by WeeSpeck » Sun Nov 19, 2017 4:05 am
I ran the Spartan Sprint today at AT&T Park in San Francisco. It was an amazing setting overlooking San Francisco Bay. I had the unique opportunity to run my race just as the afternoon turned to dusk and the Oakland Bay Bridge lit up with beautiful splendor.
The race meandered all through the bleachers from the bottom to the top, spiraled in and out of the concourse, starting in the locker room where we were required to complete 20 pushups. By the end of the race, we explored every inch of that stadium, ending up on the field, running the baseline, touching the same dirt as all the baseball greats that have graced that path.
I think I did pretty good! In my class of females aged 55-59 years I finished 32 out 84. Of all females, I finished 1314th out of 2771. Overall, I finished 3366th out of 6124 participants. I am happy with that!
I feel like I was prepared and I do feel like the last three weeks focusing on the push, pulls, loaded carries, ab wheel and planks helped a lot!
When I started out 3 weeks ago, I could barely plank for 30 seconds. By the end of 3 weeks, I was holding my plank for 60 seconds easily.
I was barely able to do 3 ladies pushups. Today, I did 20 full plank pushups! It was probably not pretty, but it was completed.
In the last three weeks, I lost 3.2 pounds and 0.8% body fat. It wasn’t just the exercise. I also focused on cleaning up my diet of unnecessary calories. Having a goal to work towards is very motivating.
There were several obstacles that I completed with relative ease. Lifting a 15-pound smash ball over my head and slamming it to the concourse 20 times was doable because I have been training with a 25-pound kettlebell. Running up and down the stairs was not too overwhelming because my stamina was good.
The hardest physical obstacle for me was doing the bear crawl up the ramps. This required squatting down to hands and knees and moving through the concourse under ropes 2 feet off the ground.
The hardest mental obstacle for me was the walls! The first wall must have been 10 feet high! Or maybe it was 9 or 6. It may as well have been 100 feet! I couldn’t jump high enough to get my hands to the top. When my son attempted to boost me up, I instinctively pushed off the wall with my feet once I clasped the top which ejected me off the wall. I was ready to walk around it, but he wasn’t willing to have me give up that quickly. He boosted me up until I could get a grip on the wall and then as I pulled myself up, he literally pushed me up and over.
Once I saw that it could be done, the rest of the walls were a piece of cake! I didn’t realize or trust I had the upper body strength to pull my lower body up and over by the power I had developed in my arms and core.
The jump rope was hard! The rope itself must have weighed 10 pounds. I kept hitting myself in the back of the head because I wasn’t swinging it hard enough to get it high enough. Once I got past the learning curve, I realized I had to keep the momentum going and work that rope.
There was no way I could do the jump box either. I didn’t have the confidence to jump from ground to platform with two feet. But, I compromised and did step ups, one foot at a time until I finished the allotted amount.
Then there was the weighted carry of some stinky heavy beanbag. I pitched it over my shoulder and walked the distance with relative ease. But, dang…the smell….All the sweat of the Spartan’s before me.
The obstacles I did not even attempt were climbing the rope, the overhead rings and the stump carry. The stump must have weighed about 40 pounds. I tried to pick it up but there were no grips and to lift it from the ground to a standing position frightened me a bit because of my back injury the last time I attempted something similar. I left that one alone.
There was also a z-table with tiny little grips, like a rock climbing wall that required extraordinary strength to maneuver. It also helped if you were tall with a long stride. My 5’2” stretch was just not going to cut it without swinging to the next grip, hanging on by fingertips to support my full body weight. But, at least I tried.
The spear throw was basically just a burbee generator. More people missed the target than succeeded. The ladder climb was more about overcoming fear of heights than physical challenge.
I feel like I have a lot of work cut out for me if I want to improve moving forward. I need to find an exercise that gives me the confidence that I can not only support my suspended body hanging by my hands, but also move it horizontally and vertically through space. That will be my task for this next year.
In the end, I feel I did very well. Just overcoming my mental obstacle of putting myself out there, in public, succeeding at times and failing at others, was monumental to me! Physically, I was not as taxed as I expected. But I guess I need to give kudos to the training and preparation I did. The overall race only lasted 1:08:03 duration for me. That is about the same amount of time I spend working out each day. It makes me wonder if I want to take it to the next level and try the Spartan Super which goes about 8 miles and includes mud…. Hmmm….
I’m gonna think on that a bit.
--\--@ Nancy @--/--
I am but a wee speck in the big picture of the universe.