Sacramento Spartan Beast     

I love hated this race.  Just when I thought I had the race in the bag, certain obstacles would show up and take the wind out of my sails. 

This terrain was more my style, and I felt more at ease being able to stretch my legs out and run for parts of it.  The towering mountains were not there, but the race designer managed to make it more challenging than I anticipated.

Showed up to the race to a cold Desert mornning and immediately regretted forgetting my hat and gloves. 

After a good warm up with Jenny Tobin, we stood behind the wall that gives you entry to the starting line (yes you have to climb a wall to even start - one of my favorite parts of the race - tells you that there will not be one thing that will feel comfortable for the next while). I love when I have teammates at the starting line because I know how they race, and what their strengths and weaknesses are.  I knew I'd be battling Jenny Tobin and Rose Marie Jarry. 

After the send off  Rose Marie immediately showed me that she was not going to give me an easy race.  We were neck and neck through the low walls, and over the log hop ( I swear they are making this harder).

This is how it used to look -  now they are much smaller logs and more spread apart now for sure!

It took a while to shake Rosie - she's a runner too and was keeping it real.  After the first mile, I was able to start pulling away a bit.  At around mile 3, i had a good minute lead on her.

Then came lovely trio of Bucket Brigade, Rope Climb, and Spear Throw.  Deviously placed back to back, many people failed the rope after carrying 5 gallon paint buckets filled with gravel up and down a hill. 

I was doing fine with it til the lovely spear throw.  The release was beautiful, it felt good, it hit the bale of hay smack dab in the middle - and then it fell out!  Crap!  30 burpees.  Rosie passed me by about 20 burpees in after nailing her own.  I caught back up to her within the next mile.

The hard running in this race was on the seriously uneven cow fields - lots of potholes, crusty running ground - death by ankle sprain.  We had to keep a constantly tight core to be able to maneuver on the terrain. 

I managed to get away from Rosie on a lot of the running portions, but had trouble on a couple obstacles (where she'd catch back up).  The 8 ft wall was rediculous and I had to give it 10 or more tries to finally get over.  and then the barbed wire crawl was so low that I managed to snag my hair not once, but at least 5 other times. ( Not to self - no more high buns! )  At one point I was stuck so bad that rosie caught up and had to help me get it out!

Around mile 10 I had about a 2 min lead on her, and she wasn't able to get the Hercules Hoist up (heavier and taller this time).  So she had to do burpees, and by the time I got in, she was ten min behind me.

They managed to have an entire swim portion as well as some other cliffs?  to climb up with rope - fun!  I am loving the tyrolean traverse in more races now - glad I have something that's easy for me:) 

People clocked this race at 14.5 miles - and it felt like it.  I'm not sure I'm a fan of the beast -it just felt REALLY long.   but I was happy to come in 1st!