Spartan Race 2014

Let's go WAY back to 7 days ago, yes one week. I get a text from Bobby saying a girl he works with has an extra entry ticket to the Spartan Sprint because her sister had to cancel last minute. When is the race? Sunday...as in 6 days from now. No wonder nobody in the office wanted to volunteer, but Bobby told her I had been wanting to do one (which is true) so after texting me and deciding why the heck not I agreed. Immediately I was thinking omg what did I just do, but I was super excited! Despite only having 6 days to "prepare" I was thankful I had been working my but off the last 6 weeks so I was at least in somewhat decent shape.
Well yesterday was race day. We had the open registration time slot so we didn't go until 1pm. We pull up and saw some of the big obstacles and were just overwhelmed with anxiety. I am so glad we didn't get there any earlier than we did because the anticipation of starting was the worst! I just wanted to GO! Finally 1 o'clock rolls around and we are off through the start line, only to then be corralled to the actual start line and get a pump up Spartan pep talk to get us off and running, and off we go AROO!

This was by FAR the hardest most challenging thing I have EVER done in my life. I have never had to mentally push myself so much as I did throughout this race, but never once did I even think about quitting. You do not quit this race. Once I got through the first couple of obstacles I was in the zone and all I could think about was the finish line. It was 4.3 miles long and there were 20 obstacles, with new obstacles never seen before on one of these races (although they were all new to me! lol). Everyone both racing and volunteers were SUPER encouraging and although we were racing individually there was always someone there pushing you and encouraging you and even giving an extra hand if needed. What an amazing experience this was. It truly showed me how to push past my limits and REALLY challenge myself. I thought I had challenged myself before, no way. You want to really push limits and challenge yourself not only physically but mentally, then get out there and sign up for one of these races!

Even though it was seriously hard I would do it again in a heart beat! I would even do one of the longer ones (super or beast) If I had some time to actually train for them! They're awesome events and you feel like a complete BA when you're done (rightfully so!). The girl I ran with ended up rolling her ankle pretty badly at the 4th to last obstacle and couldn't finish, I felt so bad for her but in my eyes she finished because she made it through all of the hardest stuff! So I had to finish on my own, but it was still the best experience of my life. I am SO glad I decided to be spontaneous and brave and sign up last minute I know I would have seriously regretted it had I not.

I am really sore today, have a good amount of cuts and bruises, but I feel on top of the world and get a huge smile when I go back and look at the pictures that my amazing husband took :) Hearing him tell me how proud he is of me is the cherry on top! <3

Before the race

If you couldn't complete the obstacle in ONE try you had to do 30 burpees, I had to do 90 (3 obstacles) One I was SO close. 2 were two of the last obstacles without my partner where everyone had help scaling the wall...was SO close! grr! The other was a rope climb...I had no chance lol SO hard!