I made my way up to registration and got my swag bag, actually it was an envelope, but it had my bib number, timing chip and headband to wear the entire race. Then I made my way to the spot where they take a sharpie and mark your arm, forehead, chest or whatever body part you choose with your bib #…I chose my arm thank you…and yes there is still some remnants of it the 8045 on there! Hoping another day or two it will come off. Now at this point it’s super official, and there’s no turning back now. Of course I never was going to turn back, I was into it for the long haul.
Next was the bag drop off point, the penalty for getting stuff out of your bag before your race once you checked it was 7 burpees…I promised I was good I didn’t need anything else out of it! These Spartan races take their burpees seriously 🙂
I made my way to the start line and started to get really nervous, but then I just tried to calm myself down and just have fun, get through it and ‘Let it Go’ channeling my inner Disney at this point…….
They call the 10:45 heat and they shove us into the chute but before we get to the starting line we have to all go over this wall (walls, ugh more to come on these later) and this is where I get my first injury, seriously, before the race even started – LOL! I smashed it on the corner of the wall while trying to hoist my leg over it – only me! I was able to shake it off and forget about it once the race started.
Basically we had to run up the ski mountain and do some obstacles then run down the ski mountain and do some obstacles and do that 6 times! Of course we worked our way across several mountains and woods, some were the actual ski slopes, but for the most part they were very off-road, steep and tedious. Now the obstacles ranged from walls – my kryptonite – literally I sucked at the walls, thank god I hooked up with the awesome Chris and Mario – they literally helped my big butt over every wall – to lifting and carrying a 65lb. ball of steel, dragging a rock through the woods, carrying a log through the woods, carrying a sandbag, a military crawl under barbed wire uphill, rope climb through mud, monkey bars, spear throwing and the elusive fire jump! I’m happy to say that I attempted all of the challenges. I did not however, complete all of the changes, and that is okay. I had a lot of help with some of the obstacles, and they actually encouraged that. They said right before we started that we could help each other out. It was really exciting to see the mile markers, what wasn’t exciting was I thought that it was a 5K, or 3.2 miles….but what I realized was that it was about 4.7 miles once I had already started!! Oooops!
The day was really hot and the hills were super dusty which translated to slippery. Then once we went into the mud obstacles, everything became super gooey, sticky and even more slippery. But I have to say once I fell off the monkey bars into the mud pit, it felt awesome, minus it going up my nose and into my ears. It really cooled me off. I did have an awesome time, and the beer after was fabulous, except after a few sips I wanted to puke! And the drive home sucked because it was just me. But now I get to call myself a Spartan and you can laugh at these awesome photos that the Official Spartan Photographers captured of me 😉
Heidi Hanson Photography 
Love reading these posts Heidi!! You really have a knack for writing!!