Doing the Melbourne Spartan Super LIKE A GIRL

For those of you who don't want to wade through the whole post, here's the list of obstacles: 6 Ft Wall, 7 Ft Wall, Block Drag,  Under Toblarones, Balance logs in SBC, 4 ft wall, Over Toblarones, Over, Under, Through, Split, Sandbag Carry, innertube obstacle, Hurcules Hoist, Water Walk, swimming, Slip Wall, balance beams, 8 Ft Wall, Dead Ball Throw, farmer's walk, Tyre Drag, barbed wire, Traverse Walls, dead ball carry, rope traverse, spear throw, fire jump and Container Complex.


Race two of my quest for the Australian Trifecta is in the books!!  It was a great run, well organized, well devised and well laid out.

We arrived to the course and were guided in by parking attendents.  Our presence in the paddock didn't seem to bother the resident goat and donkey very much.  They just grazed as we strolled by. It was cold on race morning.  Oh. So. Ccccccold!  My teeth were chattering and I couldn't feel my hands.  I think that for Melbourne standards this was a pretty average day and we knew that once we got moving, we would be more than warm enough.

Less than 1k in to the race and we were doing the over, under, through walls and hurdling toblerone obstacles ( I go over those things SO MUCH easier than I go through them!).  We came up to the sandbag carry and I thought nothing of it.  I jogged with my sandbag and then saw that we had to do a balance beam with the sandbag stil on our shoulders.  A great obstacle, but we had to queue for it as the group had not yet had enough time to really get spread out.

Once through that we climbed a wall with a rope (slip wall?) and then, at 1.9k, we went for the first of a few swims.  Way to bring it on Spartan!  Less than 2ks in and our shoes were full of mud and rocks and we were soaking wet.  Like I said, they didn't pull any punches with this one!

I should mention now that I only took three photos during the race this time, so I am relying on photos of other people or ones of me that the professionals took.  We ran about 1k down a really steep hill, collected a washer (to prove that we had actually gone to the bottom) and then had to run it back up.  I will pause the race report here for a moment to mention a douche canoe that I encountered while running.  This guy (behind me, I should be clear that this guy was behind me) kept calling out to people that ran by us "did you grab a spare washer, did you grab a spare washer?" and he was complaining about the run down the hill.  

As we headed back up the hill, some mates passed him and they called out to him "how did you get ahead of us?" He replied with "because I don't do burpees like you girls." His friends were male.  So I turned around, because he was BEHIND ME, and said "so, what's wrong with being a girl?"  He had the common decency to look embarrassed and say "uuuhhh, I don't know."  So, I proceeded to stay ahead of him for the rest of the course and DO SPARTAN LIKE A GIRL!

 Back to the hill, I was very grateful to have run up that bloody dam a couple of times in training and knew that it had been very helpful.  We jumped over an 8 foot wall, then a short while later had to throw a HEAVY ball (I rekon about 12kg for the women's weight) over an 8 foot wall.  I smashed those two and then approached the most impressive monkey bar rig that I have seen in any of my obstacle course races (OCRs) thus far.  It was a monkey bar, to rings, to monkey bar to parallel bar transition (no breaks, nowhere to rest) I SMASHED IT!!  No burpees for this GIRL!    I was so pumped after ringing that bell (there is a bell at the end that you need to ring to prove that you completed it) that I think my next few obstacles were just a blur! 

 I crawled dragged my body through those bloody toblerone obstacles the went back in the water (though this time I could touch the ground).  I carried a heavy sandbag for about 500m down and hill, under a fence...and, you guessed it, back up 500m to where we started from.  All of this was out in a trail/paddock area so we were also running, and running, and doing more running.

 

We started to see people coming along the course that were muddy.  Like really, really muddy.  It took us another kilometre or so (and a lap around a track dragging a tire), but we finally got to the barbed wire crawl and discovered what had gotten them so very muddy.  The photos are not all uploaded yet, so you'll just have to take my word for it that it was gritty and dirty and FUN!  These are a couple of shots of me to show you just how muddy it was!  The selfies are a bit blurry since my phone was in a sandwich bag.

 Can't stop for too long so we ran around some more, carried a super heavy slam ball, carried some kettle bells, ran some more then got to the container complex.

I am not in these photos.  The complex is made up of shipping containers and consisted of a rope climb (fouled it-arrgggg), climbing up a ladder to get to the top of the two shipping containers, getting across the nets, and then jumping down.  I am not afraid of heights this small, so this one doesn't give me any grief.

  We ran around some more.  Leapt over some Toblarones, they cleaned us off by putting us back in the water for another swim and then we leapt over a fire.  This is a shot of me right after the fire jump.  Pretty clean, right (my socks started off purple)??

We did the spear throw (nailed it-first time I have ever gotten that one!), traverse wall (fouled it-arrggg), balance beam (fouled it, which is awful because I never foul that one, I must have been tired). At 13k we got to drag this cement block around for a lap and then, with the finish line in sight I dragged my body through the Toblarones....

and then did the rope traverse (remember the photos of this one from Sydney?  You cross over a huge mat on a rope suspended in the air) and then DONE LIKE A GIRL at 14.5K!

 

 I am pretty chuffed to see that I finished in the top 25% overall, top 10% for my age category and top 10% for my gender over all.  Had I known that I was doing so well I might not have stopped for photos and to scrub off in the water-lol!!

So here are the shots of the medal and t-shirt that the Canadian Mudd Queens have been waiting for...

 
 

I am two thirds of the way to a trifecta. Someone told me that if I complete the trifecta over here that I will be the first Canadian to complete an Aussie only trifecta.  I have not been able to verify that (does anyone know who would be able to help to find out?).  Even if I am the 1000th person to do it, I will be over the moon at the finish line in May and I will be eager to put these babies in the holder that they are begging for!!

Some fun post race photos: