Spartan race season is coming up soon. If you’re a first timer like I was earlier this year, you’re starting to dread the day of the race — if you haven’t already been since the day you signed up. But now, it’s starting to feel real. Should I have started training by now? I don’t even know how, or what to train. But you’re signed up, and there’s no turning back now.
My Training
Saturday, August 29, 2015. The day of the race is decided. It’s just an obstacle race with a bunch of my friends, right? All we’re going to do is run together, slip and slide in the mud, climb over a few walls, and then have a drink afterwards. I don’t need to adjust my training much for this. Maybe I’ll throw a jog into my regimen every now and then. That’s it. I’ll be fine. I’m already in pretty good shape. These were my thoughts five months out of the race.
And that’s exactly the mind set I had for four months and three weeks leading up to the race. I stayed consistent with my normal training routine, which involved lifting weights five to six days a week with little to no cardio. For the first four months, I would go on a short run at least once every two weeks. By short run, I mean about two km. Over the next four months, I didn’t increase the distance, but I upped the pace a bit each time.
One month left until the race. This is when I started to take it just a little bit more seriously. My friends starting talking about the race more and more. It still sounded like it was going to be a fun and friendly day. But our competitive nature started kicking in. I could tell that the others were starting to train harder, nobody wanted to come last in the group. So I upped my running to once a week rather than once every two weeks. Not much of a change, I know, but it was still twice as much as I was doing before. The distance I was running remained the same , but my pace increased once again.
Fast forward to one week out. This is when things really picked up for me. The group chat with my friends went from fun and a little competitive to full out survivor mode. We were all in it to win now. It seemed like everybody had been taking this a lot more seriously than I had been up to this point. So what did that mean for me? Crunch time. I was hoping to cram four months and three weeks of training into one week, and hoping even more that it would actually make a difference. For this week I ran four days in a row. Saturday to Thursday. I increased the distance to four km, and tried to increase the pace as well. Tried is the key word here. Being as inexperienced as I was with running, I forgot to stop and think about how unfeasible doubling the distance I’m running and increasing my pace actually was. The first day was a terrible run. The fourth, still terrible, but not as bad as the first. Why four days and not five? Because I wanted to give myself a break for at least one day before the race. By cramming four runs into one week after being used to only one a week. I was already feeling quite sore, so that one day off was definitely needed.
I changed up my weight training routine for this week as well. I stuck with body weight and ab exercises, and stayed away from weights. I knew that if I was in the weight room, I would be abnormally sore due to all the running I was doing. The reason for doing ab exercises was a little different…I knew that my shirt might come off at some point, so I wanted to seduce my abs out of hiding (hehe).
The Race
I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t extremely nervous the day before. It was all I could think about all week, and just like a little kid before a big day, it took me forever to fall asleep the night before. I also stayed up late reading into other peoples’ experiences doing the race. All I could think is that I really messed up with my training, because everyone made it out to be pretty competitive and very challenging. I definitely didn’t want to be the person holding our team back, so I did what any logical person would do: stay up late at night stressing about it and visualizing the race over and over. That always helps, right? Now it’s 7am, and I’m already up. Time to meet up with the guys and get ready for a short road trip full of trash talk.
Now it was time for the moment of truth. The race was about to begin. Looking around at everyone, I felt pretty intimidated. Here I am standing in gym shorts, an athletic tee, and running shoes. Just normal everyday running attire. Then you have the more serious competitors. The people that are dressed like they’re at the Olympic games. Short shorts. Tank tops/spandex shirts. Head bands. Sweat bands. Water pouches. Super cool looking running shoes. These people knew what they were doing. Or at least they looked like they did. I knew for sure that I wasn’t going to beat those groups. But my goal was to place well in my own group, and that’s what I focused on.
I began a bit above last week’s pace. Pretty fast for me, but I intended for the adrenaline rush and my meager four days of running to carry me through the entire race at this pace. There were two things I didn’t take into account. Some of my friends were running faster than me right out of the gate. So I made the decision to try and keep up with them, which made them run faster, which made me run faster, which made them run faster. For a little while. Until we all got tired from trying to outdo each other early on in the race.
The second thing that I didn’t take into account should have been very obvious. But I completely overlooked it. One word. Obstacles.
The obstacles really sneak up on you during the race. As we took off, we were focused on speed. Then we became tired and really slowed down. Then we saw the first obstacle, and the excitement and energy shot back up through the roof.
