I survived the Super Spartan Race this past September in Red Deer, Alberta. My friends and I practised and trained for two months at varying intensities but we all stuck together during the race (which was essential) and completed 14KM + 20 obstacles in 2 hours on the dot. This is a respectable time which put us in the middle of the pack and I'm proud of it, but knowing what I know now here some things that I would recommend to anyone entering a Super Spartan Race.
Recommendations:
- Stick with your team throughout the race
This is critical since you're only as strong as your weakest member. Remember that the obstacles that you're practicing on aren't covered in layers of mud which make it slick and impossible to hold in some cases. I wasn't able to scale the eight foot wall without a boost or climb the rope in the Super Spartan. If you can't complete an obstacle you're able to split your burpees between your team which will move you all along a lot faster.
This might seem like a no brainer but believe me it isn't. I wore a fitted t-shirt, sports bra, cropped leggings and my best runners. My big mistake was wearing the leggings. The more clothing your wearing, the easier it is for mud to stick to your clothes and weigh you down. My legs felt so heavy about 20 minutes into the race at our first muddy obstacle. You don't have time to rub off the excess mud after an obstacle, you have to keep going. After 40 minutes we reached an obstacle that required us to swim across a river, it washed the mud off but my leggings absorbed the freezing water. This slowed me down which also slowed my team down.
This might seem like a no brainer but when I say early, I mean three hours early. Our heat was at 11:30 and we arrived around 8:30. We had to park at a church across the highway from the race, then get shuttled over to the actual race site. We had to line up to check in and get our race kit which had our time chip, race number and bag tag. This might seem pretty straight forward but there are line-ups for everything, long ones. So don't show-up half an hour before....you'll miss your race.
We weren't the fastest team out there but we were steady, we passed dozens of people just by running at a steady pace throughout the race. In a race with 20 obstacles the run can seem like a small component but several obstacles had a line-up like the spear throw and monkey bars. Being ahead in a line-up can shave minutes off your time.
Before and after the race stay warm. You can never predict the weather for your race day, mine was very cold and very wet, the air just felt very damp all day. I checked in my bag too early and was without my scuba hoodie before the race started. No matter how much I warmed up I still had goosebumps.
After the race put on fresh clothes right away, I didn't change I just washed the mud off and I didn't get home to change until 3 hours later. By then I could feel the cold in my bones and I was stiff for a week.
