up like a wooded witch witch that weighs as much as a duck, I crossed the finish line. Metal awarded; banana received, more weird free race food samples handed out, and Beast Finisher T-shirt put on. I did it… I did it in something like 789th place of men over 40, but I did it! And though no sponsorships followed, I wasn’t I hauled off the mountain with Miss This-isn’t-me either! Nor did I let my Malloy Wolfpack brothers down by utterly failing. I could wear the Finisher T-shirt with pride. For the day, I was Spartan, a rather slow and waddling one perhaps, but a Spartan nonetheless. Not a hero; not a zero, just a middle aged single father who was not going to let this mountain of hellish hills… or life as a whole... get the better of him. And to the true me, that is what the Spartan race is about. AROOOOO!
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