The first obstacle we came across was the Hay Wall. This is a great first obstacle to have. It’s literally what we imagined when we thought of a “Hay Wall”. Just jump on top of the pile of hay and roll down, and keep running. It’s a great way to get the obstacle course ball rolling. There were two Hay Walls, and we took full advantage of that. The first one taught us how fun it can be to roll down a large pile of hay. The second one resulted in us trying to make the roll down as fun/crazy as possible.
The second obstacle we came across was the Over Under Through. Otherwise known as the O-U-T. Apparently this one is a common occurrence near the beginning of Spartan Races. For this obstacle, there were three walls. The first, we went over. The second, we went under. The third, you guessed it, we went through. Seems simple enough, but this is where some people tend to start getting lazy and do a little bit of cheating. Cheating seemed attractive until we realized that there was a failure penalty if we couldn’t properly complete the obstacle. For the O-U-T, the penalty was 30 burpees. At obstacles with the potential of committing a penalty, they have a set out burpee zone, where we would perform the burpees without getting in the way of someone running the race. None of us had to do the burpees, but we saw a couple unlucky participants slowly grinding their way through them. Pumping out 30 burpees after running close to a mile and completing two obstacles, with at least another two miles left didn’t seem like too much fun to me.
The next obstacle we came across was the Over Wall. Again, this is exactly what it sounds like. A wall you have to get over. It was probably six feet tall. For our group, getting over the wall wasn’t hard at all, but there were a few people we saw struggling. The great thing about an event like this is everyone is very helpful and friendly. If someone lacked the upper body strength to pull themselves up to the top of the wall, there were plenty of people willing to shave time off of their run to help boost/pull people up. The completion of this obstacle marked the completion of our first mile.
The first mile was tough but also very fun. The tough part came from running a mile at a pace I normally don’t run at, but still tried because I want to keep up with the faster runners. The tough also comes from forgetting to plan for obstacles (I have no idea how any sane person could forget about those). The fun part comes from the extremely positive and encouraging atmosphere at the race. At the beginning I was a bit intimidated by some of the runners. One mile in, I was interacting and chatting with everyone (mostly when we were waiting for our turn at the obstacle). Everyone was extremely friendly and supportive. I was also very surprised and encouraged by how many other first timers I had met. My friends and I agreed to all run together at a steadier pace for the second mile. By that point we’d decided to enjoy the experience of doing the race together, rather than trying to win.
We grabbed some water, then went on to the next obstacle, the Inverted Wall. This was basically a wall in the ground that was angled fairly sharply towards the runners. My group, once again, didn’t have much troubles with this one. All we did to get over it was jump up, grab ahold of the edge, and pull ourselves up. This was another obstacle that required some upper body strength to overcome it.
Next up were Monkey Bars. Sounds fun right? Kind of. These weren’t the typical monkey bars that we would climb on as a kid. They started really far apart and got closer as we progressed. If you have super short arms, this one might be a little difficult. It was also fairly hard on the shoulders, since we had to swing quite far on one arm to reach the next bar.
Next up was the Atlas Stone Carry. For men, I think this was 100lbs. For women, 60lbs. This part wasn’t too hard, but this was also the point where I started feeling a drop in energy. For this event, we had to carry the stone all the way to a flag, which wasn’t too far, drop it, do five burpees, and then carry the stone all the way back. For someone that lifts weights regularly, this wasn’t very hard. But for someone that doesn’t lift weights at all, I could see it being a challenge, especially because of all the previous obstacles and running.
Next up was the rope climb. A lot of people struggled with this one. We started off in the water, which was about waist deep for me at 5’10”. From here, we simply climbed up the rope and rang the bell. Except it isn’t so simple. I think the climb was about 16 feet, I’ve already ran a lot and completed a bunch of obstacles, and to top it off, my clothes were now soaked. I felt heavy, and after all of the upper body intensive obstacles, my arms were starting to feel the fatigue as well. Two people from my group couldn’t complete the rope climb, so on they went to the 30 burpees as we watched and laughed at them.
It was finally on to the mud now. We were all wet from the rope climb, so it only made sense to get all nice and muddy. This obstacle was called Rolling Mud. Three mud pits, followed by a dunk wall. This was actually a really fun part for me. We ran up a wall, and then jump into a mud/water pit. If you’ve ever watched highlight videos of races like the Spartan Race or the Tough Mudder, this is usually where you see all the cool people doing back flips and stuff into the water. Our pace really slowed down after this one. We were wet, muddy, tired, and hungry. But we were still determined and still having fun.
