RACE REPORT: Spartan Carolina Ultra Beast & Beast 2019

My main goals for 2019 were to complete the GORUCK Star Courses in DC and CLT in the summer, and to complete at least one HTL in the fall.  The past few months had been pretty stacked with events, building up to 2 HTLs that were 5 weeks apart.

Before I had signed up for the HTLs, I had already been planning on doing the Spartan Carolina Ultra Beast and Beast to complete 2 Trifectas and get another UB.  With the HTLs getting squeezed into the schedule, though, the Spartan races became a "nice-to-have" goal.

To get through the last half of the year, I ended up taking it one event at a time.  Just focus on getting the next one finished, and don't worry about everything else after it.  I started having to do that out of necessity, since the Spartan Race weekend in Asheville is where I started having big issues with the nerve in my left foot.  Making it through the Vietnam Light (after DNSing the Tough) felt like a big victory.  Making it through the Horse Soldier Tough in Asheville was the next big victory.  I didn't know how the Mog Mile HTL would go, but by the grace of God, everything held together.  Recovery from the first HTL was fine, so there was another mini ramp-up (unplanned, but that's how the schedule ended up working out) of a Fallujah Light, then a Veterans Day Tough, then the Hard Hitter HTL.  By the time the second HTL came around, I had extra confidence going in because the first one had went well, and I'd be doing the Hard Hitter with a fantastic group of GRTs.

After the second HTL, the rest was going to be icing on the cake.  I was open to the idea of listening to my body and being OK with skipping the Spartan races if I didn't feel up to it.  Work had been busy in the week leading up to Hard Hitter.  There were more big meetings the following week.  There were cookies and donuts, so I ate a lot of cookies and donuts in the week leading up to the Spartan races.  I normally don't eat stuff like that because it's not around.  When it does come around, I might have one or two because it's rare and it's ok to indulge a little.  But I was totally OK with indulging every day that week.  I guess I supposed that it was most important for me to get calories in the week following an HTL and leading up to an Ultra-distance OCR plus a half marathon-distance OCR.  It seemed kind of crazy in my mind to be doing another 45-ish miles of hard work just a week after already doing 50-ish miles of hard work. That's a lot of miles.

My sister happened to be in town that week for a couple of days, too, for nursing school interviews.  She arrived Thursday night.  Friday night, I took her to the Whitewater Center to see their Lights 0.5 mi trail.  I got in 2 miles of rucking in about 68 minutes, since we took in the scenery and took pictures.

The next morning, I got up at 3am or something to drive to the Tryon Equestrian Center for packet pickup, drop bucket dropoff, and my 6:45am start time.  

SPARTAN CAROLINA ULTRA BEAST 

This was the second year that Carolina was getting an Ultra Beast.  The closest one used to be in Ohio, so I was sad to miss it last year, and was excited to get to do a local one this year.  My other two Ultra Beasts have been in Lake Tahoe in 2016 and in Iceland in 2017 (24 hr format).  

The venue this year was new, and it was awesome.  The previous year's event had been in Spartanburg at USC Upstate.  The Equestrian Center was about the same distance away, but it was beautiful there.  They have hills and well-groomed trails and beautifully decorated places to ride horses.  

The weather was going to make tough conditions for obstacle course racing, though.  It wasn't terribly cold, but it was drizzling rain all day.  Wet obstacles are very difficult to manage, mostly for the ones that are monkey bar-style.  Parking wasn't too far away from the festival area, which was good.  I picked up my packet at around 5:15am, dropped off my 5 gallon bucket in the transition area, and waited around.  I ran into some Spartan friends in the tent who were doing the Beast both days.

I decided to go with a long sleeve tech tee, 2 buffs for warmth, a visor for rain protection, and the mandatory ultra pinnie that distinguishes UBers from Beast racers.  I think I was in the second of three open wave heats, with my start time of 6:45am.  I waited under a tent to get protection from the rain.  I stayed close to the ground as I stretched, because it was slightly warmer close to the ground, with less exposure to wind.  The stretching helped to keep me loose and warm, too.

