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| Pre race. Dave, Herk and I. |
The Colorado Spartan Military Sprint holds a special place in my heart. It was the first race I ever ran and I've run it each year since it's 2012 inception. If there was any event that "saved my life" (in terms of getting me into a fit lifestyle) this is it. Talking with my fellow OCR buddies, we all agreed that this race is the hardest we've done, that includes the Super Spartan in Las Vegas we ran just a month ago.
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| You will run, jump, climb, crawl and Burpee all over this place. |
The race is held on the Ft. Carson army base in Colorado Springs. Nestled right up to the mountains, you get to battle the in place Army base obstacles, 6000' elevation, unpredictable weather (year to year has varied from heat stroke to hypothermia) in addition to the regular Spartan obstacle fare. This event grows each year, with more and more of the famous names in OCR showing up to compete.
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| Always some interesting characters on the course. |
Having run this race 3 times now, I would say this 2014 race was the 2nd hardest race I've run. But let me qualify that. The first was the hardest, but I think everyone's first is probably that way. Last year was easier, mainly because we ran the elite heat and avoided a lot of the muck and bottle necks. This year we ran later, at 9:45, so we did have to battle the slippery slopes more, which makes a big difference.
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| The later you run, the slippery it gets. |
This year's race had some harder obstacles too. The ruck sacks were heavier, the hoist sand bags were heavier and the Monkey Crawl (shutdown on Sunday due to injuries from what I hear) was the only obstacle I was unable to complete. Compared to running a clean race, and also my fastest finish, last year. And struggling my way to a 2+ hour finish, doing 150 penalty burpees (I had no idea what to expect out there) during my first year. I did get pretty scraped up this year, in the wire crawl mostly, which was pretty long and rocky at this event.
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| Monkey Crawl. *shudder* |
I like this race a lot because there's so many obstacles to break up the running. In fact they have enough going on to pile up a couple arm smokers just to mess with you. For instance the Monkey Crawl was immediately after the rope climb and both claimed a lot of victims. The ropes were super slick, by the time we got to them and it took about everything I had to ring the bell this time. Then I got about 3 rungs into the Monkey Crawl before I took the plunge and clawed my way out of the water to the 30 burpees that awaited me.
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| The rope climb claims a lot of victims. |
Talking with people and watching some post-race interviews, the things most people found the hardest were the Spear Throw, the Monkey Crawl, the Ruck Sack Hike and the elevation in general. Being from CO, training at 5300' daily and doing my share of back packing/hiking in 5 digit elevation ranges, I personally found the Monkey Crawl to be the hardest. My team mate would disagree, as he flew through it but missed the spear throw. If you're from out of town, the thin Colorado air will certainly have an effect on you, and is probably a big reason why we felt the Super in Vegas was an easier race overall, even though it's length was double that of the CO Military Sprint.
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One corner of the fairgrounds.
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The fairground was packed and, as usual, we found several nice people to chat with as we hung around the rope climb and Monkey Crawl area to watch and cheer on the racers still out on the course. There were a lot of people from out of town, we met people from Wisconsin, and a huge contingent from Texas. My only complaint would be the beer tent. We got our first beers pretty quick, but going back the line was 80 yards long for the rest of the day. An event this big certainly needs more beer staff.
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| Post race. |
This is a challenging race for sure. Unless you're a natural, you really need to train up for this one. I've never run a Spartan Sprint in another location, but people who have, some in several states, generally agree this is about the toughest one out there. I look forward to it every year, and for my fellow medal whores out there, be advised this race has it's own unique medal you'll want to add to your collection. Believe me, you'll earn it!
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| Trifecta tribe, here we come! |