On to the classic Barbed Wire Crawl now. This event is basically a trademark for any of these obstacle course races. But there was a catch to this one. For all of the other obstacles, if you couldn’t complete it, you would have to do 30 burpees. Failure to complete this one meant one thing: disqualification. So the stakes were high and people were getting nervous while waiting for their turn to have a go. But the obstacle itself wasn’t bad. It was just super muddy. If you don’t mind crawling through mud for a little bit while having barbed wire a few inches above you, you’ll do completely fine. But it’s a very doable event. Most people that failed this give up because they it takes some decent core strength to stay above the mud, meaning that they had to drag their body through the mud the entire time, which can be difficult. But still definitely doable. They end up quitting, not because they can’t physically do it, but because they get sick of it. It’s more so a mental thing than physical.
We faced the Log Hop next. We were told that this one was different than what it was supposed to be due to alterations of the course. This made sense, because this one was very easy. All we had to do was jump over a few logs and step over some lines. Not very exciting.
Time for the tire drag. This one was fairly challenging. More so on your grip then anything. All of the upper body movements that we had to do earlier, along with running for over 2 miles, being muddy, wet, and hot, all contributed to this difficulty. But the event was simple on paper. Just pull a tire with a rope through a bunch of mud all the way to you, and then you have to drag it further on land to a stake. In real life, there was a decent amount of struggle.
We grabbed some water after this, and then it was onto a Sandbag Carry. Great. More things that are going to kill my grip. Now we had to carry a sandbag up a hill, down a hill, and then back up the hill….and then back down again. This is one of the events that really tired me out. I has happy with the other obstacles because I looked at them as a break from running. The Sandbag Carry wasn’t much of a break from that at all. It was just more hilly running while carrying weight.
Next up were three consecutive walls, similar to the Over Wall we did near the beginning of the race. But these walls were different in height. The first one was eight feet, the second being seven feet, and then the third being six feet. A lot of people were struggling with the first 2 walls, but there were plenty of people to help boost others up. Our group was ready to be done and eat something at this point. If this were a normal workout, this would be the point where we would call it quits. But this was a race and we were definitely going to keep going.
The Hercules Hoist was next. More grip stuff. We had to pull a stone to a certain height (105lbs for guys, and 75lbs for ladies), and then lower it super slowly, without letting it slam on the ground. Everyone’s forearms were screaming by the end.
A lot of people were looking forward to the next one. It was the most “Spartan-esque” obstacle at this event. Its called the Spear Throw. We took a spear, and threw it at a man made out of hay. The spear has to impale the “man”. If it touched the ground, or we missed the target, we failed the event and we’d be doing the 30 burpees of shame before we knew it. This was the first event that I failed. I completely missed it. It’s one of those things that you imagine yourself being extremely good at in your head, but when you get there in real life, you’re terrible. So off I went to do my 30 burpees in shame.
I knew we were nearing the end at this point. Everyone was feeling tired and looking muddy. But because everyone knew that the end was near, spirits were still high, and the competitive nature in everybody started to spread. My friends and I had discussed earlier that we were going to take the rest of the race easy and enjoy the experience. But like everyone else, we sensed the end and our competitive nature came back in play.
Next obstacle up was the Transverse Wall. This was a very difficult one for most people, myself included. It was basically a wall in the shape of a Z that we had to boulder across horizontally. Touch the top of the wall, you fail. Touch the ground, you fail. Can’t ring the bell at the end? Fail. And this was another obstacle that really took a hammer to your grip. I made this one, but barely. The burpee corner was quite busy during this one.
I can’t recall the name of the obstacle that came up next, but it was basically a net that was at a 45 degree angle, that attached to the top of a wall. All we had to do was climb to the top, and then hop off the wall. Pretty easy. I didn’t see a single person fail at this one.
Up next was the log carry. This one was pretty simple too, but it was a challenge for most people at this stage. I think that the log was somewhere between 60–80lbs. We had to carry it a certain distance. This is where we were told that there were only two obstacles left. As soon as we heard that, our energy levels went through the roof, and we felt like we were back to the beginning of the race. Our group was back to full on “I’m not losing mode” and I started falling behind the more seasoned runners. But I still stayed close to the middle of my group which I was fairly proud of.
The last two obstacles were super easy. First was the Slip Wall. This is just climbing up an angled wall with a rope, and then getting over it. The second was the Fire Jump, which is literally what it sounds like. Jumping over a line of fire. From here on out, it was a sprint to the finish. And by sprint, I mean running at what would be 60% of my normal speed while feeling like I was dying.
As soon as we crossed the finish line, we all collapsed. It was a mixture of pain and happiness. Pain from the race. Happiness, also from the race. But more so from finishing it and still being in one piece.
This entire race was a great experience. But if I were to do it again, I would train completely differently.
