ANZ Stadium Spartan Super

This past weekend was the final two races of the second Spartan Trifecta that I have been working towards.  The races were in Sydney and Anna and I drove down the day before to help out and volunteer with setting up the course.

Anna hates selfies...hi Anna :)  We fueled up on pho the night before.

I ran both races with my phone in bag check turned off.  I did not take photos on course.  That said, here are a couple of photos and videos of other people to give you a good idea of what I got up to.  I'll take a look once the official photos are posted and see if I can do a follow up post with some shots of me in all of my sweaty glory mess.

The first race of the day was the Super distance.  This is a 12km race with plenty of obstacles.  As we were in the ANZ Olympic stadium, as opposed to an outdoor course, they didn't have any mud or barbed wires.  Instead, we ran all through the stadium including lots of time in the bleachers.  We ran through the VIP boxes, the private staff only areas, the changerooms and even out on to the field and grass.  We ran up and down the ramps and through the parking garage-usually with slam balls or sandbags on board.  

The the climbing happened.  Oh the climbing.  They started with a ski erg machine.  I had to go 200m in 60 seconds.  I smashed it, but my shoulders were tired and my hands were sweaty.  Of course, this was the very next obstacle!  Ugh.

I got most of the way up and then suddenly, I was falling.  Arrggg!  I fell about 3 meters down on to thin mats landing on my back and head.  I got up pretty quickly and kept moving (I would later realize I damaged my head and tailbone, but not for a few hours yet!)  

The next section of the race is right before the finish line.  It is called the Spartan 300 and it is intense!  Here is an aerial shot.  In here there is a whole mash up of things like a log jump, a Hercules hoist, cargo nets galore, wall ball, a crazy hard travers rope with a climb in the middle (oh my shoulders!!) and more...so much more. 

 Here is a lego video version of it in case you are interested:

This is the single most hateful rope traverse I have ever done.  I completed it though. Once you put that much work in to something there is no way that you are willing to fail it and do burpees!

This is the Cliffhanger. It looks really horrifying, but is actually not as bad as it looks.  I nailed it both times. I finished in just over 2 hours and I was pretty battered.

Here are the 5 race medals and 5 pie pieces earned up to this point.  

So, So, SOOOOO very close to having that 6th and final pie piece!!!.