Race Review - 2015 Spartan Trifecta

To change it up a bit, I decided to roll my entries into this year's Spartan Sprint, Super and Beast into one Trifecta review. This year I did the races in order from shortest to longest and visited 3(ish) new venues and one new state.


CO Military Sprint

This event has become my bread and butter. It was the 1st race I ever ran (2012) and the quickest and best Spartan I have posted in (2014). As usual, it was at the Ft. Carson Army base in Colorado Springs. This year, however, it was moved to a different location on the base, farther south. Because of this, the entry point was a single gate. We were running the first heat, and there was a long line of cars when we showed up, which was pretty early. It took us a good half hour or so to get through the checkpoint, and I was getting nervous we'd miss our start time. Later we heard people waited in that line for as much as 2 hours for later heats.

From parking lot to grounds.

Parking was closer to the site than normal, so no shuttle buses, but a bit of a hike to registration. Getting checked in was a breeze, as usual, and we just made our start time. After a little warm-up and some words from the Army Pastor as well as the rile up from the Spartan MC, we were off on our way!

Go time!

The terrain was slightly different from the other location, with a little more up and down on some rolling hills, with a couple pretty steep sections. One of which made the bucket carry particularly hard at this race, forcing many people, myself included, to stop, which is something I try hard to avoid.

There were a few different obstacles this year, and some tweaks to exiting favorites. New (to me) was the memory wall, where you have to memorize a word and 4 digit number to be recalled later in the race (although we were never asked to recall ours). The Rig, a hanging traverse obstacle consisting of  two horizontal bars, separated by three vertical lengths of rope. I was happy to see the Monkey Crawl omitted, since it had bested me twice last year, until I saw The Rig. This would become my new nemesis.

Bucket Carry of Doom.

The tire drag and pull has been replaced with sleds, that can be a bit of a pain, depending on the ground you are dealing with. The Traverse Wall is now in a "Z" shape, forcing you to negotiate an inside, as well as an outside, corner. I managed to slip off this one with a poor foot placement. The ropes had a variety of knotted and no-knots options for the first time. The Spear Throw was there, of course, but now with a tether on the end, so it can be retrieved quicker and safer. It didn't seem to affect my throw much and I added the 6th hit to my perfect Spear Throw record.

There was also more bunching up of obstacles this year. Especially the arm intense type. So quite a bit of running in between compared to the last couple of years. I'm sure this is to induce more stress on the hard obstacles, as well as probably a lot easier to set up, but I liked it better when they were spread throughout the course more. There was no ruck sack march this year, which was a bummer because that's one thing I really excel at and can usually pass a lot of people during.

Splash splash.

Shortly after we finished, and I with a time to qualify me for the OCR World Championships, we wandered around for a couple hours, I tried my hand at the Slosh Pipe Challenge (I got out 15 reps, the winner came in at 28), drank a beer (or two) before some clouds moved in. I heard a couple far off rumbles of light thunder, which didn't seem like a very big deal, but the ended up shutting the course down and pulling people off. This seemed a bit silly coming from an event that prides itself on being hard core, and where the founder himself brags about not canceling a race due to weather and running in a hurricane (the inspiration for the now well know "Hurricane Heats" available at many races), but that's not my call to make I guess. I do know several people were very upset and I heard from a lot of people things like "I'll never run another Spartan", etc. I did hear, later, that there were a lot of $100 race credits issued to people who were severely delayed, or not allowed to finish at all.

Art shot.

All in all, it was just OK. Not a great race, by any means, and probably a close tie for last place with the Vegas Super we ran last year. I wasn't real happy with the venue, the organization or the course layout. I'm pretty sure it ranks last for anyone forced to retreat off the course, especially those right at the finish.


Austin Super

Just a couple weeks later, I was traveling to Austin to compete in the Spartan Super. In stark contrast to the CO Sprint, this was a really great race and one I look forward to doing again some day. This was a first for me in several ways. It was my first trip to Austin (or TX for that matter), it was the first race out of my home state I traveled to alone and it was the first Super that I really wanted to be competitive at (the 1st one being a team race and I also wanted to back up my OCRWC qualifier).

I flew in on Friday afternoon, checked out Austin for some food (fajitas and BBQ ribs on one plate. Amazing!) then drove out to Lago Vista where I had rented a place, essentially splitting the distance between the airport and the venue, which was a bit of a drive from Austin.

