What I Learned From Running the Spartan Race

Cheers!

Last week, I promised I would have "awesome stories to tell" after this weekend's Spartan Race. There were lots of awesome stories, but I'd rather reveal what I learned through both practical race tips and Tony Robbins-esque life tips that will CHANGE YOUR LIFE if you choose to listen to me. Actually, these are probably all platitudes of sorts, but I have to write something this week, and this is all I've got.

You will not feel most injuries as you receive said injuries.
It's an unspoken rule of adventure races that there are so many distractions and so much adrenaline that you don't feel a damn thing while you're destroying your body. You more or less turn into Frank Langella at the end of The Ninth Gate, in which a horrified Johnny Depp watches as Langella's character Boris sets himself on fire and proclaims, "It's miraculous, I feel nothing — nothing at all!" Of course, about five seconds later he's in excruciating, agonizing pain. The clip cracks me up every time I see it. I'm not sure why.

When we finished the race, my friend Clay asked me how I felt. "Great!" was my instant, delusional reply. My Frank Langella moment started when I got home and took a shower and revealed all the gashes and bruises in places I didn't even know could be gashed and bruised:

As the evening progressed, I also realized I had kind of blown out my left hamstring and that I pretty much couldn't even walk. I had a hard time turning over in bed last night, because my whole body is just one big pile of hurt from head to toe. I know I'll really only have a day or two of this to get through — but can someone please go grocery shopping for me today, because I don't think I can push the cart or lift the bags on my own.

H2-ohhhhhhhh.
One of the more useful tips I gleaned from the last race is to drink a ton of water in the days leading up to the race, not the morning of the race, because you don't want to have to go to the bathroom while you're on the course for a couple of hours (more important for girls than for boys, because you boys can just do that whole peeing-in-the-woods thing. Yep, I have serious penis envy in that regard.).

This tip really works. I hydrated like a madwoman the whole week, and I really wasn't thirsty the entire course. I threw back a couple of cups at the two water stations along the way only because I wanted to keep myself hydrated, not because I really felt I had to. I didn't have to lug the extra weight of water bottles or one of those fancy CamelBak contraptions that a few other runners had because I BECAME A CAMEL. 

One myth I can put to rest, though: "They" tell you not to drink coffee or other caffeinated beverages before the race, because it will just dehydrate you. Fuck that. I drank ample coffee, hot and iced, that morning to wake me up, and I did just fine. I don't understand why THAT didn't have to make me pee, but whatever.

Stop, drop, and roll.
One of the last obstacles they throw at you with the finish line clearly in sight is the mud crawl under barbed wire. The crawl at Warrior Dash, which I did in 2010, was only a few yards — you could tell the race organizers had half-assed it and that it was more for show than anything else.

The Spartan barbed wire, however, was some serious shit, literally and metaphorically. You had to crawl about the length of a football field uphill in the blinding sun through some foul-smelling stuff they called mud (it was not real mud, though it was something like mud, just much, much worse), under strands of barbed wire, with tons of sharp rocks to slice up your hands and knees thrown in for good measure.

I wasn't sure if I was going to make it to the end of this one when I saw someone ahead of me doing something unusual: He was rolling up the hill. I figured I'd try it, and once I started doing it, I was able to free my mind to think more closely about the science behind it. It made perfect sense: By rolling, you distribute your body weight evenly over the rocks so they don't press into your skin as badly, and you can also get some solid momentum with each roll.

It also helped to pretend I was Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption crawling through the sewage pipe, because whatever they made their mud out of smelled pretty awful; the combination of that stank, my exhaustion, and the heat brought me pretty close to hurling a couple of times. The thought of a sack of cash and Morgan Freeman meeting up with me in Mexico at the end got me through.

Take it one rock or tree at a time (THIS IS A METAPHOR THAT CAN ALSO APPLY TO REAL LIFE).
One of the things that race organizers do to break you is to throw curveballs at you to mess with your mind. This usually comes in the form of making you hike up a rather vertical slope of mountain to what you think is the top, only to find that you then have to climb up ANOTHER long-ass slope that is pretty much 90 degrees of rocks and bramble-infested trails, with no top in sight. This isn't even considered one of the course's obstacles — it's just what you have to do to get to the next obstacle. There were lots of these mind-fucks.

The first time the sadists did this, I wanted to get all drama-queeny and sit down to have a good cry. But I took a deep breath and did it baby-steps style. I didn't look at the long trip ahead of me, which was too demoralizing. I leaned against whatever tree I was leaning against for traction, then made the next tree or boulder or flat rock patch my goal, even if it was just 10 feet away. I never looked up (well, maybe occasionally my curiosity got the better of me) and just kept plugging away until I reached the summit, replaying songs in my head like a delirious Joe Simpson hearing Boney M's "Brown Girl in the Ring" over and over in Touching the Void (which is an excellent movie of human endurance and spirit that you should see if you haven't).

Which leads to ...

