Spartan Trifecta

Late last year Brian and a few friends were trying to be intentional - about making new friends, about accountability, and about living "real life" together - so they devised a plan of sorts. Kind of a crazy one, but it worked:-) A few good friends has turned into many good friends.

They decided to start training for the Spartan races. They used the church gym/property on Wednesday nights after church to train. It started with a few, but gained in popularity once other guys started to hear about what was going on, and what difficulties they were training hard for. It's also kind of a good outreach - people that would not come to church per se, at an invite, would come and work out at a church with a bunch of good men.

It's been really neat to see the bonding and relationships form over these training sessions, and races.

The Kings Own was formed, and they are a merry band of brothers, indeed. They had shirts made for all the people that workout together, and especially the racers (some people do not do the races, just the weekly workouts).

On the back of the shirts, with The Kings Own crest : Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king. (Which is from 1Peter 2:17) On the front: "trade what you cannot keep for what you cannot earn". (a version of a Jim Eliott quote)

Without further delay: Here are pictures from the Spartan Beast (The Beast is a half marathon with apparently 36 obstacles). {Posts from the Sprint are here and here, and the Super is here.}

Ready to run!

A funny story from the first race (Sprint), - as you can see, all racers go together, so you are often surrounded by people you don't know. There was a woman struggling to get over an obstacle. Nate, the Spartan hero, came along to help her out. Brian says, "all I could hear was, 'I'm going to put my hand on your thigh'", and of course, they will never let poor Nate forget about that one moment of heroic proportions. "I'm going to put my hand on your thigh" is a regular joke around here now;-) This photo pays homage to that hilarious moment in racing history.

Brian said he was able to do most obstacles this time - but not the rope climb (you have to get high enough to ring the bell at the top). It was just too slippery, and he only got halfway up (he's not in this pic)

Swamp creature?

This is nearly the grossest thing I've ever seen

Hilarious comments taken from facebook:
Darla: What on earth?! Brian feeding Ulys straight into his mouth? Haha
Brian: Okay, my hands were the cleanest at the time. I fed everyone, it was almost biblical

Run hard, Byron!

They all finish together. Always. They stick together as a team, and help each other out when necessary. The punishment for not doing an obstacle (not finishing or not doing it correctly) is 30 burpees per failed person. That can be a LOT of burpees when a few people fail at an obstacle, which will wear you out fast. But the load is made lighter when a friend (who didn't fail at that obstacle) does some for you. A friend that sticks closer than a brother...does lots of burpees in your place:-)

I jokingly and somewhat mockingly (..."and #hockeyhair over here...") hashtagged Brian awhile back in an fb status. It stuck. Obvious to all, he has pretty close to the most enviable hair on the planet. In either gender;-) So the #hockeyhair legend lives strong, as each pic is carefully poured over by all - just to see if the hair ever looks bad, in whatever state he finds himself. The hair. It's all about the hair.

Twelve guys finished in 4hrs 21mins. They finished 165th of 312 groups of people. They were very happy with their times, and were very happy at how "easy" it was - training success! They even rocked the javelin throw (which historically has been a hard one for them). The race they ran in August (the Super) is/was one of the hardest courses of all Spartan races, so even though it was not as long as a half marathon, it was much more difficult, due to the terrain/location.