Race Review - Vampire 5K

Kellan crossing the finish line in total darkness.

On a whim, my son and I decided to run the Vampire 5k last Friday night. Originally I wasn't planning on doing this event, being that it was on a Friday night and after a long work week I typically don't feel like running. But, they said they were honoring online prices for day of registrations, and the boy and I weren't doing anything, so we decided to check it out last minute. So last minute, in fact, that I had already done some serious race training at UFL. So I was in for double duty.

We arrived at about 6:15PM and breezed through the day of registration. The fairgrounds had a makeup booth for vamps, a food-mobile, a free massage tent, the booze vendor and a "tattoo tent" where you could get some fang marks applied to your virgin flesh.

The premise of the race is citizens v. vampires. The 2 groups start at different gates, converge in the middle somewhere and finish together. I was unsure how this would play out and had visions of us crashing headlong into a huge mass of vampires at about 1.5 miles into the race. To differentiate the groups, the vamps wore black shirts and the citizens wore white, with a black in reserve if you get "turned". You turn into a vampire when your flags are swiped. Each citizen gets two flags. Once they are taken, you don the black shirt (provided by V5K) and join the hunt.

A couple things I noticed right away before the race. There were a lot of vampires milling about. Also, the event seemed to attract a lot more women than men. But, as we all know, chicks dig vampires.

The race was slated to start around 7:30, or dusk, whichever came last. The organizers had touted about running under a full moon, but when I saw the moon rising Monday around 6:30, on my way home from work, I knew there would be no moonlight running for us and it would be very dark when the sun went down. Fun fact: the moon rises 50 minutes later each day.

As the sun began to disappear behind the mountains, they had us citizens march off to our starting point. There's a shallow creek to cross and the "bridge" was backed up, so a few of us just sloshed across. I figured we'd be crossing it again soon enough and I wasn't wrong. We got to the starting gate and waited. And waited. And waited some more. Our wet feet were getting cold and my muscles were stiffening as the air temperature dropped fast with the setting sun.

Finally someone announced that they were having some technical difficulties with the smoke machines and were waiting on a phone call. A guy dressed as a demon went over the rules (no stopping or running back along the course, no contact and he explained how the flags worked) and tried to cheer us up, but we were all getting a little restless, not to mention cold. After another several minutes (we must have stood there for at least half an hour), I got the impression someone must have made the "screw it" executive decision and started us off with little fanfare.

We're off! Fortunately the guy in front seems to know where to go, because the course is not clear. We start out in the front 10 and my cold muscles are not happy right away. As we get closer to the path that follows the creek, the temps drop significantly. But after the first mile I warm up and don't notice it anymore. The route winds back and forth with some volunteers along the way to point us in the right direction. About halfway through, Kellan and the lead half dozen start pulling away and I lose him in the encroaching darkness.

I'm plodding along, staying the course, when suddenly my right side flag gets taken from me as a vampire boy lightly runs past me. I begin shouting to the citizens up ahead, that there's a vamp coming. I'm trying to figure out where he came from, but as we make another switch back turn, I see where the vamps are merging in with the citizens about a 1/4 mile back. Now I get it. They merge in, but have to keep pressing forward, so being up front, I'm only getting the fastest vampires who are pushing through to the leaders. The middle of the pack is getting slammed with hundreds of vampires. I'm sure it was total chaos back there.

At one point we were sharing a wide path, with the front half going one way and the back half going the other way. Things got interesting here and I had to sprint off course and make a big loop through the field to avoid the hungry ghouls making attempts at my last remaining flag. I had slowed down to a fast walk for about 10 paces right before the creek and this allowed a woman vampire to come up and make a swipe for my flag. Fortunately she missed as I dodged last minute and I kept my flag... but not for long. Along the last mile a vamp came out of nowhere and swiped my last flag.

