Prior to embarking on any training programme you should seek clearance from a trusted and qualified medical professional to see if you are healthy and fit enough to partake in it. You should also seek professional coaching in order to safely learn the movements. Immediately stop all exercise if you feel dizzy or weak. It is your responsibility to safeguard against risk.
I don’t know how I ever got talked into this… oh yes, I remember now; somehow it was my idea. I suppose this falls directly into the ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time category’ (again). Those of you who know me, or at least have read some of my other recent babblings know that I pretty much hold organised racing in some amount of disdain these days. But there’s no escaping it… here I was, signed up for a race. More specifically, an obstacle course race. At one point in time the whole thing seemed so far away, and then suddenly the day was upon us. What the hell happened to the time?
We were supposed to have been a team of 5 but apparent lack of ambition caused 2 of our members to drop out, and any other people I tried to recruit were much too wise or sensible to take the bait. So our number dwindled to 3. Which was 1 short of the number needed to be an official team. We could still race, it’s just that our time wouldn’t be counted in the team standings. Which was okay; we weren’t in it for that. One of the guys on our ‘team’ lived in a different state so we didn’t get to train with him. Actually I didn’t even know the guy. He was the brother in law of the guy I knew. That in itself is usually a watch-out for me. Unless it’s a glowing endorsement from someone I really know and trust, I usually shy away from doing stuff like this with strangers. But he turned out to be a good guy and it all worked out fine on that front.
In retrospect my training was pretty minimal in nature. Maybe too minimal. I did mostly my usual routine, which these days comprises of S&S kettlebell work, fighter pull-ups, and some small amount of trail running. My longest trail run was only 90 minutes. My race partner and I trained together only 3 times. Those occasions were about an hour each, and each comprised about 6 km of trail running, interspersed with hill repeats, farmer’s walks, pull-ups, cargo nets, spear throwing and approximately 100 burpees per session. Good stuff to be sure, but maybe not addressing all of the energy systems required for an obstacle course race of this duration. We never really got to push it in the heat however. But that’s only because it hasn’t really been hot yet this year. Until now. Remember… ‘Train all energy systems, and training should be preparation for the real thing…’
Back to race day. We had a crack o’ dark start because we had a 5 hour drive to the event venue. The weather forecast was calling for it to be a real scorcher. 34 deg. C. We also had an 1115 start time. We were expecting this to be brutal, and it was. This is what we signed on for I guess.
We were facing some vague distance between 13 and 16 kilometers in length and about 29 obstacles; some known, some ‘classified’ and all through mostly unknown terrain.
To the best of my recollection here’s how it all went down…
First off there was an obstacle; a short wall that we had to scramble over just to get lined up in the start chute. We were packed in there baking under the full sun for about 15 minutes, before they released our wave.
Running. Well yes of course there was running duh! Running between each obstacle obviously. Almost 16 km in total. The kicker was this however… at least 50% of the distance was in mud and streams. I’m not talking about a little garden mud here folks. This stuff was serious industrial strength muck. Shin deep in most places, knee deep in others, and thigh deep in a few spots. It was oozing, shoe sucking and soul sucking. I saw more than one person lose a shoe. One guy even claimed he felt a hand grab his ankle from deep in the slime. There were long stretches of it that you thought would never end. Real death march kinda stuff. There is a myth about how many ‘Eskimo’ words there are for describing snow. It got me thinking about how many words there could be for the varieties of mud we were encountering. It was a blessing to get into thigh deep water from time to time, to get washed off and cooled down a bit. But most of the water crossings had hidden rocks, unseen pits, and submerged logs to contend with. If you weren’t careful you went arse over tit into the water. Many did. Much of it was single track and caused racers to get log jammed. It was at one of these pile-ups that I was feeling kinda sorry for myself until I got talking to the guy beside me where he was showing me how he had drilled drain holes into his foot! Yeah, the one attached to the end of his prosthetic leg!
There was a pretty long muddy section at the start, many more interspersed with the obstacles throughout the course, and one very long section at the end. At least many of the muddy sections were in the shade. At best you could slip and stumble through the mud; at worst it was walking; I guess calling it running is a bit disingenuous. The segments that weren’t muddy were mostly at the other extreme. Dry, hot and dusty.
