It was a miserable cold and snowy winter, my OCR best bud and I trained at least twice a week every week all winter through snow, ice and sub zero weather at times to be ready for the Spartan Race Beast course on April 18, 2015 in Vernon, NJ. We were running anywhere from 10-35 miles per week to prepare with a couple 10+ mile runs in there by themselves on frigid days. The prep made us as ready as you could be for a beast course. It was a grueling 13 mile obstacle course on a ski mountain that still had snow on 50-60% of it! We paid $40 for VIP parking right at the base of the mountain so access was very easy to the course and there was virtually no traffic at 6:30am.

Once we received our race packets we were in the door basically at the start line, we stretched and did a very easy warm up jog before funneling into the starting corral for the 7:30 elite heat start. I wore my camelbak for hydration and to stash a few chews. The gun went off and we took off straight up a ski slope covered in snow and mud. And for the next 3 plus hours there was a series of giant uphill climbs followed by very steep downhills with a number of great obstacles thrown in to torture the athletes. The most exciting part of my race was the spear throw, which I nailed for the first time in competition! By mile 11.5 I had started feeling the effects of some cramping in my quads which was expected but spartan did a great job with chews at every water station on course and there were plenty of water stations. The most difficult obstacle was a treacherous barbed wire ice crawl directly up a slope at mile 11 which slowed pretty much everybody down except for the most elite of competitors. After the final ascent at mile 12 the cramps were gone and I cruised down the final rock laced downhill to the rope swing and fire jump to cross the finish line. I finished in 3:51 good enough for 129th place, but most importantly I went burpee free for the day nailing every single obstacle! The obstacles were all usual spartan toys, monkey bars, walls, mud, barbed wire, bucket brigade, sandbags, rope climb, dunk wall, etc....too many to remember but I think it was 34 in all.

The after party was awesome in typical spartan fashion with the sponsored pros mingling with the everyday joes, and tons of food and drink! The swag was great as well with a sick beast finisher t-shirt and stylish medal with my beast trifecta piece included. The only compliant was that a few obstacles were not prepared well, the spear throw had 15 or so spots but only 4 or 5 were ready to go as well as the final rope swing having the same issues! I would give the overall day 5 stars and the course was the best one I have run to date!