TRAINING LEAD-UP
Monday, Jul 28:
15 min 1.1 mi zone 2 run in 85 degree heat at night, then JBF "BW Conditioning" 15 min AMRAP with 7 rounds and 21 reps, then glute and pec PT v1 in 26:53 to ease back into movement after the tactical classes
Tuesday, Jul 29:
At Blackstone, I wanted to focus on troubleshooting my malfunctioning pistols, or at least gathering enough info to give to others to help me with suggestions.
With the DWX, I learned that you're supposed to ride the safety with your thumb. That's a new concept. It does help me prevent putting the gun back on safe mid-shoot.
With 10 different mags worth of 124 vs 147 gr ammo across 2 different mags that had come with the gun, I was able to replicate many chamber-but-no-bang malfunctions on the last rounds, though. On the last mag, I noticed that the slide hadn't gone all the way forward, so I'll need to explore whether that's the real culprit. There were other random mid-mag malfunctions, to... slide not going all the way forward, failure to eject with double-feed.
The good news is that my milled USA-made G19Cs, both the cerakoted and non-cerakoted ones, were working. I wonder what made them start working all of a sudden. No malfunctions at all, and I tried both 124gr and 147gr.
Afterwards, 18A "Lower Body Prep" in 18:56, then "Lower Push BW" in 36:24
Thursday, Jul 31:
I went back to Blackstone, to give my G43X a try, too. Maybe I could replicate my success with the other Glocks. I did a full cleaning beforehand, so that a dirty gun wouldn't be the root cause of issues. I still started getting issues with the slide not going all the way into battery. I was going to get an armorer to take a look, but one of the instructors offered to try shooting it. She isn't much bigger than me but could shoot it without any malfunctions. It turns out that with little guns, I just need to grip much harder, with everything I have, so that I'm not limp-wristing it.
Afterwards, 18A "Upper Body Prep" in 22:42, then "Push-up" in 53:39 taking as much rest as I need. It felt a little harder than usual, since it's been a while.
Friday, Aug 1:
Hip Mobility - Open Your Hips & Day 17 - Explore | BREATH yoga with Adriene. My arms were sore today after the push-up workout yesterday.
SPARTAN SUPER
I upgraded to the Age Group race, to see what I could do and avoid the later open heat crowds.
Unfortunately, it was sprinkling as I drove up that morning. Obstacles are already decently challenging, but when they're wet, even ones that are typically easy become difficult to impossible for me. Really strong ninja athletes can still do them, but you probably have to have incredible grip to make it.
Tryon is a great facility. It's made for cross-country and show-style horse activities, so it's pretty there. They also have a big covered tent area that they can house most of the festival in, to keep everyone out of the sun. Perfect for a summer event. They even have paved parking areas. The first year, I had to park in something that was unpaved and muddy. Somehow, it seems like the races happen around rainy times. The deep mud ended up messing up the underside of my car and cost hundreds to repair. Every time since then, though, I've been able to park on the best parking I've ever gotten at Spartan races.
There weren't a ton of people in the heat, it seemed. Not sure if it's an overall symptom of lower numbers, or if it's the increased cost of age group.
On the monkey bars, enough people had made attempts at the earlier bars that those weren't super wet, but the later bars were still quite wet, and I dropped with about 1/3 of the obstacle left. The guys' lanes might've actually been easier to make it through, if more guys had gone through and naturally dried those bars off, with the number of male racers vs female racers.
Pretty early on, on my way out of the sand pancake carry, about a mile in, I rolled my left ankle pretty bad. I later rolled my right ankle a little bit. You can never get complacent, even on seemingly flat stuff.
Bender:
I started the Olympus, but I could quickly tell that I wasn't making much headway and dropped and did the penalty loop. For all obstacles other than Spear Throw, a running loop was the penalty, instead of burpees. I think it might be logistically easier for them to monitor compliance that way. With burpees, people might skip reps if someone isn't counting every rep.
With Beater, I was sooooo close... I missed by inches at the end, since the lsat roller was slippery. Maybe I could've used technique to regain control and lechee my way to the bell, but I decided to try to power through it instead. So close.
Twister was all wet, and I dropped immediately.
Low Crawl & Dunk Wall:
Herc Hoist and the Bucket felt very light. On Herc Hoist, I pretty much fell on my back every single pull. I wonder if that sandbag was just light.
