Reviews, Musings and Rants
This was the second year I traveled from the snowy confines of Colorado to the sunny and cacti laden lands of Arizona. Specifically Fort McDowell, home for the 2019 Arizona Spartan. I did it for a couple of reasons. One, it was my birthday and what better way to celebrate that by doing a race. Second, I wanted to see what kind of shape I was in for the upcoming year.
There are a couple important things to note before I go on.
- I take Spartan seriously. I either complete the obstacle or I do 30 burpees. There is no leeway or shades of grey here. These are the rules and I follow them.
- I do the race as a test of mental and physical strength, so I push hard.
- I always try to take away a lesson or two from each race.
- I will unflinchingly tell you the good and bad. I don’t have an ego to prop up on this blog. There are a lot of fitness writers who carefully construct an image they want to project to the public. Whether that is marketing or narcissism, I will let you be the judge. You get to see me as I am.
So let’s get into this. February 10th and I have spent the last three months working on a couple business projects and I am freaking out. I am in decent shape but not Spartan shape. In other words, I did not practice burpees. My hope is that the Obstacle Racing Gods up in the Heavens take pity on me and let me squeak by this weekend.
Unfortunately, the Obstacle Course Racing Gods didn’t seem interested in helping me out. In fact the wheels fell off about the halfway point.
First off, let me say I really like this course. It has varied terrain from rocks to deep sand to hills to gullies. It has everything and the course is laid out in a very challenging way. The course starts and end around the rodeo arena. This year they had lined up a series of obstacles inside the arena. The nice thing is once you get through this gauntlet, you had a lot of running time to recover. Unless you screw up every obstacle.
I messed up four obstacles in a row, two I almost always get. That is a total of 120 consecutive burpees. Yep, this is where the wheels came off.
A Quick Rant
As I was face down in the rodeo dirt doing burpees, I couldn’t help but notice I was the only one. I wasn’t the only one failing the obstacles but I was the only one doing the penalty burpees. I also noticed people gleefully laughing and giggling as ran by. People either didn’t know the rules or didn’t give a damn. This happened the whole race.
The Test
So here I am in the middle of a rodeo ring, well over a hundred burpees in watching people cheat. A little voice in back of my head suggests that maybe I have done enough. After all, my shoulders are jacked and I clearly would have gotten the obstacles given another chance… This moral conundrum comes up in many races. Do you lower your standards and make an excuse or do you push through?
Sometimes when you are exhausted, you have to think a little longer about this than is needed but you know the answer. The correct answer and the answer that will always be correct is that I am Spartan and I will never concede or give up. These people can take whatever shortcuts they want to, I will stay out there until the job is done. This is not negotiable.
It is not that I look down on people who take the easy way out. Hell, I did that most of my life. It is a personality trait I have that I despise and I am working hard to control. I have always contended that these events are mental tests and that pretty much sums up why I do hard races. I want to have that opportunity where I need to make that decision. In that moment, that decision defines you.
Conclusion
My goal is in every race is to learn something about myself. As mad as I was about my lack of conditioning, I still persisted and finished. I was disappointed in my result but more disappointed in my reaction to the other people. You see, people will be people and I can’t control what they do. The only thing I have control over is how I react to it. In this case, I let their actions affect my race and that should never happen.
Arizona was a rude awakening. Where I thought I was and where I really am are two different places. Not a big deal. It is neither good or bad, it is the truth. I have a few months to fix both my conditioning and my mental game and I will be ready for Fort Carson.
