A couple weeks ago, Kowalski and I had an opportunity to do our first ever Spartan Race…
Figuring it was going to be our first one, and we had absolutely ZERO training in obstacle racing, we mulled over which distance race to sign up for.
They had an 8-mile 20 obstacle Super, 13-mile 30 obstacle Beast and 30-mile 60 obstacle Ultra Beast course option…
The logical choice would have been to get our feet wet with the 8-mile Super, but of course, we illogically decided to sign up for the Ultra Beast 30-mile 60 obstacle extravaganza…
Or was it? 🤔
Based on our lifestyles predicated on a steady amount of long distance endurance training, we figured the 30-mile course with 10,000 feet of elevation gain and descent would be challenging but very doable… As far as the obstacles, we were both as novice as could be, yet we also figured if we were to complete zero obstacles, we would just need to be able to do 1800 burpees 👍(the Spartan rules allow you to forego any obstacle by completing a 30 rep burpee penalty set)… Yup, they are as miserable as the sound.
So as we approached race day, we trained by running a decent amount of difficult, hard-charging mountain miles and doing a f*ck ton of burpees…
Come race day, we were ready. Of course we were not ready to win the race or even so much as compete with the elites, but we were very confident we would be able to complete the course.
How many times in our lives are we given options and we naturally decide to take the path of least resistance? Why make things harder on ourselves than it has to be? It would have been very easy to choose the 8-mile Super and we would have come out of it with a great Daily Hustle blog/podcast highlighting the experience…
I’m sure that Super would have been cool, but here at the Daily Hustle, our motto is “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing,” so how would we be able to look ourselves in the mirror had we left untapped miles, obstacles and experiences out on the course…
Sure, it may have taken a bit longer, been a bit harder and our level of suffering flirted with the infamous red line of complete and total combustion, but hot damn we made some f*cking memories. 👊
Go BIG,
EB