SPARTANS!!!!

yesterday i met my best friend from high school, becky, in killington, vermont to watch her daughter compete in the spartan race world championships.

she was in the ultra race which is run over 13 miles with many nightmarish obstacles and is for the top elite athletes. it was so cool to watch!

to even get into the corral at the start of the race you had to jump over a wall. o.k., right there i probably would've broken my neck!  i can say with great confidence that i could not do a single thing in this race. well, maybe i could crawl under the barbed wire!

the elite race was for a select few, but then every 15 minutes, 300 more people would start!  literally thousands of people did this race!!

oh, see that "hill" in the top righthand corner of this picture?  well, they had to carry 55 pound bags of sand UP that and then back down!!!!!

under the barbed wire, across that wall. there were more muscles than i have ever seen in my life!

then you had to swim over and climb the ropes and then grab the short ropes to get you over to ring a bell at the end. practically nobody could do this and fell back into the water.

what happens when you can't do an obstacle?

30 "burpees"!  a burpee is a push-up followed by a jump in the air with your hands above your head. yes, 30 of those. and i thought burpee was the name of a seed company! (hi kris!) i thought maybe you could just do a few and call it a day, but the officials were right there keeping track. rats!

then more running up the mountain and more doing god knows what brings you to the tyrolean traverse. lots of people fell into the water on this one, and that means more burpees!

the thing that really impressed me was that you could see how hard it was to do these things, especially this traverse. they would struggle and inch along and then hang there and i just wanted to yell out "you don't have to do this you know!!!"  and i know if it were me i'd fall in the water and call it quits!  but these crazy amazing people just DON'T quit. like, never!  that's what makes them the elite, while i enjoy sitting on the couch knitting.  we're just different!

in this photo you can see again the "hill" they ran up with the sand bags.

they climbed those ropes and had to ring a bell at the top. underneath was a deep puddle of mud. more barbed wire, then over that wall. on the other side of the wall was a ring of FIRE to run through, then "gladiators" wielding huge rubber barbell-looking things who beat you as you ran to the finish line. oh, and all of this took 6 HOURS!!!

WOW!  and the thing of it was, these people looked like after the race maybe they'd go down to the coffee shop and read the newspaper or maybe take in a movie to relax, then go for a run. no tears, no collapsing in a heap, no looking pale and shaky and throwing up.  just amazing. i think it would've been interesting to watch the "regular" people who i'm sure did all of those things.

thanks, becky, for an unforgettable day!