On November 16, my husband and I did the Spartan Sprint at Fenway Park in Boston, MA. I’m fairly new to obstacle course racing and this was only the second Spartan I had signed up for, but I remember debating about whether I really wanted to pay such a hefty registration fee for a race inside a stadium vs. on a mountain. I like mud, I like climbing things, and I thought, “How difficult can this really make this thing without water and mud?” Well that was a dumb question.
Two words: The Rower. That will be the thing I practice most for the next park sprint. 500 meters in 2 minutes and you can’t see a clock to help pace yourself. I was 70 meters short and thought I was going to lose that morning’s breakfast and my pre-race Cliff Bar. Then I had to do 30 burpees.
This was challenging in different ways than your average mountain OCR. It was much more cardio-intensive I think. The three periods of “rest” I remember as being the rope climb, the traverse wall, and the monkey bars. Might as well call the spear throw burpees, because I always have to do them! Other than that, you were pretty much running, climbing up and down stairs, jumping rope, rowing, slamming a med ball and picking it back up again, jumping up stairs, bear crawling up ramps, doing box jumps, or carrying a heavy load. I would do it again in a heart beat.
This was my husband’s first Spartan Race and his second OCR. He did a Warrior Dash with me a couple of years back and that was my first race of any kind. We had a good time planning our matching Under Armour Alter Ego outfits, and we participated with a team of really fun people. I may not be the fastest runner yet, but some of the obstacles are challenging and I enjoy seeing how much quicker I can do them each time. The rope climb was a first for me this race and I loved it!