I had three pieces of food in my pocket, one for every 4-ish miles.  Some kind of carb-based bar, some more protein-based bar, and beef jerky.  I held that in a knockoff Spi-belt.  

Finally, it was about time to start.  You want an early time in an Ultra Beast because people start at different times, but the cutoff times for various checkpoints and the final course closure are the same for everyone.  There's a decent-sized DNF rate, maybe 30-60% DNFs depending on the venue / conditions / year.  It helps to have as much time as you can get.  I think some people jump into the UB because it seems like a logical progression from the Beast, but it is double the distance.  Back-to-back events on Sat/Sun, and stuff like marathons are a better next step.  You have to keep moving to make the time hacks.  No stopping, no long transition time, and you have to have at least a somewhat reasonable pace.

One benefit of starting later is that by the time I got to start, it was light enough to not need a headlamp, even with the rainy clouds.  We headed off into some steep up-and-down terrain on a rocky mountain side, then on muddy grassy hills.  The first mile was like that.  It was slow moving, but that was the most technical part of the course.  The rest of the course is much more runnable, for the most part.  The course was two laps of a ~15 mile course... the Beast course plus an extra section that the Ultra runners had to do.

First Group of Obstacles: Hay Wall, 7' Wall, Pipe Lair, Overwalls, Monkey Bars (failed both times), Low Crawl, Rope Climb, Tyrolean Traverse, Twister (failed both times, and had to do a what felt like 0.5 mi penalty loop, which you don't want to have to do when you're already planning to have to run 30 miles), Bender (switch grip helps on the wet obstacle).

This was the first time I was trying a Spartan Race with my Garmin Fenix 5S Plus with Sapphire Glass.  Fenix 3 and beyond models are recommended for this kind of racing, because it can stand all of the abuse.  I was tracking my pace, trying to figure out what I'd need to maintain to make the time hacks.  I'm not always the best at doing math in my head during endurance events.  I remember realizing at about mile 4 in the course that 7am + 4 hours = 11am, not 1pm.  It was such a relief to figure that out.  

Second Group of Obstacles: Armer, Beater (failed both times), Z-wall (did it despite the conditions!) through mile 8, Irish Tables, Hurdles, Stairway to Sparta (on lap 1, I ran into a Facebook friend from my Horizon Ruck Training program class!  He recognized me, probably from all the selfies that I post there, and helped me get up the wall), Barbed Wire, 6' Wall, Atlas Carry, Rolling Mud / Barbed Wire / Dunk Wall (only had to do this 1X because they closed this section for the second loop... maybe from the cold?). 

In the last few miles of the first lap, I was breathing hard and out very audibly, as a way to help me stay warm.  I don't know if you've tried it before.  It seems counter-intuitive that breathing out forcefully and audibly would make you warmer, because it seems like you're expelling warm air from your body, and taking in even more cold air than usual when you're breathing at that frequency and with that kind of volume.  But it seems to work for me and for Wim Hof.  I haven't studied his breathing methods or anything, but I've heard a little bit about it, and it reminds me of that.  I wasn't so cold that I was fearing hypothermia, but it was uncomfortable, and I was looking forward to putting on my rain jacket for extra warmth when I got back to the transition area.

There was a set of very steep uphills and downhills.  You had to go up and down very carefully.  Spartan likes to cut routes straight through terrain, intentionally finding the steepest possible ways.  It makes the segments of the terrain obstacles almost unto themselves.  I'm not a fan of that, since I like running, and I approach technical terrain cautiously, but it's part of the course.  

Third Group of Obstacles: Sandbag Carry, Herc Hoist (surprised that I could do it, even with the rain making the sandbags on the other side of the pulley heavier), Spear (failed both times... can't throw it far enough), Vert Cargo (got help up the Irish Table portion), Helix, Inverted Wall, Multi-rig (failed both times), Slip Wall.

