Spartan!

 Nate and I ran the Spartan Super yesterday!  

In general, Spartan races are one of three levels of difficulty: Sprint, Super, and Beast.  The sprints are 3+ miles with 20+ obstacles, the supers are 8+ miles with 25+ obstacles, and the beasts are 12+ miles with 30+ obstacles. 

This one was a Super!   It was close to 8.5 miles and had 26 obstacles!  

Nate came down to our house the night before so we could be ready to go in the morning.

Excited and a little nervous!

This race took place at Soldier Hollow this year.

Lots of hiking up and down on the trails surrounding Soldier Hollow

One obstacle was to swim under this wall- completely submerged in muddy water!

Another was to carry these weights down and back up a hill

Others included climbing up both vertical and pyramid shaped wooden walls, dragging giant metal plates,  rope climbing,  monkey bars, horizontal rope crawl, spear throwing... among others.  And if you couldn't complete an obstacle you had to do 20 burpees.  Luckily I only had to do burpees a couple times, and friends are allowed to help you complete them, so Nate may have done a couple of mine... ;)

One of the last obstacles was a barbed wire crawl... the barbed wire was just low enough that you couldn't just crawl straight down... took a little maneuvering 

Just before the finish line we had to climb up a huge wooden wall, after which we jumped over a wall of fire to the finish!  

I love this shot of Nate!

WE DID IT!  AROOO!  

They had a big hose down station at the end... the water was freezing but getting all that mud off was nice so that we could enjoy...

The kids Spartan!  

Shad has been looking forward to this for awhile!  He kept asking, "Mom, when is our big mud race!?"  He couldn't wait! 

He loved all the climbing... 

 and crawling...

But he was NOT loving the mud.... Not sure what he thought a "mud race" was exactly... but it took a little encouragement to get him through that part! ;)

Mini spear throwing...

Balance beam walking...

Done!

He did it!

We are Spartans!  AROOO!

I'm already looking forward to the next one.  It was definitely a challenge, but an incredible one.  So much more empowering than the Dirty Dash... I loved it!  Maybe someday I'll be able to get the Trifecta medal! 

(The Trifecta medal is a special medal you get for doing a Sprint, Super, and Beast all in the same calendar year.  Nate just earned his with this race!  He also ran the Boise Sprint and Montana Beast this year!)