Still Smiling at the end
Spartan, Fitness Faster Fun Day Out
Some might call us Mad or Crazy and be glad it’s not them doing the Spartan race. Whilst some might call us Brave and be envious that we got out there and did it. Which ever way you look at it, Team Fitness Faster had a fun day taking part in Spartan last weekend.
Our specific training for the event was minimal. We did not plunge ourselves into icy cold water or commando crawl through mud/cow pats under barbwire as preparation. We did however have a good strength base. This helped us to scale high walls, carry sandbags and 20 litre water containers up a muddy steep hill and crawl upside down on a rope.
Can anyone do it?
Absolutely, we ran past a guy in a wheelchair that had one guy pulling him with a harness in front and a woman pushing from behind! Now if they can do it, anyone can!
We chose to do the Spartan Super Race, 14km of running around the hills in Paris Creek with 30 Obstacles. There is also a 7km race with 15 obstacles for beginners. The atmosphere is great and everyone is there to help each other out. Team work at it’s best, encouraging and helping people you don’t know to get over, under or up something.
For anybody wanting to do an Obstacle Race, I would say, DO IT. Make sure you do some running up hills in preparation, get some good solid core strength work going on, you will need it for some of the obstacles, especially this rope crawl.
Core Strength needed for this rope crawl
Get your back, arms and legs strong for all the jumping over walls and climbing/swinging up things and good grip strength will help as well. If you want to improve your strength then join Fit HIT. (Only one space available).
How did we go?
We did not wear shoes with rope protector grips on the side as suggested by Spartan and I think you can tell from the footwear (that we were willing to get muddy for the day), that we were in this for fun, not the prize money!
Gluing an old pair of shoes together for Spartan!
On arrival at Spartan we walked under one of the obstacles and watched all the incredibly fit and agile Elite Spartans, running over the netting. At this point I think some of us started to wish we had done some training to prepare for the balance and coordination involved. Although my sideways roll across the net was still effective!
Cargo Net Obstacle. (Jesse looked cool as a cucumber, he is clearly made for Spartan).
Was it tough?
It’s fair to say the obstacles were challenging but mostly do-able. Stu lost his balance whilst trying to jump onto floats on the water and did an amazing dive into an icy cold damn. However it wasn’t long before we all had to join Stu in an icy water submersion. The low of the day for me was swimming across some nets and crawling through some muddy pits. I hate being cold! The trick then was to (attempt to) keep moving as fast as I could to keep warm.
Jumping over the fire obstacle was one of the challenges that I had been apprehensive about, however after plunging into cold water I would have been quite happy to jump through that warm fire several times!
I think from the whole course there was only one obstacle that we couldn’t complete due to being too wet and slippy to crawl up a vertical rope. The rest was a challenge but with the help of each other and strangers we managed to get through the whole challenge.
We took our time and finished in just under 3 hours.
If you want to join us next year then get in touch and let me know sooner rather than later. I will put together some specific training to be better prepared for the next race.
Who is keen? leave me a comment to let me know.
#fitnessfaster @fitness_faster #spartanrace #wedidit #obstacletraining #personaltrainingbrighton #personaltrainingglenelg #personaltraininghove #personaltrainingseacliff #fitnessbrighton #gymbrighton