The drive to the venue was a beautifully, serene,
winding road through rolling hills along the river. I really enjoyed it, hardly saw a car the whole time, and it really set the mood for the weekend for me. Arriving at the venue, which was some sort of ranch, the parking staff was great and things moved quickly. It was a short hike to the bus and about a 5 minute ride to the main grounds. The area had been experiencing heavy rains (I would get an occasional flash flood alert on my phone) and the ground was pretty sloppy with mud and muck.

Before.

I was plenty early for my 11:00 start time, so I wandered around a little bit, and zeroed in on the Slosh Pipe Challenge. No one was signing up, so I figured I might get lucky and win a race entry. I stepped up and banged out a pretty impressive (for me at least) 28 reps. I milled around a bit, keeping an eye on the challenge, but hung my head in shame after I saw a guy hit the 30 mark. So I headed over to the start and made my way towards the front, excited to race on a new course.

And this was a fantastic course. It would through the trees, across streams, up over large rock outcrops, through rolling terrain that was never quite so steep that you had to stop and rarely did I even have to come to a walk. Like many races, I came to trade positions back and forth with another guy and we would chat along the way as I passed him or he passed me.

One of the many stream crossings.

At one point, along a wooded path probably about halfway through the race, I could hear two guys chatting behind me, probably 30 yards off or so. Then I heard what sounded like a large branch break, and one of the guys said: "You all right?" Followed immediately by a shout for "Medic!". Obviously it was no branch that snapped, and judging from the sound it was a pretty large bone. We hadn't passed any staff in a while, so I ran on ahead and quickly found a guy manning an obstacle and relayed the info so he could call it in. It wasn't a bad stretch of path, or rocky, or anything like that, so I'm guessing it was just a misstep that caused it. I good reminder for me to keep my head in it and watch my feet.

The obstacles were similar to the Sprint from a couple weeks prior. The Memory Wall again had no recall station, so I spent a lot of time reciting the useless mantra in my head. I nailed the Spear Throw again (7 for 7!), but once again failed The Rig. Right at the finish, they stacked up a number of arm smoking obstacles, finishing with the Rope Climb. I was pretty tired, but managed to get up it without too much difficulty, then took a couple minutes to explain the technique to two guys that were just sort of holding the rope staring up at the top. The only variation I recall, was the Atlas Carry had a thin rope stretched across the halfway point that you had to duck under, making it a little more interesting. The sled carry was in some serious muck, causing a good bit of suction and I had to really yank to get it moving.

Final dunk in red TX mud water.

Considering how nasty the fairground area was, the course overall wasn't that muddy. I really expected to be slipping and sliding all over the place, but it was a pretty smooth run. The one issue I encountered was with the stream crossings. The fine gravel would get into my shoes, and although I was able to ignore it for the most part, at around mile 8 it was compacting in the toe area so bad that I made myself stop and empty it out, even though I really didn't want to. This year I went up a full shoes size in my runners, and that helped me to not stop sooner and I also haven't gotten the dreaded Black Toenail this year. I brought a small water bladder with me, but I probably didn't need it. I felt pretty good and drank very little from it.

The Rig (hate) was my only failure for the day, which allowed me to finish strong (elevation drop probably didn't hurt, either) and the ChronoTrack has me listed as 1st in group for the day, although the official results from Spartan will later drop me to 13th. But either way, good enough to back up my OCRWC qual, and make the day a great success! I felt really good post race, until I stopped to chat with the guy I had been trading with on the course and I suddenly got intense leg cramps in my calves.

I like the 1st place better.

I was pretty beat, trying to walk off the cramps and sip a beer, grab a bite to eat and finally just had to sit down, so I went near the finish and watched some racers cross the line for a bit before I decided to head back to the car. The parking area was still really mucked up and a lot of cars were getting stuck, but they had tractors on hand and were yanking people out quite efficiently.

This was probably my favorite Spartan Race to date (maybe tied with my first CO Sprint, because your first is always memorable and that was an incredible race) and I would definitely recommend it to anyone. It's a great destination race, Austin is a cool town, and there's lots of other stuff to do in the area if you have a couple days. My only regret is that I didn't take an extra day or two as well as have someone to share the experience with.

After.

Breckenridge Beast

Fast forward a couple months, and we're back in Colorado for the first ever Beast in Breckenridge. Breckenridge is a ski town, but has a pretty decent Summertime draw too. We decided it would be a great mini vacation, so we rented a condo with some friends and went up Friday night. We took it pretty easy Friday night, knowing the next day would be tough. The Beast we did last year in UT was really hard and everyone expected this one to be worse (they were wrong) and pics leading up to it showing a ton of snow still on the mountain had us all wondering what to wear for it.