The Obstacles…
Hurdles: The first real obstacles were two hurdles that were chest high that you needed to clamber over. Pretty simple and easy, although I think I went under one of them.
Wall: The walls varied in height but mostly required the same technique. Jump up, grab the top, do a quasi-muscle-up or mantle. Hoist yer ass over the top and drop down the other side. Complicated by mud in most cases. We aced all the walls, but they were a real challenge for many of the shorter and heavier competitors. It was pretty common to see teams giving boosts to their team mates.
Memory Test: This was a hoot! There was a big board with all the race numbers on it. You found your number and there was an alpha-numeric code after that. Mine was Alpha-34-3794. The task was to memorize this for future use. So that was a mantra I kept repeating over and over again countlessly through the kilometers and through each subsequent obstacle.
Tire Flip: Pretty self-explanatory. Flip a big ol’ tractor tire twice in one direction, then twice back.
Barbed Wire Crawl 1: This was a pretty long section. Rolling under the wire is a fast method and worked nicely at first, but gets you really dizzy and nauseous. So I switched to leopard crawls, which were slower and knee scuffing. I had to take off my camelback and sort of push it ahead of me. Last thing I wanted was to get snagged by barbed wire. There were lots of yelps of pain and cussing from people as they navigated through this hazard.
Overhanging Wall: Maybe 60 degrees. Like a bouldering cave. Even though it was muddy it was pretty easy to get up and over.
Bucket Carry: You fill up a 20 litre bucket with gravel and carry it up a hill and down a trail back to the gravel pile and dump it. Crazy hard on the grip. At one point I am looking down at this huge mosquito that is drilling into my forearm. All I can do is pathetically and ineffectually blow at it and watch as it starts to turn crimson and bloated from my blood. It was only towards the end that I realized I was carrying a ladies bucket…what a jamoke!
Wall: Like the rest but 7’
Something, but I can’t remember.
Spartan Rig: This is just nasty. Hand over hand swinging on various hanging holds. The holds are muddy, and hard to grip even in clean conditions. We all fell off this one and had to pay the penalty of 30 burpees. We did them as a team although we probably shouldn’t have.
Cargo Net: Also pretty self-explanatory. It was a big A-frame. Up and over. It was pretty high, and some folks were getting a bit gripped. For me this was actually a good rest.
A Rope Crawl: About an 11mm rope, horizontal, slightly angled upwards. The deal was to hang on underneath it with your legs wrapped around it and shimmy along it until you ring the bell. The rope was slick with mud. Hard to hold onto but the mud acted as a lubricant and slid with only minor rope burn across my ankles. Lots of mud falling off into my face and mouth however.
Traverse Wall: Here I was totally in my element. Traversing a vertical wall with 2×4 holds mounted on it. Muddy as hell however. Lots of people falling off. I represented the climbing community well. No fall, no touching the top, and most importantly no burpees.
Sled Drag 2 Ways: This was a two-part challenge Sitting on the ground, you had to grab a rope and pull a heavy sled across the dirt about 10 metres. Fairly easy once you got it moving. Once it was at your feet you had to get up, grab the chains at the other end and drag it back to the start. The drag back was back breaking. For the last couple of metres I ended up sitting on my ass and scootching backwards with it.
Barbed Wire Crawl 2: Yes, another barbed wire crawl. Shorter, but muddy, and the wires were much closer to the ground. This time I rolled the whole way but I figured out a trick, and that was every so often spinning around and rolling to the other side. It seemed to reduce the nausea, but I was still pretty wobbly when I first stood up. At least one of my team finished ahead of me and came back alongside and took my camelback.
Monkey Bars: Large diameter, different heights, and different length big swings between them. Intimidating but if you have a good swing technique it was kinda fun and not too hard. Unfortunately one of our guys was lacking in the ape index department and he bit the dust here. More burpees! But we helped him with some. What are friends for?
O-U-T Walls: Down a wet embankment into a water pit that you wade through. Once out the other side there was a wall to crawl under. Then down another slippery embankment into another bigger water pit; up the other side and through a hole in a wall. Finally down a steeper longer slippery embankment into an even bigger, deeper water pit that had a wall in the middle of it that came down to water level. The idea here was you had to swim under the wall. This water is muddy like chocolate milk. But not as tasty if you swallow any. Also by this time my calves were starting to cramp badly. Every time I had to push off to jump up and grab something they painfully seized up.
