I attempted the Spartan Ultra Beast in Killington, VT, the Grandaddy of all obstacle course races, on September 17 and I did not finish. A little over halfway through the 30-mile mountain march, pain in my right knee rendered it nearly impossible for me to walk, let alone race, along the vaunted rugged mountain terrain.
I knew I was in trouble after the first mountain scurry. My right foot, racing on uneven ground at a higher altitude than my left, pronated inward and aggravated an old injury from marathons and triathlons past: the IT band. For those of you who have had to deal with IT band stuff, it needs no introduction. For those who have not, godspeed, and just realize that the injury brings with it great pain, immobility, and mystery as far as how to prevent and cure it.
I raced with a friend from college who actually took 5^th place. He is also an actual real-life Ultra Beast, formerly little known but now a much better known fact. It pained me to tell him to go on without me. Just as in Last of the Mohicans, I pleaded with him, “Stay alive, I will find you!” Indeed, what I found was that I had poked a dragon in this Ultra Beast. Here are 5 things that stand out to me, in retrospect, with regard to the difficulty of the course.

• The mountain terrain is fierce. It is Asheville on steroids. The vertical climbs go on and on for hours, and then you race downhill. There is very little of this race that is straight ahead on a flat plane: virtually all of it is either up or down. If you don”t train in the mountains, don”t sign up for this race. I picked up my long distance training two months prior to the race and it didn”t do me much good at all. Even before my injury hit during the race, it struck me how much I had neglected mountain training.
• The cramping was intense. I came prepared with salt tablets but still became somewhat paralyzed after the swim (which was about 200 yards), which was about 3 hours into the race for me. Note to future racers: keep your salt tablets in a shampoo bottle, because any water contact will dissolve the pill casings.
• You need upper body strength to get through the obstacles, but you don”t need them to win the race. My buddy, who took 5^th, failed 5 obstacles, all of them strength related. I failed one, the spear throw, no surprise there. If you stay on a steady diet of pull ups, dead hangs, and try to incorporate more pull than push into your F3 Qs, you”ll be in good shape. Core is also key with all the hoisting and carrying you have to do, but really you need a strong-ass grip because with many of the obstacles you”re hanging onto stuff. If you want to compete for time, focus on endurance and get small at the expense of getting strong. You make up time in between the obstacles when everyone else is in misery.
• The obstacles are a lot of fun! The swim, the rope ladder climb, and the tarzan swing followed by another swim right in a row were a treat (in spite of the cramping). You swim out to a bridge where the rope ladders hang. As you climb the ladder, you realize how heavy the unstable rope and your water-logged gear make you feel. Then as you finish climbing the ladder, you have to tarzan swing to the other side of the bridge, ring a bell, drop into the water and then swim to shore. The multi-rig was at the end of the first lap and included baseballs at the ends of the ropes. The log carry was awesome at the end of the first lap, right after the spear throw (choose your own log and carry it up and down the mountain). We had not one but two barbed wire crawls, each of which was on a pretty steep incline, which were both fun and terrible at the same time. There is what is called a death march, which is a straight shot up one of the steepest sides of the mountain, right underneath the gondola path. This was extremely painful but a ton of fun because the only way to get through it was to share in the misery with others by rattling off jokes and commiserating through the pain.
• The struggle is real. Hats off to anyone who completes the UB. It”s a terrific accomplishment, a worthy clarion call to mental and physical toughness. If you have any semblance of a physical ailment, this course will find it. If you have any cracks in your belief in yourself that you can do it, this course will find them. I raced on a sunny day. The views from the mountain were breathtaking. Still, a dark and ugly force beats on you on this mountain. I can see now why many attempt this race, but few finish.

What seems like a story shrouded in disappointment isn”t really that at all. I spent 3 days with an old friend from college, catching up and cracking jokes. I spent 7 hours on a big mountain, 5 of them in survival mode, and during the darkest moments I met a handful of wonderful people, all sorts of colorful characters I won”t soon forget. While I would have loved an Ultra Beast belt buckle as the capstone to 2016, my first foray into obstacle course races, I can”t help but appreciate the journey – the training, the preparation, the multiple races I”ve done with F3 friends, all the new relationships I have, and all the new awareness and memories I now possess of an insane, irreverent, and CSAUP corner of the universe known as OCR.
Upon returning home and researching my injuries for a bit, I had some time to reflect upon the past 8 months. While falling into rabbit holes during my research, I began to piece together some common themes. If you run a Google search for “happiness” you”ll find the following things:

• Wake up early
• Work out
• Work out early in the morning
• Work out early in the morning with intensity
• Be social
• Encourage others
• Show gratitude

I don”t need to tell any of you that F3 ticks off each of these. I think we”re doing something right.
I will need to take some time away from endurance and obstacle racing, but I”m grateful for F3. I don”t know if I”ll try the UB again. Maybe it”s a mortality reminder, maybe it”s my new white whale, or maybe it”s the beginning embers of a 2017 Spartan Revenge Tour: this time, it”s personal. Who is with me?! We”ll see, I guess. But I know I”ll be back at F3 soon. And right now, I know I”m pretty happy about that.