Saturday morning the sun was out and it looked like it was going to be pretty hot, so I decided to go tights and short sleeves, rather than the long sleeves and I brought just in case. This was a pretty solid idea. We checked in with one of our sponsors, Brute Force, stashed our bags and made our way to the start, which pointed directly uphill. We were a little late getting the the corral, so ended up towards the back of the pack.

These guys rule.

Once the start went off, it took a good bit to push through the people (this drives me crazy) who immediately started walking and didn't have enough sense to move over to let us pass. It's like driving people. Stay right, pass left and the world will be a better place! The climb did manage to spread people out and when we hit the big water crossing (the first of a few venue specific obstacles) I was able to push through at my own pace. The course wound pretty much up and up, but unlike Utah, it was mainly along dirt access roads, rather than single track trails. This was nice in that it made for a quicker ascent and descent, but also made it relatively easy. There were very few really steep climbs, mostly long gradual ascents.

Cold snow melt water.

For the obstacles, the stand outs were the hike up the snowy half pipe which then turned into a Snow Wire Crawl. This was one point where some gloves would have been nice! At the top of this slope, the course split into it's respective Sprint and Beast distances. The Sprint turned off down the hill and we continued upwards. There were 2 separate Log Carries, that were rough and a very long Bucket Carry that I had to stop during, much to my disappointment. The other notable was the horizontal rope traverse, which I hadn't seen at a Spartan race before, but knew from other events.

This was a little miserable.

Again I found my pace car. A young soldier, named Jason from Ft. Leavenworth who wearing a Rogue t-shirt. We traded back and forth several times and then hiked up a long hill together and chatted about races and heart rate monitors and all manner of OCR type stuff. I would pull ahead on the quicker stretch, but his steady pace would catch me on the long hills. On the traverse wall, I made a misstep at nearly the last foot placement, allowing Jason to pass me and keep his lead.

Not long after my first failed obstacle, I found my old (not) friend The Rig, who bested me once again. This set of burpees really smoked me and the rest of the race became incredibly difficult. I was starting to feel the fatigue, some minor cramping, etc. when I can to the Spear Throw. On my step in, I hit my lead leg against the low log barrier, and botched my throw for the first time ever. This put me at 90 penalty burpees for the day. From here my morale was down and the cramping was up. The last downhill section back towards the fairground was a lot slower than I wanted. The cramps were setting in and I walked way more than I wanted to.

Somewhere, out there.

At the finish they again had the Rope Climb as a final insult. I was tired, cramped and downtrodden, but determined not to do anymore burpees that day. So I dug deep and pushed through to the top, splashed under the Dunk Wall and crossed the finish line at 3:42 and change. I did make my goal of beating my UT Beast time, but this was a very different race and I was angry at myself for missing the spear and the traverse, 2 obstacles, as my friend Dave says, are right in my wheel house. It would have been nice to reinforce my OCRWC qualifiers again, but I missed it by a full 25 places.

Post race, some clouds moved in and it started to sprinkle ever so slightly and a light breeze came up. As I wandered around waiting for my friends to finish, I began to get a deep chill that i couldn't seem to get rid of. When Dave saw me, sitting shivering by the Brute Force tent, he mentioned my lips were blue. I couldn't even make it to have my free beer and was barely able to wait for Dave to take a leak before I had to get out of there. I was shaking pretty bad when we got on the bus and figured I was getting hypothermic. Even a hot shower back at the condo didn't help and the shivering and teeth chattering continued until I got some food in me, leading to believe that perhaps it was brought on more so by a severe calorie deficit (I generally have a hard time fueling on a hard course) rather than the relatively slight temp drops, post race. Once I ate I bounced back fairly quick and was able to enjoy a night on the town.

Rare and elusive Beast Sprint medal.

This Beast was a decent race. Not great, but not terrible. Bruce is a cool place, and I would probably do it again, but it wasn't so special that I'd feel bad missing it. I did get a bonus from it though. The only known Beast/Sprint medal that I've heard of. So that made it all worthwhile. :)

In Total

After a local day outing, a destination event and a road trip, 26.7 miles were covered in 7 hours and 51 minutes,  dozens of obstacles conquered, a few failed (damn you Rig!) and some highs and lows experienced. I decided next year I wouldn't want to do the CO Sprint (although I almost immediately signed up for the CO Super at the same venue, go figure) opting to do one somewhere else, like AZ perhaps. The Austin Super will likely find me competing there again, but probably not in 2016. If the Breckenridge Beast happens again, I will likely skip it for a trip to Montana, because I hear that course is phenomenal.

Spartan Stats to date