Atlas Stone Carry: Tough. For me this maybe was the toughest challenge. I couldn’t have probably done this one without some help. You pick up a 68 kg atlas stone and carry it about 10 metres. Drop it; do 5 burpees, then pick it up and carry it back. On my first carry the Spartan ahead of me handed it to me, and on the flip side one of my team helped me with the lift off the dirt.
6’ Wall
Sand Bag Carry: For this obstacle you hoist an 18 kg sandbag and carry it any way you can about 500 metres. I sort of held it across my upper back. I had actually trained this using a concrete cinder block. Pretty easy under normal circumstances; not so much when the terrain is a twisty, slick up and down muddy trail that crosses a couple of streams.
Rope Climb: It’s mostly all technique. This was one obstacle I had actually practiced on. But obviously not as much as I should have. I made it about half way up the 7 metre slippery muddy rope when my whole leg totally cramped up; calf, quad, and hamstring. I had to slide down and I could barely walk. Both of my guys made the climb but one got pretty bad rope burns on his hands sliding down. Bad enough that he went to the first aid tent after the race.
Hercules Pull: For this you must sit on the ground and grab a rope that goes up about 8 metres to a pulley and back down to a 68 kg sandbag. You have to haul the bag up to the top and lower it without dropping it. I found it easy. The guy with the rope burn couldn’t do it and took the 30 burpees instead. The other guy made the pull but was losing it on the lowering portion until I stepped in and helped him. We each threw in 5 burpees to help out our other team mate.
Spear Throw: This was another event I practiced for. (A lot). Throw a spear into a straw man from about 10 metres away. The spear has to: 1 Stick, and 2, have the handle not touch the ground. I had the distance, the angle, but I went wide and just clipped the bale. The other two guys who had little to zero spear practice both scored direct clean hits.
Slip Wall: This is the third to last obstacle. An inclined ramp tilted at about 60 degrees with a rope hanging down. You grab the rope and batman your way to the top, and then climb down the other side. Pretty hard because the wall is super slick with mud as is the rope. People were really struggling with this and some were getting very gripped at the top. No wonder; because a slip at the top would mean a long fall where you would be lucky to survive unscathed. We all aced it.
High Wall Climb: We could smell the finish by now. The next obstacle was a 2-1/2 metre wall topped off by a climbing structure that went up about another 4 metres. Over the top and down the other side. Easy but a bit dodgy because everything was covered in mud.
Fire Jump: Way easier than it sounds, more for show than anything else. Just a line of wood on fire that you have to leap over followed by a short sprint to the finish line.
We finished in 3 hrs. 31 minutes. Pretty shocked that it took us an hour longer than we were forecasting for our ‘worst case’ finish. But we finished in the top third overall, and I finished 19th out of 44 in my age group. The ‘winner’ blistered in at around 90 minutes. Many folks took a lot longer than we did and there were a fair number that were in the 6, and 7 hour ranges. If I had been a bit fitter, and not missed 3 obstacles we probably could have only shaved off 30 minutes. Most of the time was spent waiting at obstacles and at the traffic jams in the mud. Going in an earlier competitive wave would have helped as well. But those are all excuses. Simple matter is that I just needed to be fitter. The guy in second place in my age group was a year older and an hour faster. So I got a ways to go.
I was knackered, and more than a bit dehydrated. I hydrated before the race. Drank along the way from my camelback, drank several cups of water at each aid station and refilled my camelback at each aid station. After the race I drank 3 litres of fluid over the next 6 hours and didn’t pee once.
Oh yeah….there never was any need for the memory test. It was all just a psych!
Three tired guys
Thanks to Renee for taking the action shots
Epilogue:
Everything in life should be a learning experience, and this event provided that in plenty.
Do more running, especially at varied tempo
Even though you think you are hydrating, probably you could drink more
Typically I avoid electrolyte replacements, but an event like this on a day like this may warrant some
I think I might consider some compression sleeves for my calves. They might aid in cramping, but they also provide some protection against rope burn.
Some gloves might go a long ways to help with some of the grip stuff, especially on wet and muddy surfaces.
Hone your technique on some of the signature obstacles. Such as spear throwing and rope climbs. I mean really hone them. Then work on them some more!