On March 16th, me and Beatriz did the Atlanta Spartan 5K.
A little over a year earlier, I'd broken a bunch of ribs training for the same race. This year, I was uninjured, and more or less ready for it. I wasn't in as good a shape as I had been for the previous year's race in Nashville, but I was feeling good enough. Let's do this!
I drove myself, B and Dave over that morning, and we gave ourselves plenty of time to park and warm up. We figured we might need extra time because, historically, you had to park kind of far away and walk over. However, that ended up not being the case that day! We found a spot, probably the only available spot, in the lot right next to the start/finish. We couldn't believe our luck. I even worried that we were parked in a volunteer lot or something, but no, it was completely legit. Woo!
The event was in Conyers, at the International Horse Park, which I'd done more mountain bike races at, than I can count, including three 24 Hours of Adrenaline races. Most of the obstacles were set up in the steeplechase area, and the runs were all through the woods on trails I knew pretty well. We were just doing the 5k, which was entirely on the steeplechase side, but the 10k and 15k runs even went under the road, over to the granite side.
Having done one of these before, the vibe was familiar. It wasn't all South African Candy Aisle any more.
Having given ourselves a little extra time to park, that it turned out we didn't need, we had plenty of time to mill around and get ready at a leisurely pace.
Dave and B:
B was racing. Dave was not.
But, that was great, because he was able to take photos of us!
Me and B before the start:
Yeah, looking good and strong.
We had to crawl under some barbed wire and hop over a wall to get to the actual start.
There was a group of ladies ahead of us who seemed completely incredulous at this. I'm not sure what they expected. A few of them began crawling and just pushed through it. The others were like "How I'm gonna do that!?" to the course marshall. "I can't go around?" He kind-of explained how to do it. Plus the rest of their group had figured it out. Eventually the last 2 got through the barbed wire, and their friends helped them get over the wall. I thought they might bail right there, but they didn't. It looked like it would be a long day for them, but hopefully they at least walked the route and tried some of the obstacles.
It did occur to me at that point, that you can either skip or at least do the penalty loop for most obstacles, but you absolutely must do the crawl/wall to the starting line. There's no getting around that one.
Me and B at the start:
I was worried that it would be cold, so I brought my jersey with me, but the sun was out, and I ended up not actually wearing it.
B is on Team Usana, and there were a bunch of folks from the team at the start, so we all took a group picture.
A bunch of them had done many of these before, but for a seemingly equal number, this was their first event.
I want to say that, again, the announcer was just like: "Yeah, just go when you want" rather than doing all of the standard "Spartan, what is your profession!?" speech, but I may be confusing it with the Nashville event. At any rate, we eventually started running. The start was located close to where the start for all of the mountain bike races was, and we ran the same trails for a while.
At some point, we diverged though, and there were some little 4 foot walls to climb over. It's been long enough that I don't remember the exact order of obstacles any more. I do remember that we ran for what seemed like a really long time between obstacles at first, and then towards the end, there were a ton of them in a row.
I'd never done the Helix before. I'd watched videos of it, and it looked easy, but for all I knew, it would be tricky in some way.
Turned out no, it was super, super easy.
The sandbag carry was tougher than Nashville. It went straight up and back down this super steep hill. Climbing was strenuous. Coming back down was sketchy.
In previous years, the weather had generally been pretty bad for this particular Spartan. It was either cold, or wet, or both. This year, it was warmer than expected, the sun was out, and it wasn't going to rain. It had rained either the day before, or the night before though, so it was still a little muddy in places, and stepping in someone else's slippery footprint was something to watch out for.
The Mud Wall was a Conyers-specific obstacle. I'm not sure it exists anywhere else. We had to scramble down a slippery embankment, cross a creek, climb over a chest-high downed tree, and then climb up a cargo net draped over a hill on the other side of the creek.
It sounds way worse than it was. The toughest part was getting safely down to the creek. Climbing up the net wasn't materially more difficult than an A-frame cargo net. The mud was a non-issue. The biggest issue was just people moving slowly ahead of me.
The bucket carry was as awkward as usual, and also involved climbing directly up a hill and back down it, like the sandbag had. So sketchy coming down.
The barbed wire crawl was legitimately difficult. It was super muddy, and the mud was deep. You couldn't just lie on your side and roll. You really had to crawl, and it was as exhausting as it was filthy. There were exhausted people everywhere, who couldn't go another foot without recovering, and you had to navigate around them. I got covered in mud. My shoes got filled with mud. My hands were covered and slippery. It was surprisingly difficult.
I remember wiping my hands on every tree I could until they were dry. I don't remember if the multi-rig was before or after the barbed wire. I want to say that it was after, and that I was worried about muddy hands. My hands were dry by the time that I got to it, and the rings weren't a problem, but the pipes spun! The pipes in Nashville didn't spin, or at least I didn't notice if they did. But these did, it caught me by surprise, and I almost slipped. Fortunately, I didn't, but yikes!. Now I know!
Somewhere in there, we had to run up a long, fairly steep hill, and I walked for a hundred feet or so. That was the only walking I did.
After running through a familar section of trail, with a bunch of tight switchbacks, we popped out in the steeplechase field and the rest of the obstacles came in quick succession. I don't have photos from them, but they included the spear throw, z-wall, rope climb, hoist, slant wall, A-frame, rolling mud, and of course, the fire jump.
I managed every obstacle, except for the spear throw. I'd even gotten it 3 times in a row, in practice before the event. Maybe next time.
I also remember that the hoist was right after the rope climb, my hands were tired, and again, it seemed way heavier than Cody's hoist. I was able to hoist the bag, without tremendous difficulty, but it really wanted to get away from me when I let it back down, and the rope burned my hands a bit.
Done!
It's funny, between podium ceremonies, they kind-of don't care if you get up on stage and take pictures.
We didn't really get 1st, but it's fun to pretend!
I don't remember how well I actually did, and I'm too lazy to look it up, but I want to say that I did better than Nashville. I think B did too. The course was a lot harder - the hills were steeper, there was a lot more singletrack, there was more running all at once, and then the last group of obstacles were all clustered one after the other.
It was super fun though. We were both pretty well recovered before we got home, and the drive wasn't exhausting or anything. It might be time to try a 10k.
So, I felt good immediately after the race, but the next day I felt beat all to hell. I wasn't sore per-se, just beaten up, and my legs didn't want to work.
To remedy this, I got on the road bike and spun out to Hiram and back. By the end of the ride, I was putting in actual efforts, so I figured I was recovered. The next day, I took the mountain bike to Cochran Mill, figuring I'd rip some miles, but nooooo, that was not happening. I barely made it back to the parking lot after a lap of the yellow loop. Beaten up was the best way to describe it. The road bike had been ok the day before, but the impact of mountain biking was just too much.
I ended up taking Tuesday off, riding the comet again on Wednesday, then just resting and staying off the bike until the following Sunday.
It was a rough couple of days, for sure!
