[Closed] Anyone here done a Spartan race?!

Why do this to yourself?

It doesn't impress me enough to make me want to sleep with you. Hopefully that's enough to make you see sense and stop now before you die.

I did an Ultra Beast a few years ago ... two laps of the Beast and I think 94 obstacles and over 1000m vertical.

Oddly enough it's what got me into riding. I decided to do it a few months out and realised that the only way i could get fit enough was through cycling to work. So i bought a bike. I'd do an 80km/1400m round trip to work twice a week and a 20km trail run on Saturdays, interspersed with circuit training (running whilst dragging a tyre, flipping a big 155kg tyre, carrying a 25kg sand bag, etc)

Probably the best thing in training was changing my trail running so that every km i'd stop to do press-ups, burpees, lunges on a rotation. I also did a few bonkers training efforts as well. One was a local double mountain loop carrying the 25kg sand bag, dropping it in the saddle, running the rest of the loop and collecting on the second loop. The other was the big final training run. A full marathon trail run with 1700m climb (equivalent to the three peaks in the UK i think), but with two 1km hillclimbs with the sand bag.

The actual event was pretty tough. It was 1200m vertical and near Ipswich, Queensland - which is notoriously hot. I think i got through 9 litres of fluid in the end! I'd definitely under trained.

I wore tights to protect my knees sliding around on the mud but no gloves.

My upper body strength is good, but I'm heavy and don't manage that well at climbing, so probably a lot more pull ups would have been good. The hills were the hardest part though, because some of it was insanely steep - there was one hill that you had to climb and collect a nail to take back down the hill to give to prove you'd been to the top. On the second lap my quads starting scream at this point and i pretty much hobbled the rest of the way around.

Frankly, Henley sounds much more suitable, you can at least have a Pimms when you finish!

No, but I've done a few Italians

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Boom tish.

Would recommend decent mud running shoes over road running trainers (if you're doing this in anything other than a scorching August). When I did one a few years back people were sliding all over the place, holding on to trees and each other and I just jogged past them.
They're much slower though, so do a bit of training in them to get used to the extra effort.

Course was made harder by high winds, loads of rain and temps around 3 degrees. Not sure it was even second degree fun by the end...

Not a Spartan but did Tough Mudder years ago. Actually a cracking day out! As long as you can run the distance you'll be fine (there'll probably be queues for obstacles so you get breaks)
Yes definitely wear gloves. I did bang my knees a few times, so thought if I ever did another one might look into light pads, they'd have to be comfortable to run in obviously!
Most of the more challenging obstacles involve hauling yourself & others over things, as long as you can do a few pull-ups though I wouldn't massively overthink the strength training stuff.

Cheers for the tips etc!
I'm going to have to get some trail shoes... I use a decent local running shop so will see waht he has in..

One bit of advice I read online was to got for a 1k run, then drop and do push ups, or use monkey bars, then repeat etc etc..

Here in Worthing there's a pretty good seafront body weight gym thing, so can just do 1k loops then swing/climb/pull for a bit, then loop again!

DrP

Not done the Spartan or Tough Mudder as I'm too tight to pay the entry fee but a few years ago I went through a phase of doing a lot of other OCR races.

As mentioned if it's muddy then proper mud shoes but if it was a summer run I wore general off-road shoes but with good grip. Unless it was winter I didn't bother with gloves as they just get cacked in shit and you can't grab or hold anything. I personally always wore shorts and found merino socks to be great and a technical t-shirt that you ain't too worried about if it gets trashed.

I asked a mate who does loads - properly good at it

He reckons Henley is quite hilly but your main focus shuld be upper body/core, esp if you're a decent runner already

There's almost always rope climbing, and also pressing yourself up onto & over walls gets to a lot of people eventually (so don't forget triceps).  Every obstacle you fail will bring a penalty and it's often burpees.

Definitely gloves.

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40, you say?  When's the Harley Davidson being delivered ?  🤣

This guy is an entertaining watch with good info and a backstory

@peaslaker
It was a Mark Lewis video that inspired me... he's a really likeable YT character... and yeah, his backstory is inspiring...

He's always clear how his 100kg frame is a disadvantage in most events, bar the strength bits!

DrP

@DrP FWIW I did the Henley Tough Mudder in 2014. 646m ascent/descent. 20.3km. It's a different thing to Spartan as it isn't a race and collaboration gets you through the obstacles. No silly penalty burpees for failing an obstacle; just a degradation of your dignity from falling into muddy water.

I think the Spartan stuff is genuinely tough. TM, was doable on minimum training. Good trail shoes made a hell of a difference. Henley can provide a lot of steep vertical on difficult terrain depending on exactly how the course setters have laid things out.

It’s a different thing to Spartan as it isn’t a race and collaboration gets you through the obstacles. No silly penalty burpees for failing an obstacle; just a degradation of your dignity from falling into muddy water.

I think the Spartan stuff is genuinely tough.

I did the Henley TM a few years ago, I’d just come off the back of plantar facetious so didn’t do much training and was fine.  I dislike running but found that part ok, to be honest waiting for the obstacles gives plenty of breaks.  We did it in a team of 6 which helped at the obstacles but plenty of people are happy to give a hand when needed.

Clothing wise I was fine in a tech t shirt, shorts and running shoes.  I was in an ice bath from obstacle 3 so lightweight and fast drying is the order of the day.

Doesn't Spartan make you do burpees if you fail an obstacle?... Practice burpees!

Also find a local OCR place, technique is the key.