The Spartan Sprint run took place at Citi Field on Saturday April 16th 2016.

Soooo my friends and I signed up for the Spartan Sprint run at Citi Field. What is a Spartan Sprint you ask? Well…it can be a lot of things but this one is a fantastic 3 mile + obstacle course race through Citi Field stadium.  I am a runner by trade and have been running for years, but I am also scrappy. I spent my early childhood scrabbling up trees so I was totally up for this challenge. And who does not want to break up the running season with something a little different!

A Spartan is an obstacle course race. This one happens to use Citi Field as its tromping ground. To be fair, I have no idea how many obstacles we actually did:), I will go more into that later, but the whole race takes you on a run all over the stadium, through the bleachers, up the stairs, through the parking lots, on the field and in the back tunnels. If you are a sports fan, it is kind of amazing. The views are fantastic and I can truly say, never have I ever seen more of a stadium.

One of the nice things about this race is the location, which is easily accessible by car or by train.  I took a train there and my racing buddy drove, neither one of us had any problems. We simply met up in the parking lot where we picked up our bibs and tags like any other race.

This was easy and well organized. We had formed a team, so we were essentially running at the same time with a drawn go-time of 9:30 am. Being a team has it’s benefits and to be truthful this is one of the really nice things about the Spartan culture. While running is usually a solo project, the Spartan races allow you to form teams and do the race as a group which allows for your teammates to help you on challenges that might be just out-of-reach.  If you fail an obsticals, a teammate can help you or share in the penalty (30 burpee’s) to ease the burden.

This race had some great obstacle in it. A short list includes, rope climb, crawling under/over things, spear throwing, bucket carrying (with and without water), general lifting and hauling of things, a  plank skateboard thing, jumping rope and some other odds and ends. The set up is simple…run, then stop and perform a task (while the refs cheer you on). If you fail the task for some reason or cannot complete it due to physical reason then you can opt for 30 burpee’s. Sadly, we did not do a great job of documenting it because we were so busy running! But we managed to capture these shots from the obstacles.

 

By the time we finished the race it was 10;30 or so…keep in mind we talked to other runners and wandered around snacking on the free goodies provided and comparing race stories. By that time there were a lot more families coming in to race too. They run a children’s Spartan race along side the adult one which is wonderful.

As an entry level, this sprint is a great time. It is challenging if you do all the obstacles and are in reasonable shape, but so long as you are fairly active I think any group that likes a challenge could participate in it. There were loads of people who walked the course rather than ran. The ability to share tasks makes the tasks achievable, but you can always opt out and take the burpee penalty. So as long as you know your skill level, you can keep yourself safe from injury. I say this with a grain of salt because any time you are doing complex activities while you are tired, you could easily hurt yourself…so be carful out there! And injury is relative. I would totally expect to come home with a few of these beauties! Since we were a little beat up we recovered by treating ourselves to Spa Castle for a sauna, which is just a short drive away.

But you will also get an amazing day, some great new skills and this….

Totally worth it. I really enjoyed the switch up from running, to some more skill oriented tasks. As a woman, I also have to say one of the nice things about races like this is it challenges you to build upper body strength in a really useful, practical way. I really do not know if I will ever have to bench a bunch of weights cold, but you never know; I totally might have to lift my body over a fence while running one day.