We are Spartans

Ed Philipp, Rye Y Chief Operating Officer

A while back I wrote a blog post about staying motivated to lead a healthy lifestyle. One of the things that I mentioned was that I liked to appeal to my competitive nature to keep me motivated and that I was going to compete in the Spartan Race (www.spartanrace.com) on June 4th. I am happy to say that I trained hard and was one of the 73% of participants that completed the race. I am also happy to say that I was part of a team made up of mostly Rye Y staff that competed that day. While it was an extremely difficult race, all of us finished, albeit with cuts, bruises and covered in mud.

The race was billed as a 3.1 mile race with 10-12 military style obstacles that 99.9% of those that start finish, with the fastest time around 30 minutes. In my mind it was going to be like a 5k with mud and monkey bars. I figured if normally the winner of a 5K finishes in 17 min. and I can do it in 30 min, I should be able to finish this race in about 50 min. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The first thing I noticed when we arrived at Tuxedo Ridge Ski Area was that we weren’t going to be racing on the flat sections of the Ski Area, but rather on the mountain itself. I should have known that we would be running up and down the mountain, after all the race was at a Ski Area, it just never sunk in until I actually saw the course with my own eyes.

The race began at the base of the mountain which we were to run straight up. Half way up we were sprayed with water and had to jump over fire, the race was on. It was at this point I realized that there was no way I was going to last very long if I continued to run, so the race quickly became a brisk hike. Since most of the race was over rocks/boulders, up steep inclines and down equally steep declines, it would have been very easy to get hurt if I became too careless.

For the most part the obstacles were the “fun” part of the race; some of them were relatively easy such as the monkey bars, cargo net, 8 foot wall, inclined soapy wall, and tire carry. Others were difficult such as the balance walk, rock wall traverse and the spear throw. I failed on all 3 of these and my punishment was 30 burpees for each obstacle. As I said, for the most part the obstacles were fun; however, there were some downright insane obstacles.

The first insane obstacle was the 5 gallon bucket carry. We had to fill our standard orange Home Depot bucket ¾ full with gravel and carry it up the mountain about 200 yards and then back down. The bucket weighed about 25 lbs. filled and was awkward to carry. I actually had to stop a few times on the way up and down to rest; this is not something I readily want to do again. (I was amazed to learn at the finish that one of my teammates, Kaleena Ladeairous, carried two buckets in order to help out a teammate.) The next insane obstacle was the barbed wire mud crawl. Keep in mind that the website for the race said this was going to be 40 yards long, in reality it was 400 meters long and up the mountain. It must have taken me 20-30 mins to complete and I was completely covered in mud. At one point my sunscreen combined with sweat and got in my eyes, I was in such pain I couldn’t open my eyes and I surely couldn’t wipe them due to all the mud on my hands/arms. Thank goodness there was water being sprayed on us at that point and eventually I could open my eyes and see again. The final insane obstacle was the barbed wire ice crawl. You would think after going up and down a mountain on a warm June day that you would welcome the opportunity to crawl around in some ice, and I did. I was wrong though, by the time I finished the 40 foot crawl I was in pain from the cold. The good news was the finish line was near.

After another jump through fire, the only thing between me and the finish line were 3 “Spartans” armed with pugil sticks. I made it through all 3 without getting knocked over and finished…in 1 hour and 33 minutes. My teammates were close behind and I was able to cheer them on as they finished. What a sense of accomplishment we all had as we talked after the race (and that was before we realized only 73% of the racers finished the race and not the advertised 99%). I think all of us said the race was the hardest thing we had ever done, some on the team had run full and half marathons, and we vowed we would never do this again.
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