Spartan Beast Killington

The idea of back to back challenges in difference endurance events actually came from a podcast interview with the founder of the Spartan race while driving to my second marathon 3 years ago!

Strengths: Experience with ski trails (in the summer)! Ski trails are wide, treeless, grassy and are steeper than regular hiking trails. Last year I raced on Wildcat Mountain and Whiteface mountain ski trails, both are also 4,000ers. Whiteface Mountain has the steepest ski trail east of the Rockies so I already done worse than Killington. I also have loads of experience of running in muddy trails.

Weakness: Upper body strength, not good with burpees, lack of experience with obstacles.

Preconditions: I didn't specially train for this race, I started off with some pushup and then pullups strength training but as training for my 100M went to peak weeks, strength training was the first thing I cut (swim was second and I paid for that last week). I did do trail runs which ended up having significant elevation gain. Killington ended up being my tenth 4000er of September. Despite not knowing what I'm getting myself into I was confident that I was fit enough to handle anything that comes. I heard stories of friends cramping in the Spartan race and made sure to have good nutrition. I didn't know how long the race would take but figured I aim for 6 hours, I usually consider being around twice the time of the fastest person good for middle of pack.

My confidence dropped a bit when I saw that the time cutoffs for when you were required to have a headlamp on you. Made me rethink how long this would take. I liked that you had to climb a small wall to get into the start line area.

The race started off with an immediate uphill and the front of the pack started off running it. I just power hiked, doing the usual ultra-running strategy of not running up unless I could see the end/top. The first few obstacles were getting over small walls and such. There was a monkey bar a bit in and I successfully crossed it. That's my first time! Afterwards there was a barbed wire which I found pretty easy to crawl under but it was longer than any barb wire I faced in other obstacle course races. This one wasn't muddy, sometime I didn't realize I would appreciate on the second one. The Z-walls were my first failed obstacle. Had to pay with 30 burpees.

The Bridge obstacle was the only one I seen pictures of beforehand. It involved swimming a bit to a rope ladder, then climbing it and then swinging on 3 dangling ropes to hit a bell. We were required to have a life vest which made swimming freestyle awkward. I switched to back stroke and relaxed swam my way to the bridge. I felt pretty comfortable, very refreshing, in the open water, I guess swimming 86 minutes last week at Mirror lake helped eliminate some fear. I failed to hit the bell from the dangling rope, another 30 burpees.

Around mile 5 I met Jeff. We had been passing each other here and there. I would pass on the uphill and he would pass me on the downhill. We talked a bit, found out he worked in NYC for five years before moving back to the Ohio/Kentucky area. After the
bridge the non-ski trails became muddy which added to the fun. The ski trails are still weird to me but as soon as the route gets some trees, rocks and roots I get into my element and have so much fun.

Some getting over obstacles initially look like you need to get your hands to the top and pull yourself up which is why I thought my lack of upper body strength (I could barely do more than 20 pushups in a row) would be a big weakness. However, after observing some people I found out that after getting your hands to the top, you could swing and crawl your legs to the top and get it over which reduces the body weight you need to pull up. Ends up you don't really need strong upper body for most of the obstacles. Going down my first 7 feet wall my knee banged against something on the way down. I felt like it didn't hit any muscle so I knew I was okay but I guess the force of the impact made my brain go into limp mode. I limped for the next five minutes to the next obstacle.

Around mile 7 I saw people starting to tire out. I started telling people good work or good job as I passed, common practice in ultras. People did interesting things like walking uphill backwards and running downhill sideways or in S shapes like skiing. I could remember when I tried things like that when I was younger.

Sandbag carry wasn't bad as I thought it would be, it felt like carrying a heavy backpack. I imagine the backpackers found it easy. Going uphill with the weight had me focusing on breathing. On the second sandbag I was running downhill with it. I did however struggled with the bucket carry, not because of the weight but because the bottom rims dug into my hand (I could see how gloves would have helped here). At mile 10 we hit the death march which I been hearing people talk about along the way. It was a steep ski trail climb, maybe a mile uphill then fell into some regular trail running before merging with the sprint Spartans and then a steep downhill. This was all normal terrain to me so I went through it with ease. I tried cracking jokes to people as I passed on the uphill to help keep the mind off pain, one person kept up with me for a while. It was weird seeing the sprint Spartans...the beast Spartan were all suffering and now we merged with a group that were out as a family thing. They even shared burpees! The obstacles got more frequent towards the end and I failed a few of them. The burpees got pretty tough, it got to the point where I had to take a few seconds break after 5 of them (something to work on if I do this again).

I had to do burpees near right at the end because of failing the javelin throw. A few feet away was a jumping over fire and then the finish line. Not enough distance for me to recover from the burpees. I’m pretty sure the finishing pic is of me looks like I’m dying.

I finished in 6 hours and 6 minutes, my garmin says 14.8 miles with 10,640 feet of gain! 12th in my age group. Arms are sore from the burpees and forearms and knees scratched from the barbed wire crawling but pretty good overall. No trouble walking down the stairs but I can’t run down them.