The rope climb was fine despite being right after the dunk wall. There's enough friction designed into the system that it's ok.
Even the multi-rig bar was wet, but I ended up powering through it ok.
I ended up getting 1st in my age group. We actually all finished within 1 minute of each other, so it was close! Every decision and little push matters. You don't always know how much it's going to matter until the end.
Because it was overcast, it was actually quite cool. I got chilly with my wet clothes and exercised self, as I was sitting on my bucket under the big tent, killing time.
KORBOARD CHALLENGE INTERMISSION
At a vendor booth nearby, I saw people playing with KORBOARD, which is a board with a built-in bar that can hold your feet as you do sit-up type exercises. There are also slots where you attach bands to do resistance exercises. They were running a challenge where you wanted to see how many situp-to-squat reps you could do in a single go. I saw a couple of kids try it, and they were really proud to get thirty. That was the leading number for the day so far. The kid got a hat, since that's what you got if you set a new record for the day. I was shivering, and I wanted a hat and figured I could get thirty, so I gave it a go. I got to 100 really easily, and it was so far past 30 that I asked if they wanted me to stop to not hog it since I wasn't anywhere near failure, or keep going. They encouraged me to keep going.
I eventually got hot enough to take off my shirt. I ticked off different milestones. Somewhere in the upper-200s, maybe, they said that if I hit 339 (an odd number, but ok), I'd get a free KORBOARD... sweet, new goal! All I had wanted was a hat, but a KORBOARD would be awesome! I got to 339, and it feel scummy to just stop after getting enough for the board, so I kept going. I was starting to feel fatigued, though, and I briefly considered stopping at around 420, but I didn't want to make it seem like I was advocating for 420 or anything, so I had to keep going.
I ended up going until 500. I could've pressed on, but the reps would've started taking a little bit longer each time. My legs were the thing that burned the most. My arms were working hard from generating momentum for the situps, but they weren't burning. My core didn't feel anything. With the Spartan Sprint still coming up in the afternoon, though, and me needing to use legs for that to jump high enough on walls and climb up the hills, I stopped at 500. Good enough for today.
I got the free board and accessory pack. Hitting some milestone (maybe it was 500) beyond 339 got you the accessory pack add-on, which was nice. Didn't know at the time. 500 is a nice number. They did say while I was going that the record at the time was 1,001.
Later that day, a girl and a guy ended up doing 1,002. Impressive. I wonder what I'd be able to do fresh, not having done a high-effort Super beforehand, and wanting to leave something in the tank for the Sprint.
The KORBOARD people were counting reps as I went and hyping up the crowd. Everyone was great and so supportive. It was awesome.
AWARDS CEREMONY
I hopped over to the Awards Ceremony afterwards. It's my second time on an AG podium, first time getting 1st. My first podium was at the 2024 Fayetteville Ultra, where I got 2nd.
I ran over to the reg tents to get my stuff for the Sprint right afterwards. The lines were long, and it took over an hour to get my stuff. I made it into my heat, just barely.
SPARTAN SPRINT
For the Sprint, my main goal was to survive and not get injured and have a little fun, enjoying the course.
Since the obstacles were drier this time, plus the Sprint doesn't have as many of the obstacles in general and fewer of the harder ones, I actually did better on the obstacles this go-around. I failed the Spear Throw again, but that might've been it.
I did the "Extra Mile" challenge again, but I had to wait for a long time to get KBs, since there were many more people on course by then. People were allowed to do the loop without KBs, but I wanted to do it properly. The first set of KBs that I could get my hands on were the mens' 2x20#, so that's what I used. Good training!
After the Sprint, I did take advantage of the Dr. Bronner's mobile foam party. They had warm water, which was excellent. I think I've seen them before at a Rugged Maniac or something, but didn't take advantage of it then due to lines or not being sure if it cost money or something. They made it a lot of fun, though. When I went through, there weren't that many people, since it was kind of back away from the main festival area, so maybe not a lot of people knew about it, even though the emcee would mention that it's there, and they had a table and guy giving away samples closer to the main festival. You could even go multiple times in a row, if you wanted, but I did want to get back home to shower and rest, before my all-day volunteering shift the next day.