I put on my black shirt and managed to snag one flag before the end of the race. Somewhere along the way I passed a smoke machine, but the only thing coming out of it that resembled smoke was the exhaust fumes from the small generator. At the finish line I was disappointed to see no timer clock. I didn't wear my watch and had no clear idea when the race began or what time it currently was.

With no official times, we had to guess at our placements by the number of people at the finish, how many had passed us, etc. We placed Kellan in the top 15 for sure, maybe as high as top 10. Myself, we figured around 25-30. Kellan nearly survived. He said the same young vamp that had snagged my first flag had run him down in the last stretch to the finish.

I wandered over to the free drink stand for what I thought would be a nice can of something. Instead, I find a table full of tiny 8oz. plastic cups, full of ice and the good stuff only filling about 3/4 of the cup. The lady explaining the favors available warns me that it's 9% alcohol (so almost as strong as a glass of white wine? The horror!). But the partial mouthful of liquid in the cup would need to be about 90% to have any effect. So I have my single swallow and wander over to the kool-aid stand and have a small cup of the "vampire juice", then we called it a night. We didn't really feel like hanging out in the cold longer than we had too.

In short, it was interesting, but had some serious flaws. If you don't know how to use smoke machines, you should probably test before the race and figure it out. If you want to have a night race, best to understand the sunset and moonrise tables. Also, it gets cold in Colorado at night, especially in the early Spring. This event was too early in the season to be run at night. Lastly, for $60 an entry for a race that has no real setup or obstacles, you could at least have a clock so people could get some idea of what times they ran.

I give it an A for effort and a D for execution. It was kind of fun and a good warm-up for Spartan (which is this Saturday), but not worth the price. With some proper organization it could be a real winner. If anyone ran this event in another city, drop me a line and let me know how it compared to Denver's inaugural run.

MOW - Crock Pot chicken cacciatore

MOW, the Meal Of the Week.

As I've mentioned before, to keep a firm grip on my diet, I bring my lunch to work everyday. I also make sure it's something prepared by me and with fresh and good for you ingredients. To further that process, I generally spend Sunday afternoon or evening making up a big batch of something for my son and I to eat during the work/school week.

A current favorite of mine is chicken cacciatore made in a Crock Pot. It's a simple, delicious and good for you.

Ingredients:

3 large chicken breasts, cut into 1" or so pieces.
1 lb. thick sliced fresh mushrooms.
1 red onion.
3 large tomatoes, chopped.
2 cloves garlic, minced.
1/4 cup flour.
2 T. olive oil
1 cup chicken broth
2 T. tomato paste
1 tsp. dried basil.
1/2 tsp. dried oregano.
1/2 tsp. dried thyme.
Salt and pepper to your liking.

Combine all ingredients, EXCEPT chicken, mushrooms and onion in a medium mixing bowl and whisk together.
Layer the bottom of the Crock Pot with the chopped onions and place the chicken on top. Dump in the mushrooms and spice/tomato mixture. For no particular reason, I put in half the 'shrooms, then the mix and then the rest of the fungi.
Crock on low for 8 hours. I've let it go as long as 11, with no problems. If you're in a hurry, you could crock on high for 4-5.

Chicken over the onion. Crock about half full.

Whisked up goodness.

Might look like a lot of mushies, but it works out.

Finito!

Serve over pasta...

Or roll up in a tortilla for lunch.

This typically will make enough for my son and I to eat for dinner Sunday night, and for lunch for the rest of the week. Adding a salad or piece of fruit rounds it out nicely.

Pro tip: If you're going to do lunches, drain the water that accumulates the first couple of days to help avoid soggy tortillas.

DIY - Spartan Spear, with throwing technique tips.

So you want to train for Spartan, but you have no spear. Here's a (relatively) simple how-to for building your own training spear for around $10.

Shovel handle. Cost: $9ish

10 penny nail. Cost: 10 pennies

First, head to your local hardware store and get yourself a shovel handle and a ten penny nail.

There are various other handles available, rakes, spades and whatnot, but the rounded head shovel handle seems to be about the right weight and length.

