Left home at 4am to drive up to Tampa, with enough time to get ready for the race, including setting up my GoPro camera. Temperature was around 42º by the time my race was about to start, which is not a big deal, but when you’re about to run and most probably jump in cold water, it becomes one of those “oh crap, this is going to be fun…. not” moments.

Overall, I thought the race was tougher than my Super race from last year, but I think two main factors that got me to this realization has to do with to very specific issues. The first one, right at the beginning of the race, during the second obstacle, while helping a lady jump over the wooden obstacle, the force she applied in order to reach the top wasn’t downwards but find of forward, literally throwing me to the floor and hitting my knee and wrist against the concrete floor. Although my knee hurt just at that moment, my wrist was the one with more damage, which became worse as I had to keep using my hand throughout the race. The pain became excruciating and there was nothing I could do about it… because I wasn’t going to quit and I wasn’t going to do 30 burpees just to skip each obstacle. The second issue was the amount of stairs we had to climb during 75 to 80 percent of the race. I’ve never in my life climbed so many stairs before in a single day.

I’ll be honest, while I enjoy helping others to overcome obstacles, that initial injury that cost me having to deal with so much pain and ending up not being able to use my hand for a week after the race, taught me that not always I can sacrifice myself for those around me, especially during a race. The worse that can happen during a Spartan race is, that if you can’t complete an obstacle, you’ll have to do 30 burpees, and even then you’re getting something physically positive out of it.

My goal now is to prepare and focus for next year’s Beast race, which most probably will be in Atlanta, and for once I will try to focus on timing other than recording videos with my GoPro. This along with a Tough Mudder race and smaller obstacle races will keep me busy for a while when it comes about outdoors physical activities.

Spartan races are basically obstacle races. There are four different races, the fourth one not being advertised or promoted as much or at all in comparison to the other three. The races are the following ones:

• Spartan Sprint Race- 3+ miles with 15+ obstacles
• Spartan Super Race- 8+ miles with 20+ obstacles
• Spartan Beast Race- 12+ miles with 25+ obstacles

The fourth race which is not talked about very much is called the Death Race. Not much is known about this race, other than the fact most people won’t finish it. It could easily take over 24 hours to finish and it challenges you physically, mentally and spiritually. I’ll include a video at the end of this blog about this race.

These races are as fun as they are tough, and although anyone can register to participate, I wouldn’t say they are recommended for everybody. To give you an example, some people are just not physically ready to climb ropes or doing the monkey bars. These among other challenges are part of the obstacles found in the Spartan races, and if you fail or skip any obstacle you need to do 30 burpees (here’s a video by Joe Desena, CEO and co-founder of the Spartan Race doing some burpees and explaining why burpees) in order to continue the race. So as you can imagine, if doing 30 of those is very difficult, failing any obstacle implies doing 30 of those, even if is the last obstacle after you have been on the race for over an hour.

Now, you may be wondering what this blog is all about and why I titled it Defeating the Purpose. The answer is very simple. I recently found out that the Spartan Sprint Race I registered for this year in Tampa, FL is somehow mostly indoors, or at least on hard concrete floor. Personally I think this is kind of ridiculous and doesn’t honor the true meaning of a Spartan race because of what I stated before; this should be an outdoors race. Running on concrete floor, jumping 6 or 8 feet tall walls and landing on hard floor is far different from doing the same on the grass or dirt. Even running is completely different and many people notice the difference on their knees.

I lived in Tampa for 3 years and I know for a fact there are plenty of areas and parks that they could have chosen for the race, yet, they decided to do the race on a stadium, and I still have no idea why this decision. If I had known this I would have probably waited to register at another venue, even if it meant for me to travel further to another city or state, like I will for the Spartan Beast Race in 2016.

While I think this could be seen as a challenge or obstacle part of the race, I think it is only fair if someone out there gets to read this blog post, that they are aware that this could happen, and if they prefer running out doors on the grass or dirt instead of concrete floor, to find out what venue will be used for the race, and to look up videos on YouTube for previous races at the same location.

Without further due, here’s a video of the 2010 Spartan Death Race

Death Spartan Race