I know you are all probably dying to know how this all ended (sorry, we’ve been busy and Spartan sucked at delivering photos for this race).

The Beast has been conquered and the Trifecta completed!

The Beast will test not only your endurance, perseverance and grit, but also your mind. The 21km+ Beast packs in 30 obstacles and it is the final hurdle to Spartan TRIFECTA glory.

A quick stop for donuts and we were on our way to Blue Mountain to attempt to complete our Trifecta of Spartan races for the season.

After a restless sleep full of dreams about hills, cold water and monkey bars we woke up bright and early, after a couple of shots of espresso from our Nanopresso and a quick breakfast we headed to the race.

The course

The weather was perfect.  Beast Mode: ON.

Greg got a no rep on the Hercules Hoist and was told to do 30 burpees (which you can imagine, he was thrilled about).

Sadly did not make it much higher than that this time. Damn wet rope.

Ringing the bell!

Greg did conquer the rope climb again, however learning to j-hook would make it a lot easier. The rope was SO WET, like you squeezed it and water came out. Maybe next year. Rope – 3, Sarah – 0.

How does he always know where the camera is!?

How do I NEVER know where the camera is…

After the fire jump I feel like there should be someone handing out beers.

Again, really – I need to learn how to take race photos.

Major lesson learned at the Beast, always “walk” your feet on the traverse rope. The rope burn you get from dragging is no joke.

After it was all over, we went back to the hotel to relax and drink beer! Yes they were Spartan races, but it doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate like a Viking and drink out of a horn (in a fancy robe, because why not.)

Blue Mountain was really nice, there was a free Colin James concert in the square so we were able to take that in.

Earned.

Afterthoughts on the Trifecta

Learning how to climb a rope is now a goal.

Hills make a HUGE difference in the course. The Beast (21km) was mostly flat, we finished in nearly the same time as we did the Super (16km) because the Super had huge hills, and a LOT of them.

The Beast added some fun elements like a heavy sand bag clean and press – the “floppiness” of the sand bag makes the lift much more challenging compared to a barbell.

For training, we would add in more long runs. To be honest, we all but gave up on long runs this year, focusing more on shorter distances with workouts and hills along the way as we didn’t expect any great running distances despite the course length (based on past experience with the Super last year, where we learned we REALLY needed to train hills more). The flatness of the Beast threw us for a loop and we ended up running a lot more than expected.

It was a fun “race season” for sure. The constantly varied courses keeps it very interesting. We have completed four Spartan races now. Will we do more? Who knows! The challenge and feeling of accomplishment are amazing, but maybe we will look to other sorts of adventure next year.

Oh, and we have yet to flip a tire.

AROO!