Spartan Asia Pacific Champs race recap
My lead up to the Asia Pacific Champs:
- 9 weeks out – bad patella femoral pain – returned to running started five weeks before APAC
- 2 weeks out – painful foot injury
- 1 week out – emergency dental after I smashed my mouth on an obstacle
- Travelling to China – luggage lost, so I had no racing shoes, gels, running watch, sunscreen, deodorant, or hayfever tablets.
I had not had the best of luck leading up to the race start line. But despite this I had a relatively solid build up through cross training and quality running when I could. I was cleared to race by my physio and told I could not do more damage to my foot by racing, despite the pain (I thought I had a stress fracture). While my luggage was lost during the 18 hours of travelling to China, I had packed shorts, bra and road running shoes on my carry on so at least I had something. With a foot injury and that amount of vert there was no time to wear in new shoes. I was able to borrow a race belt and get a gel from a few other Australians, so I started the race with 4 gels of a variety of brands. Some of the gels I had tried previously and vowed never to try again after they were followed by vomiting. I usually use a hydration vest. This was the first time I had raced 21km relying solely on water stations.
We were staying 200m from the start line and on race morning woke up to festival area music. On warm up number 1 at 7:20am my foot was not feeling in as much pain as during my shakeout run on Friday which was encouraging. It was already quite hot and humid and I was coated in sweat already. We watched the men start at 8am and then did warm up number 2 as some run throughs and jog backs on the hill. It had poured with rain overnight and the ground which was dry and rocky on Saturday was now a variety of sticky mud and slippery mud. Even in the warm up I was having traction problems with my road shoes.
I was wondering where all the elite girls were when I realised it was going to be a very small race. There were only 9 girls in the championship race at 8:15am (from China, Singapore, Australia, France). The start was very different from Spartan races in Australia. We all gathered outside the start area. A few girls were announced and jumped over the 4 foot entry wall. Then the rest of us were invited over. There were so few of us that we could all line up comfortably in one row at the start tape. There were no jostling for places or shoulder contact like in Australia where we have co-ed starts and the starting chute is nice and full.
Thaiwoo Ski Resort is at 1600m-2160m above sea level, which is the same elevation as the mountains I often train in around Canberra in Namagdi National Park and Kosciusko National Park. Although I live in Canberra (650m above sea level), regularly being able to train at a higher altitude does help, as your body is used to working harder despite not actually being acclimatised. Thaiwoo is the site of the 2022 winter Olympics, so the whole resort is being tripled in size in preparation. The hills were quite bare with almost no trees or shade, covered in grass and some summer flowers.
The start was uphill so I was immediately able to feel comfortable and take the lead. The race started up a fire trail before veering off into the grass and then up for the start of a massive climb. After a few small walls we came to the water obstacles which were rolling trenches with over under through walls at the top of each trench. There was then a dunk wall and a rope slip wall. Any lead I had here was eaten up as it is pretty difficult to get out of muddy trenches in road shoes and I had to do the second wall twice as I went over it the first time not realising it was an under wall (it looked exactly the same as the over wall and had no directional arrow). There were volunteers and marshals at each obstacle which was really impressive but most of the volunteers and marshalls did not speak English so there was still that difficulty.
There was then a barbed wire crawl followed by more running up a grassy slope. The sandbag carry (with a spartan pancake) was through a shaded forest and then up even further to an A-frame. Followed by more running uphill on grassy alpine single trail and then through forested trail. I was still in the lead at the first descent. As soon as I started descending my foot was in a lot of pain. I had expected this as the weekend before I had to cut my long run at 12km due to pain descending. The soles in my shoes were sliding around everywhere. Half way down I stopped to take the soles out. That was the best I could do. I couldn’t tie my shoes tight because my foot injury is at the top of my foot. Two girls had overtaken me because of my stop and my slow descending. There was a bucket carry at the bottom where I overtook both the girls and then started the next ascent which was powerwalking up a techy and rocky track. This then gave way to a firetrail where I tried to get out my first gel but had to slow down a lot to do this due to not being used to the belt I was using. After the gel, I was neck to neck with the Chinese lady (unfortunately I did not get her name as at the end of the race she would avoid me when I tried to introduce myself). We went through rings at the same time and spear throw. My spear hit the target but bounced off, so I was doing burpees with the Chinese girl. We then started the last long and muddy climb to the highest point of the course which was mainly power walking. I was trying to run as much as possible and using ten step powerwalking recoveries. Power walking requires bigger strides which requires more grip which my shoes did not have. The plate drag required pulling the plate uphill on a very muddy slope with rock obstacles. I was first to drag the plate up but then struggled to pull the plate back down because it was thick mud and I just couldn’t get traction on my shoes. The Chinese girl overtook me again here.
