Spartan North American Champs race recap
Big White Ski Resort, BC, Canada
Championship Beast 23km 1,130m vert
Big White was a venue worthy of a championship race – lots of vertical gain, varied terrain requiring a well-rounded trail running skill set and wet weather that made sure that obstacles played a role in the outcome.
I was pretty nervous about this race, having not done a Beast in over 2.5 years due to Covid lockdowns. This was also my first full distance race since I broke my foot at the beginning of the year. Optimally you would do a practice race or two before a championship race, but I was in the Canadian Rockies on annual leave and was just grateful to have this opportunity to race again.
When I arrived at Big White on Friday I was stung by a wasp just above my right eye after my shakeout run. Canadian wasps really hurt, it felt like someone had cut my face with a razor blade. On race morning I woke up and half my face was so swollen I could barely blink my eye. Fortunately for my eye the weather was 5 and rainy at the start which meant the swelling went down as the race progressed, but ideally you have two functional eyes on race day.
I usually start races fast and then recover a little. It’s not everyone’s best strategy but it works for me. Coming back from injury I decided to be more conservative. I did not know that after the initial downhill start the course went suddenly into a muddy single trail (xc ski tracks) through the forest. As a result I got stuck in congestion for the first 2km. It would have been so nice to be able to open up and run my own pace in the long grass and squelchy mud. Lesson learned to start at an appropriately hard pace to get in an appropriate position for any early single trail. Finally after about 2km the course opened to a firetrail allowing for overtaking. The first obstacles were monkey bars, the 4 foot and 7 foot walls. I fell off monkey bars in the wet conditions and did the penalty loop before continuing on. The course was now on dry and rocky single trail climbing to Rhonda Lake and the climb was fun. I was potentially too comfortable and could have been pushing harder but its really hard to trust yourself first race back from injury when you haven’t had that experience of learning when pushing harder is taking you to places you cant recover from.
On the Saturday I took the chairlift to the top to hike around some trails. This was not part of the course but same mountain we ran on so same same in terms of terrain.
Views down to Rhonda Lake.
As we got higher it got colder and after the 8 foot wall and approaching the top of the first climb, I was very happy with my decision to wear gloves and bring a buff to pull up over my face. It was probably 0 or -1 at this point which is fairly cold in the rain but similar to the conditions I’d been running in at home in Canberra winter. The altitude was also similar to Australian mountains being 2,100 at the top, and I felt comfortable particularly after spending the preceding week at higher altitude.
The first part of the descent was on really fun rocky single trail. I had lost a lot of confidence on obstacles and this played out the whole race particularly given the wet conditions and cold hands. I failed Olympus, completing another penalty loop on gnarly offtrail terrain. I was then able to rally and get over stairway to sparta after getting a single hand grab on one of the holds and then run fast on the fire road descent to the lake. Halfway down the descent was z wall, spear throw, dunk wall and slip wall. I failed spear throw and after the 30 burpees followed by dunk wall it was really hard to warm up. The bucket carry felt heavy but it was fairly short taking maybe 1.5-2mins. Luckily after that the firetrail descent continued and the lack of technicality meant that I could warm up and take in some more nutrition. The second climb started after Hercules hoist and the barbed wire crawl. This climb was awesome, all off trail on ski slopes studded with small pine trees with different varieties of grass and moss underfoot. Gradients would have been 35% average with some steep hands grabbing grass sections. I made up some time on this climb catching up with and overtaking some women who had failed less obstacles. The climb was mainly powerhiking but had some runnable terrain in between the three false summits. After reaching the top there was armer and then a downhill firetrail back to the lake where atlas carry lead to the final firetrail run back into the village. By this point the field was fairly spread out and I was very much running by myself.
Near the top of the first climb.
Pretty easy to see here the swelling on half my face from the wasp sting.
The last two kilometres were stacked with obstacles. Multirig was rings to bar to rope attachments. I got to the rope attachments before falling off. I found out after the race that you could touch the top of the rope attachments which makes a huge difference. I had thought you could not use this part of the attachment based on what was said in the pre-race Q&A b on the Friday. This just shows rules can change rapidly and I should have asked the marshal at the obstacle to confirm. After multirig was helix then the 18kg sandbag carry, the box and beater. The box is not an obstacle we have in Australia but after securing my feet on the rope and reaching for the bar on the top it was relatively easy to pull myself over. Having never done anything like the beater before I fell off in the wet conditions and did another penalty loop. After this was the last uphill on a grassy ski slope before rope climb then the last firetrail descent into the village which had the vertical cargo with a table in front (so you essentially have to do a muscle up to get onto the platform to get onto the cargo), A-frame cargo, twister and inverted wall.
Given the 6 obstacle failures, 5 penalty loops and 30 burpees I was fairly happy with the 9th place finish. It was frustrating because my running fitness was there, I had just added 15 or so minutes failing so many obstacles. It was particularly frustrating because I have been training on obstacles coming back from my injury. There has been some improvement in that I did complete 8 foot wall, stairway and twister, all obstacles I failed a few months ago when I was just relearning to jump coming off my broken foot injury. This is what makes OCR racing so interesting in that you need to work on the obstacle skills over time and there are so many pieces to put together to have a good race. Given the wet conditions most elite women failed at least one obstacle (spear throw aside), but even taking into account the rain I had too many failures. I also know that a lot of that came from low confidence. Confidence comes from not only training but racing.
Barbed wire crawl. Fairly high height but very brutally rocky terrain for knees and elbows.
Bling. I really like the championship beast medals.
Much drier conditions for the Super on Sunday. Can you tell the event was sponsored by Nissan?!?
Finish line feels.
Super 13.4km 699m vert
I decided to race the Super on the Sunday to practice obstacles and get some confidence back. The first two kilometres on the muddy single trail the elite women ran together and then Lindsay gradually ramped things up from there. There was only one climb in the super on a different single trail to the Beast, but it was just as rocky and fun despite being on tired legs. The first obstacle was again monkey bars. I jumped up and then fell straight off after a cramp in my rib muscle. I definitely didn’t warm my upper body up enough. Running the penalty loop and then catching back up to Elise on the first climb I was super annoyed with myself for failing another obstacle, but on the climb getting back to where I was behind Lindsay, I managed to turn my head around and successfully completed Olympus and stairway to sparta before the firetrail descent to the lake. Approaching z wall I saw that Lindsay had stuck her spear and was heading into dunk wall. I arrived at spear and although I hit the target it did not stick meaning I completed 30 burpees. Burpees the day after a championship level Beast are killer. By this time the gap with Lindsay probably stretched to 2 or so minutes. The super course from here veered off back to festival with firetrail running followed by the gauntlet of obstacles. Yes it was drier conditions on the Sunday but I was still really happy to be more confident and get multi rig and beater despite the bad start and some unhappy intercostal muscles. Overall running and the obstacles were smoother and it was nice to come away with 2nd even if the gap to first place was 3-4 minutes.
The Spartan North American Championships was such a great way to kick of my season and learn some valuable lessons to work through in the coming weeks. I am just so stoked to be injury free and robust enough to compete in two back-to-back mountain races. Looking forward to taking that stoke into the OCR and trail running season back in Australia.
Helix with multi rig in background.
Helix is serious business when this is only the second time you’ve been on the obstacle.
Alpine terrain at the top of Big White. Not part of the course but indicative of terrain.
