I AM SPARTA!

Today I ran the Spartan Race. It's a 3+ mile obstacle course, I think ours was 4.7 miles (or at least that's what I heard) and we had something like 12 obstacles that were both fun and exhausting. But I got to run with some AMAZING people from my church who were all very encouraging! Here we are pre-Sparta. All nice and clean!

this is when I started getting nervous...

cause about 5 minutes after this our race started. We ran straight to our first obstacle: a series of walls that we had to 1st climb over, crawl under and then crawl through, and then repeat, all while being blasted with water. It was a fun obstacle and we got to run for a while after that to a mud pit covered with barb wire that we had to crawl under...yay!

Then we ran for a while and ended up getting to wade through a creek for about 1/2-3/4 mile...which was probably one of my favorite parts. The rest of the race feels like a blur, but the obstacles included:

• a 10-12 foot wall that we had to jump up and over (thanks Chris and Mike for giving me a leg up on this one!)
• a net attached to an A-frame that we had to climb up and over
• a 1/2-1 inch zig-zag balance beam
• a 10 gallon bucket we had to fill with dirt and carry up and down a large hill (terrible)
• army crawl through this tent thing that felt like an oven
• cinder block pull
• another much larger net A-frame
• another mud pit covered with barbed wire
• a javelin throw (which was just cruel in my opinion)
• this like sideways rock wall with only like 1/2 inch of wood sticking out
• wall covered with soap that you had to run up and grab a rope to pull yourself up and over
• then 2 spartans who stood in front of the finish line that would hit you with those big q-tip looking things that the old american gladiators used to use.

I was EXHAUSTED by the time I got to the top of the last wall and I literally sat on the top of it and glared at the Spartans as they literally smacked people in the face with their q-tips....and yes they hit me in the face and in the back as I ran toward the finish line.

I basically collapsed beside the water table and managed to pick myself up for a group picture...during which they announced "free beer" and everyone got up and sprinted to the beer line...and yes I sprinted (I was about 5th in line).

here we are post clean up

this spartan was nice, he didn't have a big q-tip to hit people with