We.Are.Sparta.

On Saturday our Spartan was up at 4am and headed on a 5 hour trip...

Let me back up...Brian is part of a mens group at chuch, they meet on Wed mornings for breakfast, and the wives call it book club jokingly, but it's better than that, really:-) Anyway, as part of just fun, and team building and all that, they decided to run a Spartan race. Then others were invited too, so I think they ended up with 11 in their group, including 2 pastors at the church, and 2 teens from the church.

So at 4am the adventure begins, they meet at the church and begin the trip. Although Brian is extremely sore in his quads, otherwise he's feeling great! The stories are naturally hilarious, and a good time was had by all. No one was hurt, other than muscle cramps/soreness.

The race was 4.8 miles of running with I think 15 obstacles in there. Our men decided to do it all as a group, and not individually, so they stayed together and helped ease each others burdens...of burpees...if you failed an obstacle (by falling off or not completing it etc), you owed a certain number of burpees for your failure. But having teammates willing to do them for you...bonus. 

Not everything was able to be captured on camera - one of the guys had a waterproof one. But on the tougher stuff, he wasn't taking pics. Apparently there was barbed wire, and fire, and somehow we missed pics of that fun:-)

There was 120 lbs on the other end of that rope

Which was hard to lift because of the muddy slippery rope and ground, he said

The course was a lot muddier than it was supposed to be (this was not a "mud run") but due to our crazy weather and extreme rain fall in the area, every thing was very much under water

After army crawling through "a football field" of barbed wire. This is Brian, Otherwise known as naked looking brown man;-)

Brian in "2nd" here - they are pulling 85lbs of concrete

They finished!!!

Their entire group finished in 1hr and 48 mins I think the recorded time said. Which was entirely not terrible, the fastest single person to finish the course that day took 53 mins, obviously groups are slower, and all that, so I think they were quite proud of that number. Spartan Race #2 (Aug) is 8 miles and more obstacles, and Spartan Race #3 (Oct) is 13 miles and even more obstacles. To be a Spartan, and get the whole medal, you need to do all three races (which they are planning on). Right now, the medal is only a third of a medal, missing 2 pieces:-) So on to training for the more difficult race coming up in the heat of August...