How I Would Train Now
My training was a complete mess coming into this race. As I mentioned, I basically ignored all running for the first four months of “training”, if that’s even the right word to use for what I did. First thing I would recommend to someone that’s training for the race is that your Spartan Race specific strength training doesn’t have to start until you have about 1.5–2 months left till the day of the race. But start running as early as you can. You can never start running to early. The more accustomed you are to running, the better off you’ll be.
There are three basic skills that you need to train to perform well at the Spartan Sprint:
- Running
- Grip and Upper Body strength
- Burpees
Running
This one is the most obvious of all. And this is often the one that most people give the most attention to leading up to the Spartan. After all, this is a race.
But the one thing that most people forget about is that you won’t be running on a track, or on a smooth sidewalk/street. You’re running on grass, gravel, and dirt trails. And it isn’t a straight path. It’s hilly. Up down left right. You’re going to be running on different surfaces and all over the place.
One of the biggest mistakes I made in my training was only running on the street or track. The best thing that you can do is a find a trail with elevation, and run that. Its going to be the experience that relates best to the actual race, and will give you the most bang for your buck. Don’t have any trails in your area? Try incorporating stair running into your routine. The point of this is to get used to running on land that isn’t flat. Friends from my group that I was faster than were actually passing me during this race just because of the fact that they had more experience running trails and hills.
Grip and Upper Body Strength
This is a huge and often overlooked part of the Spartan race. I was lucky and already was weight training for fun before the race. But if I didn’t do much strength training and tried to jump into the race, I would have really struggled. Almost every single obstacle involved either doing a pull up, or carrying/pulling something. If your bodyweight strength or grip strength is lacking, you’re going to be in for a long day.
There are three great movements that you can do to train your upper body strength for the Spartan race:
Pull Ups
- This one is a given. You’re going to be doing a lot of pull ups during the obstacles, so you should practice and get good at them. A good range to be at in order to comfortably complete all of the pull up obstacles for the race is 10–15 strict pull ups. This goes for both men and women. Most competitions have different standards for the two genders, but the thing is, everybody is going to be doing the same race. Keep in mind however, that if you are struggling, there are going to be people that would be glad to help you out. More often than not, they’re more inclined to help the women out rather than the men, so if you’re a guy, be wary of that.
- If you’re starting your training and can’t do any, or very few pull ups, don’t worry at all. Learning how to do pull ups actually isn’t as hard as people think it is. A lot of people tend to use the assisted pull up machine to learn how to do them, but I would stay way from that. The assisted machine is going to teach you how to do pull ups in a movement pattern that is different than if you were to try a pull up without the machine. What that means is that if you do a bunch of pull ups on the machine with assistance, when you go to try a pull up all on your own, it will feel very different because you wont have the machine to guide you through it. Negative pull ups are what I would recommend.
- Here is a brief guide to negative pull ups
- Grab on to the bar
- Jump to the top of the position for a pull up, and lower yourself slowly (the descent should take about 3 seconds)
- Do this for either 5 sets of 3 reps, or 3 sets of 5 reps, depending on how difficult this is for you
Farmers Walks
- These aren’t a very common exercise, but they’re very effective and very simple. All you have to do for this exercise is hold weight in each hand, and walk a certain distance. The key to getting good at these is using fairly heavy weight. You can use anything you want as the weight. But if the weight is heavy enough and you walk far enough, you’re really going to feel this one everywhere. Traps. Forearms. And surprisingly, your core as well. It’s a full body exercise. But it will primarily target your grip. I can’t stress enough how important it is to train your grip for this race. Your forearms will be screaming at the end whether you train them or not. But the difference is, do you want them to be screaming after completing all of the obstacles, or do you want them to be screaming after you failed all of the obstacles?
Sled Pulls
- These, once again, are a great way to train your grip, and also your back, which will come to benefit your pull ups. A lot of commercial gyms won’t have the necessary equipment to tie a rope to some weight and pull it over a distance. But if you can find a gym that has a sled pull station, or if you can make something to compensate for the lack of one, you should definitely take advantage of it. This exercise will really come to fruition during the tire pull segment. And all of the other grip killing obstacles.
Burpees
Get good at these, because whether you like it or not, you’re going to be doing 30 at some point during the race. Remember, every failed obstacle is going to mean 30 burpees. Get good at push ups and get good and transitioning from a jump to a push up and from a push up to a jump. As much as you’re probably telling yourself that you’re either not going to fail an obstacle, or that you’re good at burpees, start training for them. Because chances are, you’re going to have to do them at some point. And even if you like them, try doing them after running a few miles and failing an obstacle, while you’re wet, sweaty, and covered in mud. Not fun.
