Oh Spartan, I have fallen in love with obstacle course racing and have become quite addicted! This was my second year doing the DC Spartan Sprint and my first time ever competing in the competitive division. The DC Spartan Sprint is a 4+ miles run with 24 different obstacles. This year’s event came out for 2 days instead of just the one day compared to last year.  Pictured below is a map of the course.

I decided to volunteer the entire weekend to gain some race credits and helped out with the Spartan Kid’s Race.

Little Spartans getting ready to take off!

Warming up!

Parents rooting their little Spartans on through the mud!

Check out this little guy! Isn’t he just adorable!? The kid’s course was no joke!

I really enjoyed helping out with the Spartan Kid’s race. It felt very rewarding to be able to hand out medals to the little Spartan Kid’s finishers and to be able to give back to the racing community. It was so adorable to see little kids out there killing it on the course and also doing what I love to do.  I wish I could have gotten involved at a younger age!

Now on to the race…. I arrived at Maryland International Raceway around 7:30am and it took me a good 20 minutes to walk from the parking lot. The competitive race started at 8am so I rushed to check my bag and headed for the start.

This course so was much easier compared to my race in Palmerton last month at the Pennsylvania Spartan Super. My main worry for this race was having to climb over the ginormous 10 foot walls. It can be quite the struggle climbing over those walls being only 5’2, but I lucked out with this course not having any! (does happy dance).

The course was completely different from last year’s race and I had so much fun passing all the guys!

I always tend to get worried with these monkey bar rigs. It was a little slippery at first, but I was able to make it across!

The Hercules Hoist. We had to pull a heavy sand bag up to the top and bring it back down slowly without it falling.

The rope swing. This is a nice, easy and quick obstacle for me. I just have to be careful sometimes to not get rope burn when I climb back down or worse, fall!

The many Spartans doing their burpees. If you fail to complete an obstacle, there is a penalty of 30 burpees!

The sandbag carry. I usually fly through this obstacle. We had to trek through a muddy creek and had to be careful not to lose our shoes in the mud! I almost slipped a few times.

The atlas carry. Now I am not sure how heavy this thing is, but trust me when I say it is pretty dag on heavy! I am glad we just had to walk it over a short distance to the other side, because I probably could not have carried it any further. For this obstacle we carried the atlas across, did 5 burpees and then took it back.

I was surprised to see that this year’s barbed wire crawl did not have any mud! It makes it a little easier without the mud. I saw a few people rolling their way across, but when I tried that I started getting dizzy and had to stop, so I just crawled as fast as I could. This crawl felt pretty long.

There were only 2 obstacles in the entire course that I could not do. The infamous Spartan Spear throw and a more difficult monkey bar rig. I did not see one person make the spear throw when I was doing my burpees, so it made me not feel as bad for missing it. The same can be said with the other monkey bar rig, many people failed to hold a grip.

There were many more obstacles on the course, but I was only able to get pictures of the ones near me while I was volunteering.

and the famous fire jump before the finish!

I finished the race in exactly 1:20:00 even and was excited to see I was 4th overall female!!

I can’t wait to compete in the next Spartan Race! I love the challenge and adrenaline rush I get when competing in OCR races. I am looking forward to getting involved more competitively. I plan to continue to push myself and look forward to seeing where it all takes me. Thank you Spartan for allowing me to become a stronger runner and challenging me in ways I never thought I could ever accomplish. It’s amazing knowing what you’re capable of if you just try 8)