It's usually not the physical stuff that will get you — it's the mental stuff.
I knew there would be a cargo net climb going into this race, because there usually is. I climbed one in Warrior Dash, so it was the least of my obstacle concerns.

However, the Warrior Dash cargo net was a dual-sloped contraption on an incline, like this:

As I approached the Spartan cargo net, my heart sank. It was a net extended straight up many, many feet into the air (no incline), with a only a flimsy cable at the top to use to hoist yourself over. The net shook as people climbed it. It looked more like this:

Of my many weaknesses, the worst one (though usually not one applicable to daily life) is my insane fear of heights. I couldn't get to the top of the Chichen Itza pyramid in Mexico because of it, and had to endure lots of later ribbing from my brothers, who scrambled up past me like spiders to the top. I'll never get my chance to redeem myself when I go back this January, since they've now sensibly closed the pyramid to climbing tourists. 

I get similarly nervous descending very high, very steep sets of stairs. If you want to reduce me to a withered, weeping mess, tell me the elevator from the food court to the first floor at Roosevelt Field Mall is broken and I have to descend that terrifyingly sweeping staircase. (Incidentally, I don't like escalators, either, because I used to work for the Mass Transit trade magazine and saw some horribly mangled feet from escalator accidents.)

I've conquered this fear in little ways over the years: jumping off a cliff in Jamaica (into water, natch), rappelling in Maine, the various Warrior Dash climbing obstacles. But this one got me, even with people standing at the bottom holding the net taut for me. It wasn't the physical part that did me in. I made it to the top of the net, clinging to the rope, one leg throw away from the other side. But I wouldn't do it. I sat up there, holding tight to my perch, trying to strategize each move I'd make to ensure I wouldn't plummet to my death on the other side.

In other words, like so many other things, I was overthinking it. A girl immediately to my right tried to talk me through it as she threw herself over the top, saying with unnecessarily great cheer, "Just pretend the cops are chasing you!" I didn't want to get into it with her that I dream of the day when I'm arrested for some petty crime where I haven't really hurt anybody but that requires me to spend a week or two in jail so I can sit in my cell and read uninterrupted. Even if I wanted to get into it with her, she had disappeared over the top already.

You will see a healthy amount of humanity at seemingly frivolous events such as Spartan Race.
One of the best things about these adventure races is that, finish or not, it's a feel-good day. They've got volunteers shouting words of encouragement at you along the way. At the end of the race, there's lots of music, beer, and general merriment.

The day before the race, my 8-year-old son had field day at his school. As you can see here, he really got into the spirit of things:

But what impressed me more than his blue-dyed Mohawk was his sportsmanship. During one of the races in which the kids were paired with a partner, he took off like a bullet at the starting gun. My son's pretty fast, so he was soon in the lead. Then he realized his partner was way behind at the back of the pack. He ran back to his friend, stayed with him at the butt the whole way, and even let him cross the finish line first when they got the end. He got a shout-out by the announcer for his efforts, which made me very proud and a little weepy.

I saw the same thing at the Spartan. There were a lot of people resting at varying points along the course, in various states of disrepair, and invariably, other folks who didn't know them would stop and ask, "Are you OK, bud?" or "Take a breather and keep going, you can do it!" At the more difficult obstacles, like the 8-foot wall, you were allowed to help each other out. Which makes sense, because most people couldn't make it over this without some kind of help*:

Some of the more athletic dudes stuck around and sacrificed their running time to help others over these things. One guy in particular in my heat would always show up like some kind of Spartan guardian angel to help those who needed it. He was a buff, burly guy who wore a T-shirt that said "Assassin" on it. He was clearly able to do this race in his sleep, yet he spent most of it helping everyone else do it. He was always at the walls boosting people up so they could grab the top.

When I was struggling with the rope climb, I was about to give up when The Assassin emerged out of nowhere, told me he'd hold the rope, and kept reassuring me as I tried to go hand over hand to the next knot. I didn't even get close to the top, but I felt motivated enough to try, instead of giving up immediately like I used to do in sixth grade gym class. His support gave me the drive to at least attempt every obstacle, even the ones I knew were never going to happen. When I saw many of the girls struggling with the tire pulls and pulley weights, I knew The Assassin was probably watching from the woods or wherever the heck he was hiding, ready to pounce upon my first sign of wavering — I did those challenges like a boss. There is some Ukrainian workhorse in me after all.

At the end of the race, I saw him being helped down a hill by a couple of his pals. He was limping, nursing what was probably a twisted ankle from the muddy slopes that many competitors succumb to on the way down. I waved as I passed. I wanted to tell him that he was still The Assassin to me, but he was laughing with his friends. That guy was all right.

If you want more of me on Twitter, @WarriorHauswife is where you should go.

* I made it over every single wall, and there were lots of them — sometimes with help, sometimes without (#HUMBLEBRAG).

NOTE: I do not know why the fonts in this post are all messed up, and I'm too tired to fix it, so be a Spartan and deal.