This year a few people from Onfit, myself included, competed in the Spartan Race. This was the first time a couple of us had ever tried an obstacle style challenge like this and was an excellent experience.
The event we competed in was the Spartan Race which is a 7km race with 20 obstacles spread throughout. These ranged from barbed wire crawls, high walls, rope climbs, heavy sand bad carries and throwing challenges (full list below). The real challenge of the event however is the punishment for failing or not attempting a challenge, this being 30 burpees for each one.
We competed as a team which was great as we could all encourage each other to keep going and push through, no matter how many burpees we had to do. Overall we did really well, we only had to complete 90-150 burpees each (failing between 3-5 challenges). It was surprising just which challenges were the hardest and we all had different weaknesses which made for an interesting race and great team work to get each other through. Between the team the general consensus was that the sand bag hill climb was by far the most physically challenging obstacle and we all ranked this as the hardest to complete. The barbed wire crawls were surprisingly difficult and seemed to go on for a lot longer than their actual distance.
It was strange though going through all of the challenges as the ones which looked easy on paper were actually some of the most difficult, for instance the balance beam. It was just a simple course made with wooden planks, no problem right? Well since balance is not my forte, this one which seemed like it would be easy, meant I was doing my first lot of burpees after I fell off after only 2 steps. Pretty bad right? But the good thing was that I wasn’t the only one doing burpees for this one, it proved to be quite challenging for a lot of the competitors on the day.
Without a doubt though the most fun we all had was going through the mud pits, by this stage of the race we were getting really tired and it was starting to get really hot and these mud pits made for a great change of pace. Plus who doesn’t love being able to play in the mud again?
The Spartan Race is a great event and I would recommend it to anyone, no matter their fitness level. Even though it was quite challenging (more so than anticipated) it is a self-paced event and you can take your time going from one obstacle to the next. I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a fitness challenge or wanting to have a goal to work towards. I will definitely be back next year to improve on my time from this year.
Full list of challenges in order for the Spartan Sprint:
