Welcome back to Seattle, Spartan! Let’s take a Kracken [pause for applause and laughs, because you know, the NHL team…] at the first Pacific Northwest Trifecta weekend, held at one of the fastest Beast venues on the Spartan circuit: Meadow Wood Equestrian Center.
Spartan's Back - check out seth's Montana Trifecta Weekend recap!
Plenty of beautiful terrain awaited in the Spartan Arizona Sprint and Super courses, which varied from slight inclines and steep, hard declines, to beautiful sandy trenches and prickly bush juking.
October is an exciting and bittersweet time of year in obstacle racing. If you're like me, your season is winding down. The calendar only has a few dates left on it and you're gearing up for championships and the long off-season of winter training.
It is amazing how far I’ve come personally. I started off just doing a Tough Mudder half 2 years ago. This year I have done a race almost every two weeks the past couple of months. I finally got to try my first Spartan at the Spartan Super outside Austin, Texas. There are lots of things to definitely discuss.
Welcome back to the absolutely beautiful Pacific Northwest, where Spartan, once again, held its highly anticipated Seattle-area US National Series. It was an opportunity for OCR’s top athletes to secure their position in the US Championship in West Virginia, while also providing a rematch of sorts for those who were physically, mentally, and spiritually defeated after the mud fest that was the Seattle Super in 2017.
75 degrees, rolling, sandy, mountainous, desert terrain and a whole lot of Spartans made for one epic weekend at Fort McDowell. This venue did not disappoint.
OCR Sandy continues his 2014 OCR journey with another double race weekend. I could tell right away, the day was going to be much sunnier and hotter than the previous day in Ohio at OCR World Championships and I knew hydration would be a key for this race. I opted to wear my CamelBak hydration backpack and carried extra GU gels with me. I started the last wave of the day.
Schlachter, commonly referred to as "the most connected person in the sport of OCR" or "center of the OCR universe" takes on the role of Supreme Editor-in-Chief of Mud Run Guide (mudrunguide.com) on top of her duties as host & producer of Obstacle and Adventure Weekly, co-host on OCR Warrior, founder of Dirt in Your Skirt, subject matter expert & columnist for obstacleracing.About.com, and writer for Mud & Obstacle Magazine.
Spartan started with the obstacles right from the get go on this race. After the initial climb, you had a ridiculously long barbed wire crawl through mud and water. It felt like a quarter mile, but the water felt great with the heat. My arms and knees were torn up after this one. The next obstacle was the monkey bars. I gave them a shot, but I couldn't hold on, since the “bars” were more like pipes, and I have tiny hands. So on to the burpees for me.
