The BEAST!!!

Well, my sister Annie somehow (way too easily) talked all of us sisters and 1 brother in law into running the Utah Spartan BEAST!! Now there are Spartan races all over with 4 different variations of levels. The beast is the 3rd hardest of them all.

We normally run a Ragnar race together but we are all a little burnt out of them so my sister thought switching up to the Spartan might be fun. As I looked into the race and realized it was 12 miles of crazy hard obstacles I was second guessing this idea but everyone decided it was a go and OBVIOUSLY since I live the closest to Midway, UT where it starts (I'm the ONLY one in UT) I couldn't really say no...right?!

So months ago we signed up and about a month before the race I realized this was really going to happen. So I started running more (I never really stop cuz it is my therapy) but I didn't miss a run and took my miles up a bit and kept my weight lifting up. How do you really train and be prepared for something as crazy as this?!

As the day got closer I just kept thinking WHY are we doing this?! We really PAID for this?!

SO how was it?!

It was truly VERY fun, uphill, hard, muddy, uphill, crowded, muddy, uphill, challenging, muddy, rewarding, uphill, and FUN!! I couldn't have picked a better group to run it with!!! We totally lived it up and had a blast together. We went into it saying we were all gonna stay together and just make it fun and not care about winning but I'm not gonna lie...we are all pretty competitive so we pushed it for sure.

The VERY first obstacle was a muddy water pit that you had to jump into and crawl out so you started off the race nice and wet and muddy and it only got worse from there.

There were walls to jump over. Some so high that there was no way to get over without my brother in law Matt boosting us over. There were sandbags to carry up and around hills. Log stumps to balance and walk across. Ropes to climb up to the top and back down. Nets to climb over and down. 40 lb cement blocks to drag by a chain up a mountain and back down. Buckets (with no handles) to fill with little rocks and carry up and down a hill (this was one of the hardest). Walls to barely cling onto and scale across. Huge tires to drag down and then pull back with a chain. Monkey bars to cross with wet muddy hands. 60 lb cement blocks to pick up carry, drop, do burpees, and carry back. Javelin throw. Tires to jump in with your feet banded together. More and more mud holes to climb in and out of. The hills were so muddy and slippery that there was NO way to get out of them without people helping push you out. IT was crazy.

TONS AND TONS of uphill hiking on trails. A ton of the race was on tiny trails that you were hiking up to the top of mountains. It was a beautiful view though. There was NO way to run up them because they were so steep and on the hills you were literally lined up person to person going up. There were times where we could have hiked faster or even ran when it leveled out but you couldn't pass the people in front of you because there was literally no room on either side. Then going back down the trails was quite tricky cuz it was so steep you were worried about falling and hitting into people. There was SO much uphill!!

The very worst part was the end. There was barbwire low to the ground that you had to roll or army crawl under for a long ways. It wouldn't have been so bad but it was SO freakin rocky that you were constantly getting stabbed by rocks no matter what way you tried to go. It hurt so bad!! That was the only part that I was literally wishing I could just quite and be done because you would be dying but there was no way out and it was so crowded with people that you had to watch your every move.

We ended up finishing in 3 hours and 19 minutes which I thought was pretty dang good!! I ended up 888th out of 3,766 overall. 91st out of 1,036 woman, and 16th out of 190 in my age group. Our team ended up 75th out of 239 teams. We definitely could have been faster but there was some waiting around at obstacles...especially the rope climb. And just the waiting behind people on the trails. But we were super happy with the end result and most importantly we created some awesome memories!!!

Just getting our of the car all sunscreened up. Nice pretty smiles!! ;)

Starting to feel tough!! Bring it!!!

Getting closer to the start...got our numbers...felling pumped and tough of course! ;)

Not looking so pretty anymore!!!

Sharing some coconut juice after. We were so thirsty!!

It was so worth it all though. TO do it with my sisters and Matt ;) was such a blast. It was a challenge but I'm  always up for a good challenge. It was fun to do something different then just run too. I would do it again for sure!!

We were super happy to be done. After it was over we got some pics before heading to the hoses to shower off. The water was FREEZING but it felt so good to get all (well most) of the now crusty mud off. We changed and then headed into Heber for some food and some milkshakes at Granny's!! We were SOOO hungry and exhausted!! It tasted AMAZING!!!

YUM!!! Ice cream...our favorite!!!

Then we topped it off with some pedicures. I felt bad for the poor people doing them...they were probably grossed out by our dirty nasty feet but it felt so good!!

Aw...relaxing and SO deserved!!! They had 5 chairs...perfect! Good thing my mom only had 5 girls! ;) The guy doing our nails told us our mom was a good baby maker ;)

We picked up the older girls from the cabin to come with us! Shea, Paige, and Logan.