About me

At age 30 I had the beginnings of a barrage of minor and major health problems start. By age 35 I had lower back surgery for a blown disk, lost the hearing in my left ear and found I had a bad aortic valve that would require open heart surgery.

At the time of my open heart sugery I was the heaviest I had been in my life. I weighed 212 pounds when I enetered the hospital in March of 2009. After 8 of the worst days in my life, I was back home with a mechanical heart valve and a pace maker. I was 22 pounds lighter, but for every pound of fat I had lost that much in what little muscle I had as well. In the winter of 2010 I had ACL replacement surgery to fix a problem knee that had been plaguing me since I dislocated it in my late teens.

After recovering from the heart and knee procedures, I decided I needed to get in shape. I had always tried to work out, but never could stay focused or on track. I sucked it up and decided I needed some help. That's when I met my personal trainer, Jonathan, at UFL5280 in June of 2011. We started very slow and basic. But I stayed focused and pushed hard and slowly lost fat and gained muscle and gained confidence in my abilities.

About half a year later I decided I needed to start testing myself and finding a tough goal to work towards. I had never competed in any race before, obstacle or otherwise. In fact I'd never done so much as a 5k walk-a-thon. I've never been a runner, but really enjoyed the cross training I was getting through Jonathan. So I did what any reasonable person would do, I signed up for a Spartan Sprint. Come to find out it's considered by many to be the most difficult 5k obstacle race out there. And this was the inagural Militray Sprint and turned out to have the most obstacles of any Spartan Sprint to date and ended up being 4 miles long!

Well, I continued to cross train and at the last minute, literally a week before the race, I started trying to figure out how to run properly. I finished the 4 mile "sprint" in just over 2 hours and ended up in the top 25% for the day (858th out of over 3600 entries). It was the hardest physical thing I had ever done... And I was instantly hooked. Within days of the race I signed up for the next year's sprint and set my sights on running in the competitive heat. The following year I placed 77th in the elite category and finished in the top 2% for the day.

I began this little blog to share my experiences and thoughts on obstacle races and other adventures. Listing things in detail on what has (or hasn't) worked for me. Hopefully you'll find something to help you, or maybe you've got a tip for me. Regardless I'd love to here from you and please let me know if there's an event in my area so I can add it to my list!

See you in the mud.

Wade