Ugly, but usable with head intact.

Drilling also helps keep it straight.

Drilling a pilot hole will help keep the nail from splitting the handle. Don't go too big though, you want that nail to be tight in there.

Pound that nail in a good couple of inches. I drove mine about .5" past the first observation hole.










You can use it as is, but if you have a grinder or belt sander, grinding off the head makes it just that much better.

Try not to set your face on fire.

If you're not hitting nice soft hay bales, you can expect some bending with ground strikes. Not to worry, you can bend it back easily with a hammer, or just by hitting it against a hard object, like asphalt, a goal post, or your noggin.

Dart grip.

Throwing tips:
Find your spot on the spear and get used to the feel of it. For me it's a few inches behind the balance point. I like it to feel a little front heavy.
Grip it like a pencil, or dart.
Step into your throw.
Use your opposite hand to counter balance and aim.
Arc your throw slightly, but don't overdo it.
Follow through. Let your back foot come forward as you achieve full hip rotation.
Practice. It will probably feel funky at first, but once you find your sweet spot, repetition will have you making consistent hits.

DON'T THROW IT TOO HARD! The pics below are exaggerated for technique. I'm also throwing a lot farther, for practice, than the hay bales are in a typical race. A soft touch goes a long way!

If you find your spear is glancing off, or turning sideways when you throw (usually going to the left for right handers) you are likely side arming it too much. Bring your elbow in and down towards your body. You may have to exaggerate this. For my son, we had to get his elbow in front of his body to correct the for this. It's more of a basketball toss than a baseball toss, if that makes sense.

Most failures I've seen involve poor grip (holding it in their fist and/or not finding the right spot on the shaft) and throwing too hard.

Step into it.

Full rotation. Back foot coming up to the front.

Too much arc.

And there you have it. A cheap training tool that will help you avoid one of the Spartan Race's tricky pitfalls. Now that I've saved you thirty burpees, you can buy me a beer at the next race. ;)

You might also like:
Spartan Slosh Pipe how-to

Training - 10-100 with Spartan spear and grenade toss

With the CO Spartan Military Sprint just a few short weeks away, we are trying to get ramped up and ready. 2 of the trickier obstacles last year were the grenade toss and the spear throw. Either (or both) of these can easily cost you 30 burpees, so practice while you can!

We've developed an easy to use race training regimen we call the 10-100. This essentially works out to running 2.5 miles (10 1/4 mile laps) and doing 100 burpees. Then you can mix in an obstacle you'd like to practice. We chose both the grenade toss and the spear throw for our latest session.



Here's how it shakes out:

Run one lap. This first one we took pretty easy, as more of a warm-up run.

Toss the grenade (or spear). Sprint to recover the object and bring it back to the line for the next guy.

Throw the spear (or grenade). Sprint and return.

Do 10 burpees.

Repeat 9 more times. For a total of 10 laps and 100 burpees.

Such form!

For targets, since we didn't have a hay bale or a 55 gallon drum to haul around, we used a fleece jacket for the grenade and just aimed between 2 lines on the field, that were graciously chalked out when we got there, for the spear.
The jacket helped deaden the bounce of the grenade, if you overshot it, you had a decent sprint penalty ahead of you.

Kellan demonstrates how not to throw a spear.

The exercise is more about feel and form, through repetition, and testing your throwing under stress, rather than a full simulation of battlefield conditions.

Kellan lapped me on the 8th round, to finish first at 32 minutes and change (he didn't pay attention to the second hand).
I came in at 38:30
Billy couldn't remember his time, so we'll call it an even 2 hours. (OK, he finished somewhere around 35:00).

Billy takes aim with the 'nade.

Grenade used was an inert M10 with the spoon and "fuse" removed. Found at most Army Surplus stores for around $7 or so. Spear was a shovel handle with a 10 penny nail driven in the end and ground to a dull point. Here's a link to our DIY version: Spartan spear for about $10.