Three notes:

a)

The Vermont Spartan Beast (photo from nuvision)

This article will have 3 sections:

1. Summary/Highlights
2. Lessons Learned
3. Details of the Experience, with Photos

Summary

This was a 12-mile race, but like nothing I’ve ever done.  It was almost entirely hills (and I don’t mean normal hills, I mean straight up Killington ski mountain not using a trail but using a narrow woods path).  And it had 26 obstacles, described below.

I did this with 3 friends, and about 1/4 of the way in we split into twos.  We later found out that the leading two stayed just barely ahead right up until the 3rd to final obstacle, so we all finished in a little over 5 hours.

That’s right.  Over five hours.

The elite men winners did it in about 3 hours.  I think, in retrospect, if we trained a little more appropriate for the terrain, and pushed ourselves, we could have done it in 4 hours.  But 3 hours seems insanely fast.

The 26 obstacles involved variations of the following:

• fire jumps
• barbed wire crawls
• wall climbs
• hills
• mud pits
• balance walks
• horizontal rope lines
• sandbag carries
• sled pulls
• swimming
• oh, and did I mention hills, some of which were so steep that we were on all fours, grabbing roots and branches to keep from falling backwards?

If you failed any of the obstacles, you had to do 30 burpees.  I’m proud to say that I was successful on all obstacles except one:  the spear throw.  I was SO frustrated when I missed that (you only get one chance).

Some people were clearly not ready for this, as evidenced by

Cameron did the Spartan in The Carolina’s the weekend of June 25th.  Here is his first-hand account…

The race was intended to be approx. 8 miles with 15 obstacles.  The fastest times were intended to be around 80 minutes.  It ended up being (after adding the turns)

Sometimes I feel pretty dumb about fitness

Buddy McKee squatting 810 Lbs. at age 53 at the APF Louisiana Open in Sept. 09 [pic taken by Teresa Frank]

Buddy McKee hasn’t followed a typical path. It’s been an exceptional path, covering multiple sports, various powerlifting records, NFL free-agent, competitive bodybuilder, full-contact karate (before MMA was in vogue), teacher, and coach.  And if that weren’t even, he even recorded a hit song he wrote and sang (#80 on the national charts many years ago).  [For a more complete bio, scroll to the bottom of this article.]

Buddy is STRONG.  His in-meet records are Squat – 810 lbs. Bench Press – 600 lbs. Deadlift – 622 lbs. And of course, in the gym he’s lifted even more.

He’s held various titles and records recently in the over 50 class.  And, at the prime age of 54, he’s still competing and 2010 may hold a couple of new records for Buddy.

I talked with Buddy a couple weeks ago, and he was kind enough to let me record the call and share it with you!

The tool below lets you listen to streaming audio of the interview. LeanLifters will get the full MP3 download via email.

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