What is Spartan Racing?
As many “non-OCR”-people don`t know what Spartan Racing ist, here is a short introduction to what Spartan Races are and what kind of Races there are as well as what this magical “Trifecta” is which we completed in 2015. 🙂
Spartan Race is one of the biggest obstacle course racing companies in the world and offers races of different lengths and difficulties:
- Sprint – The Spartan Sprint is the entry level Spartan Race distance. The usual distance is at least 5km and 15+ obstacles
- Super – The Spartan Super is the next step up in your evolution as a Spartan racer. The usual distance is at least 12km and 21+ obstacles
- Beast – The Spartan Beast is the crown gem in the trifecta for most Spartan Racers. These are races that not everyone can finish. The usual distance is at least 20 km and 30+ obstacles
- Trifecta – You become a member of the Spartan Trifecta tribe by finishing one of each Spartan distance – Sprint, Super and Beast – in a calendar year
Our Spartan Trifecta 2015 journey
Spartan Race (Sprint) Munich, April 2015
The Spartan Sprint is the shortest distance and is perfect for athletes of all levels, from Spartan first timers to seasoned racers. It was the 1st part of our Trifecta. The race has taken place in our hometown in Munich in April. It was Maggy’s first obstacle race, which is of course always even more exciting as you don’t know what to expect. Since we’re doing a lot of sports back home in Munich and of course spending a lot of time among people who are also as sports addicted as we are, there were quite a number of people joining us.
We’ve never done an obstacle race together but it turned out quickly that we are a perfect match in running obstacle races together, as our pace and fitness level is quite similar. Eventually the distance of the race was almost 7km and around 20 obstacles, like monkey bars, rope climb, spear throw, horizontal wall traverse, barbed wire crawl, slippery wall and much more. Every failed obstacle is a 30 burpee penalty. The race took place in early spring, which meant that the outside temperature was quite coolish, thus made it even worse to manage some obstacles. I’ve never expected a brain freeze like this while diving under logs. 🙂
You need to keep on going fast after water obstacles, otherwise you start freezing quickly. Especially our hands suffered from deafness, which partly made further obstacles difficult to manage. When you fought your way through all the obstacles, the last and most special one (and obviously the one we like the most) is the fire jump.
Once you arrive at the finish line, volunteering people await you with bananas, water or juice and even a beer. 🙂 After this race we were just happy that we’ve made it through together and felt great. At this point we didn’t know that the worst “obstacle” still lies ahead of us.. The “Showers”!!! Just a simple hose with ice cold water coming out of it. Our whole body was covered with mud and we were freezing like hell. We imagined how to jump into a 38°C warm whirlpool, but unfortunately that didn`t happen.
After all, we had an extraordinary day with heaps of fun. This was the 1st chapter of our “obstacle race career”. We were hooked being Spartans and signed up for the Spartan Super Race in Madrid as the show had to go on!
Spartan Race (Super) Madrid, May 2015
The Spartan Super is the next step up in your evolution as a Spartan racer. The length of the race is at least 13 km and 21 obstacles. This was the 2nd part of the Trifecta. The race took place at Auditorio Miguel Ríos, which is about half an hour drive by car from Madrid / Spain. This time the weather conditions were completely different.It was already summer in Spain and the temperatures were high. Additionally we knew, it will be twice the distance, so we decided to run with a slower and comfortable, but steady pace. In Spain it’s apparently unusual that women are SPARTANS as well. 🙂 Means we were mainly surrounded by men. It was quite a dusty trail up and down the hills, through a beautiful landscape. Since we’ve started in a smooth pace, we made our way successful through the eventually 14km and about 25 obstacles and arrived after the fire jump obstacle with a big smile on our faces at the finish line. This time the ice cold water hose was a great and welcome refreshment.:) We were proud of ourselves that we managed this race without any struggling and did a great teamwork again. Guess what we did, when we arrived in Munich: We signed up for the Spartan Beast Race in Tyrol!
Spartan Race (Beast) Tyrol, September 2015
The Beast is the last and biggest part of the Spartan RaceTrifecta. As we all know, the last ones are always the best!
In this case it was indeed like that. It was a great final of our first Trifecta in 2015. We started with a huge group of friends in Tyrol and as well spent a great weekend there. Everyone was excited about the last race. We knew it would be extremely strenuous as it took place in the mountains and there would certainly be some meters of height to master. The “usual distance” is around 20km. What we didn’t expect was, that the event organizer decided to create the toughest Beast in Spartan Race History! So, in fact, it was around 27km, 1600m in altitude and around 45 obstacles. We agreed, as it was the first race of this length, to start again slowly and – very important – to pace ourselves. If you are not used to this length of running (under extremely challenging circumstances), you should pace yourself in order to reach the finish line. We saw a lot of people who obviously started too quick or struggled with cramps and couldn’t make it further. Rather calm down a bit and enjoy the race! That’s what we did. Of course there were Ups and Downs during the race for both of us, but every step we took together and helped ourselves out in both a physical and mental way. When we arrived at the finish line we gave each other a relieved and joyful hug and were extremely proud of ourselves. We reached our aim to make it successfully to the finish line and, most important, to enjoy this overwhelming event and having fun as well.
What`s next?
Guess, what we did next… ? 😉
We signed up for already 3 races in different countrys in 2016 (Trifecta).
And additionally we signed up for the Spartan Ultra Beast in Hawaii in August 2016. This will for sure be one of the craziest and strenuoust challenges for us so far. The Ultra Beast Hawaii will be twice as much as distance, altitude and obstacles as the Beast- that means at least 50km, >3000hm and around 100 obstacles!
Life is all about facing new challenges! 🙂 AROO!
