Spartan Ultra and Trifecta Weekend, Colorado Springs, June 15-16, 2024

Alternatively titled: 

6000 homeless people descended onto Fort Carson this weekend.  They wandered aimlessly through the cactus for hours, bathed in muddy water, ate all the bananas, napped in any shade they could find, and ran off with all the hardware.  

I remember the cactus and the sticky mud from a race here back in 2018. I needed an Ultra course for 2024, and this one was the right time, so why not?  Plus it wasn't a mountain course so I thought

it might be faster than usual.  Ha ha.   Jokes on me.  

Ft. Carson in the middle of June is a hot, dry desert.   There are ravines/gulches about 200 feet high, which the race director managed to turn into 6000 feet of climbing (!) over 30 miles.   How is that even possible?  

Jim declined to race here this year and that wasn't a bad decision on his part.  My Ultra started at 6 am on Saturday and by 8 am it was already hot.  I had been through the dunk wall already and was coated in a special kind of mud that doubles pretty well as sunblock, too, it's so thick.   The course was fairly runnable, if power hiking up rocky hillsides is considered running!  I managed to avoid getting any cactus spines in my hands this time, by creatively avoiding them on the barbed wire crawl.  

The special feature on this Ultra was an extra-long sand bag carry.   We picked it up, carried it for a while, drug it under barbed wire with us, carried it for a while, added it to the plate drag, then did the barbed wire again in reverse.  I think it was over a solid mile that we carried the sand bag, which for women weighed 40 pounds and I think 60 for men.  

Cactus!!!

My focus for this race was on my breathing. I've been training with Ed Harrold to breath only through my nose while exercising. There's a lot of benefits to this, including less evaporation of water, parasympathetic nervous system response, calmness, and focus. I managed to carry my nasal breathing patterns through the whole race, and that felt really good. The second half specifically felt like I was really in the flow of it, even as my body was overheating and my pace had to slow down.  Learn more here https://www.edharrold.com/

By 10 am it was 80 degrees already when I got into transition. 4 hours to do 17 miles seemed decent for the terrain (and the 1 mile sandbag carry!).   The second loop, shorter at 13 miles, would take me another 4 hours. I stuffed some bags of ice into the front and back of my bra, in my hat, my pockets and carried one in my hand. The evaporation kept me cool for a while, and the melted ice helped wash my face off after getting through the second dunk wall.  I had hope it would be cool and refreshing, but it was just muddy. When I opened my eyes after popping out of the water I couldn't see anything.   And my white leader's jersey was now brown.

My calves cramped up a little bit on some obstacles.  Definitely a failure on my part take get in extra magnesium the last few weeks...I've been distracted.    Otherwise my shoes and race plan held up well.  Final time was 8:05, good enough to get me on the elite podium for the first time in my Spartan career! 

The best part of a trifecta is that the races keep getting shorter. Significantly shorter if you start with an Ultra!  I did the Super in the morning and finished 3rd in my age group...my legs didn't really want to run much.   Then I napped in the shade, sharing a space with an 83 year old grandma who was out to see her grandson racing.   She was more agile than I was by then, lol.   At 12 I started my last Sprint race, which was just an open race with no competitive heat.  So I took my phone along and instead of doing the obstacles, I got to take pictures of other people doing the obstacles.  It was a fun switch.   When Jim picked me up after I finished it was 98 degrees.  Time to head back into the mountains and get out of the heat!