WE ARE SPARTA!....kinda...

Team Legendary: Brian, me, Daniel, Diana

This past Sunday I decided to hold a little training session with the group of people I'll be running the Spartan Race with in May. They are all obstacle racing virgins and I wanted this training session to help prepare them at least a little bit for the race. Although that's kind of like saying you want to eat a Vienna Sausage to prepare for a hot dog eating contest.

Going into it I was a little nervous, for a couple of reasons.

1) The previous day, the salad I'd eaten at a restaurant completely tore my insides apart, which left me really weak and kind of hating life the rest of the day. I woke up Sunday feeling like I'd been roofied- not a good feeling.

2) I think we've pretty much established that I'm a pretty shitty runner. I get nervous running around other people I know because I am so slow. I also knew that because I'm the experienced one, they were going to be looking to me for direction. I was worried I wouldn't live up to their expectations. Still don't know, kinda too afraid to ask.

The elusive Tyvek Sandbags

I had decided that I wanted to include as many elements of the Spartan Race as I could in the short time we'd have, one of which were sandbags. I know many of the Spartans require carrying heavy sandbags and while I don't know if ours will, it's better for them to experience having to carry one while running than show up and not know what to do with themselves.

This sent me on a mission to Home Depot to find the Tyvek bags used to make the kind of sandbags you see people stack up during hurricanes. 45 minutes and endless searching and questions to salespeople later, turns out that none of the Home Depot's in our region sell them. Apparently you can really only get them in the coastal regions, for obvious reasons I guess.

I realized I was going to have to improvise if I still wanted to "surprise" them with sandbags in the morning. Many thanks go to my GORUCK Tough family on Facebook for some great suggestions.* I ended up deciding to pour sand into trash bags, tying them tightly, then putting them inside those Wal-Mart reusable shopping bags and tying them as well. Were they perfect? Not so much, but they got the job done! They were quite beat up after our workout and yes, that is duct tape wrapped around one of them in a redneck effort to make sure it didn't bust open on whoever was running with it. Cutest duct tape ever, right?? On a side note, I learned exactly how not-strong the seams on those bags actually are. I would recommend not carrying anything super heavy in them, like multiple gallons of milk, or a toddler, for example.

Sunday morning. The plan? Everyone meet at a nearby park at 7am sharp. In keeping with tradition, Bexar and I got there around 7:10. Luckily we weren't the last ones there. Brian and Diana apparently didn't know how to even get to the park as we found out after calling them at 7:15am to find out they didn't know exactly where they were. Daniel finally successfully navigated them to the park and we got ourselves all set up to run the 3.5 miles of trail to get to the pavilion area where I planned on putting them through some PT (Physical Training).

I didn't realize until I saw these pics that I looked just as bad as I felt

After a short shake-out jog, we were off. It was apparent immediately what our varying running abilities were. Daniel, a former cross-country runner, was practically speed walking the whole way while I was huffing and puffing in the lead (since I was the only one who knew where we were going). Brian is also a natural runner so he and Daniel kind of took turns running second and third. Diana runs mainly on the treadmill so going from that to a trail is a fairly big adjustment. She brought up the rear but she stayed with us, which is no easy task when you've never run a trail before.

For the record, this is a trail I ran constantly last summer. I have my good days where I can run the 10k loop just fine, others where I may have to walk short distances from time to time. But this run? Awful. My legs felt like cinder blocks, my form felt like it was all over the place, I was having trouble controlling my breathing, and I was having to stop and walk so much more often than I ever normally have to. I'm not going to lie, it was embarrassing. Here I was leading a group of people who were expecting a good hard run and instead they were stuck walking periodically because I just couldn't keep up the pace. I was definitely battling those negative internal demons as well as the physical ones at that point. I don't think I've ever been so glad to see that pavilion come into sight.



While we had been running, Bexar had taken off on his bike along with Daniel's boyfriend to ride along the other trails in the park. While waiting for them to meet us at the pavilion, we started a short circuit on the fitness equipment at the park; rows, dips, pull ups, push ups, and pikes. Once the guys showed up Bexar and I took off to the car to bring everyone's "surprise". The look on Brian's face when he saw the bags put on the picnic tables was priceless. His first question? "Is that our lunches?"

I'm really proud of all of them though, they ran with those bags like champs! We went a shorter distance than I had originally planned, mainly because I was feeling even worse at that point, even though I was trying not to show it. With that done, I started the down and dirty PT: bear crawls and low crawls. Now personally, I love getting dirty, crawling on the ground, you name it. Them, not so much. I guess once you pass the age of 10 you really don't have the occasion to be crawling around in the grass anymore so none of them were exactly used to it. Brian used to play football in high school so he was familiar with bear crawls but Daniel and Diana were a little lost. I have a great video of us doing them, but for whatever reason it's all jerky and hard to watch so unfortunately I can't post it.

We moved on to low crawls. I think this was everyone's least favorite thing of the day. The grass was wet, which always kind of leaves you with that itchy, stingy feeling on your skin. Unfortunately for Daniel, it was quite a bit worse. Turns out he's massively allergic to grass and had to go get steroid shots and steroid cream. For the next 2-3 days he was completely miserable and would have to literally duct tape bags of ice to his legs just to get any kind of relief. I felt so terrible! I guess it's a good thing that he realized it now though, so he can make sure he gets the right clothes to protect himself at Spartan Race.

After our groundwork, I taught them the Spartan regulation 4-count burpee. In theory, the 4-count is super easy compared to the regular 8-count bodybuilder burpee or military 8-count bodybuilder burpee.** In reality, even 20 burpee's winded me.

Some practice on climbing a wall and we were done. It wasn't as great of a workout as I had hoped, but out next (and last before Spartan Race) will be next weekend. This time I plan to actually have real sandbags for them, as well as 5-gallon paint buckets that they'll fill with rocks and learn to carry as well. I'm really excited for that workout. The others? Well, we'll see...

Cue Dr. Horrible laugh...

*A special thanks goes out to my GRT brother who is actually sending me Tyvek sandbags that he had. If anyone is debating whether to try a GORUCK Challenge, I say do it. The family of people you will be joining are some of the most amazing, selfless and supportive people I've ever had the honor of knowing.

** Margaret Schlachter of Dirt in Your Skirt made a great video explaining the differences between the different type of burpee's. You can view that blogpost and video here: Dirt in Your Skirt: Burpee Debate