At the transition, the best practice is to minimize the time spent there.  My first priority was to change into a dry new long sleeve shirt and put on the rain jacket.  I opened my bucket only to realize that my clothes inside were all wet.  Nothing seemed to have spilled.  The cap of the 5-gallon bucket wasn't snapped on all the way, but I would've expected the insides to stay dry anyways.  It's a mystery.  Oh well... I'd get wet again soon anyways, so I put on the shirt.  At least it wasn't dirty like the one I was already wearing.  The fact that it was wet made it colder than a dry one would've been, but I'd warm up again soon enough.  I wasn't tempted to linger in the transition area because it was cold and I wanted to get moving again.  I saw a ton of people there who seemed to be taking their time.  They had a fire pit there, which was a nice option, but I'm guessing that it does more harm than good for most, because at best, you think you're getting warm, but you're staying in transition longer than you should.  Worst case, you stay there and it feels toasty, and when you move away from it, you are less inclined to go for a second lap because the rest of the world is cold.  

I ate a couple of cookies and cheese.  I replaced the food that I had eaten on course.  I grabbed the headlamp, which you are required to have if you are on the course past 5pm.  

The course is always more chewed up later in the day, especially in bad weather.  Slopes become mud slides.  Many runners' feet from the later waves of Beast Runners and all the UBers have trampled the course and made it even slicker.

I passed and failed the same set of obstacles on both laps.  I slowed down a lot in the second half.  The last portion of the course feels very long.  You're back near the festival area, but there are still many obstacles and miles of running to do in that area.  I think I might've still been running-ish, but probably near a walking pace.

One good thing was that as I was getting to that obscenely steep hill portion near mile 10, the hill portion got closed for safety reasons.  I heard that someone broke their leg or something.  It was getting dark, and it was really muddy that late in the day.  It was near dark by then.  It didn't remove much distance... maybe half a mile.  It sped things up a lot to skip that portion that you'd otherwise have to carefully slide down crab-walk style, though.  

There were still many obstacles to go, but at least you felt like you were near the end now.  I didn't end up needing to use my headlamp because though it was dark, there were enough lights in the festival area obstacles to not need the headlamp.  

I finished with the last two obstacles of the a-frame cargo net and the fire jump, got my bucket, and then got in line to pick up my belt buckle.  They don't hand it out at the finish line like they do with normal race distance medals, since they need to verify that you did both laps by looking up your chip data.

28.8 miles in 10:47, 22:29 average.  5,433 feet of elevation gain.

I drove back home.  I spent a few hours with my sister, who would leave the next morning.  I was still debating whether I'd go back out for the Beast the next day.  I decided to go for it, because I love how comfortable this year's finisher's shirts are, and I wanted that 2X Trifecta, and I already had a volunteer code for it.

SPARTAN CAROLINA BEAST

I used race-day registration with a volunteer code, so I got to run in the volunteer heat.  The 8:30-ish start time gave me plenty of time to finish, without a big rush.  I was totally OK with the idea of walking the whole thing.  About 0.5 mi in, though, some friends came up from behind, so I ended up running/walking with them until about the 9 mile mark.  They were the ones who had done the Beast and had seen me before the race the day before.  It was fun running with them, since I normally don't get to do that and go my own pace.  

It was sunny and a little warmer.  The lack of rain meant that obstacles that I had failed the previous day were doable (although some, like Spear, Olympus, the Box, Great Wall, I still either failed or got help on, since some are tough period, but especially after this many miles of OCR).

About 9 miles in, I could no longer keep up with them.  The last few miles had been a struggle.  They were still going strong, and running was hard for me, so I let them go ahead, and I walked the rest of the way.  I hope to be as tough as them one day, because they wore me out.  They are almost 20 years older than me!  

I was hoping that the dunk wall would still be closed, but it was open.  The dunk wall is what makes you the muddiest, since it's full-immersion in thick soupy mud by the second half of day 1 and beyond on the course.  It made the multi-rig too hard for me to do, too, since muddy hands make holding onto rings difficult.  

It was slow, but I finished.  14-ish miles in 6:38:49, 28:29 average.