At the top of the mountain (2,160m) where the gondola finished, was twister, Olympus and bender. The marshall was yelling at me that we had to jump straight onto twister, we could not use the horizontal bar beforehand. This is completely different from my understanding of the US rules. On all the available lanes the twister handle was pointing upwards so I jumped and tried to grab it with both hands but slipped when it dropped down. The Chinese girl had also failed so we did burpees together. She had wasted quite a lot of time putting on these hand grips (kind of like what you would use for gymnastics) which is how I caught up to her after the plate drag. I went through Olympus and bender first. Being at the highest peak in the area we were now descending. My foot was excruciating despite this being a gentler descent. I stopped half way and was going to go to the aid station to withdraw, but decided to continue down the descent to see if it felt any better. It did not so at the bottom where there were more volunteers and marshalls I stopped to try and withdraw from the race. There was no way I could survived the 1,300m we still had to descend.
A few minutes passed and they still did not understand that I wanted to withdraw due to the language barrier. At this point Robyn ran by and told me to keep going and just walk the downhills as it would be a quicker way to get back as the course was a loop. I jogged with Robyn for a few hundred metres then picked up the pace again. The terrain now undulated for five kilometres with more gentle ascents and descents. I gradually caught up with second and first and was right near first by the time we got to armer. I overtook first on the tyrolean traverse (which was on an uphill slope). It was very hot and exposed but there were water stations every 2km so I was fine. I had also done heat acclimatisation before leaving for China so that may have assisted. Although the temperature was only 21, I usually train in -2 to 0 degrees in Canberra winter.
The terrain then went to muddy single trail and the big descent started. I was in a massive pickle here because of my shoes and foot pain. It wasn’t long before I was overtaken again. By this point I had decided to finish no matter what, so I descended as best I could. I had really bad heat friction blisters on the bottoms of my feet from all the movement of my feet within the road shoes. The single trail eventually led to a road descent. Although this was far better for my shoe situation, my foot was so destroyed and blisters so sore that I couldn’t descend fast. I had also destroyed most of my other leg muscles from the change of running gait required to cater for my limping stride and sore foot. The road descent seemed to go forever.
There was then a tyre flip and the stairway to sparta. As I got to the Stairway to Sparta I saw that the Chinese girl was using the edge of the obstacle to get up. Stairway to Sparta is a wall with climbing holds that start half way up. You run, jump, and try and grab a hold, then work your way up and over some horizontal bars on the top. We do not have this obstacle in Australia. I have read the US rule book which says you cannot use the edge of the obstacle to get up. This is the same rule as for getting over walls, ect. There were so many volunteers and marshalls watching her do this. As I came up to the obstacle I tried to protest but none of the volunteers seemed to speak English at this obstacle. I got over and continued. The race then went around a huge dam. There were sloped walls leading down to the dam which was covered in a net to get down to the swim. I gained a lot of time in the swim which helped make up for slow descending. The life jackets we had to wear were enormous. After climbing the dam wall to get out my feet were completely shot and so painful. I knew we were close to the finish but there was one more massive climb to come. After getting painfully close to festival area the course started going uphill again, with a second, very low barbed wire crawl positioned before the real climb started. The climb went up a ski slope and was probably 26-30% gradient, muddy and rocky. The power hike seemed to be going on forever. I could see first but when the descent started completely lost her. It was so steep, rocky and muddy, and cut up by the previous day’s ultra racing. I did the best I could but I could not quite cut out the voice in my head that knew how fast I would by flying down that hill if I had proper shoes and a proper foot. But that is what Spartan racing is all about. Doing the best you can with what you have at the time.
At the bottom of the hill 1km from the finish my legs started cramping. I usually try and flow downhill and avoid braking, but because of having no grip on my shoes I had to rely more on my quads than I normally would and they had given in. Somehow I managed Hercules hoist, rope climb and atlas carry with my legs cramping. At this point Quinton and Liam (who had finished their races) were yelling encouragement at me, saying the Chinese girl was not far off. This helped me psychologically, but I could not move any faster. I did my best to do the loop around Thaiwoo town on the cobbled stone paths. There were pedestrians all over the course so it involved some weaving. I got over the A-frame, inverted wall and second A-frame. Then I was at the monkey bar-twister-monkey bar. I could not see but someone (Quinton, Liam, Jimmy??) was yelling at me that first was doing burpees. I was absolutely dead, but managed to do the monkey bar-twister-monkey bar. As I rang the bell at the end of the second monkey bars, the Chinese girl got up from her burpees and sprinted. I also sprinted. She beat me by five seconds. When I finished I had to lie down with my legs on the wall my feet were so painful. I was so happy the race was over.
I have not done a Beast with 1,400m of vertical gain before. It was unreal and I would love to have the opportunity to do this race again with an uninjured body and some decent trail running shoes. Despite this, I learned that you don’t need much to race well. You prepare the best you can, and race the best you can in the circumstances you are given and with the gear that you have.
If I did not have Robyn and the other Australians helping me out it would have been so difficult for me to complete this race. Although they gave me physical things like gels, racing belts, protein powder and Panadol, they also made me feel like I could do this despite the circumstances. Focus before Tahoe is to believe in myself like everyone else believes in me!
Great write-up Monika and supreme effort, even with all the problems along the way. Adapt and overcome.