race report

2012 Miami Superhero Scramble race report

Last week was the second SuperHERO Scramble held in Oleta River State Park, the same place as the grueling 2012 FL Super Spartan. The first race from back in November was a ton of fun, so I’ve been looking forward to this race for months now. Well. Sean and the rest of the team did it again, this race was more fun with great obstacles. We even had the legend himself Hobie Call join our race…and dominate it, predictably. This race completes my spring race season, so now I’m just training up for Tough Owl and fall races.

The race was pegged right at 4 miles and my Timex clocked 3.98, no doubt due to dropping GPS signal in the nice swim we had to take. Since I was coming off a few other races and a blistering workout from last week, I was definitely curious how I would fare on a course that, for the most part, I’d run a month earlier and I did much better than I had anticipated. I finished with a time of 1:17:34 to snag 406th overall and 71st in my AG, and my Athlinks profile has more details on other stats and stuff. I was proud to finish so quickly, but I was even happier to cross the line smiling, unlike at the Spartan where I thought I was about to pass out and/or vomit, haha.

Overall, the course itself was not much different from the Super Spartan. The first two miles or so mirrored the Spartan’s race course fairly closely, only deviating a few meters to take us from one singletrack to another. We even got to take the same long ass swim too! The only difference was this time, rather than leisurely wading into the water, we got to take a trip off the 25ft+ tall Leap of Faith obstacle and then swim over to the lagoon’s designated boundary line, which added a good 40 or 50 ft to the swim overall. I was fortunate enough to get through the massive 100+ person queue rather quickly but then once I jumped, I spent another 5 minutes looking for my now-sinking-to-the-bottom GoPro. I have no idea how I found it since it doesn’t float but somehow, I managed to kick it underwater and swam down to find it. I forgot how much salt water in your eyes hurts. Bad. Now I need to get a floating back for my camera housing, I’m not doing that crap again. The race director managed to have us do three water crossings in total, but only the first one was long and arduous, the others were less than 50 yards and could be crossed without swimming, for the most part.

I’ve got to say, I wish Oleta was closer, it’s a beautiful place to go run. During one set of wall climbs, I overlooked an area that was recently planted with some new saw palms but was also very obviously recently fire-cleared to plant those palms. The trees were so out of place in this section of forest that was so dry and desolate, almost post-apocalyptic. Some places of the park are also pretty gross, like two creek crossings we did. The RD was nice enough to make us have to go down and through two stagnant water pools, back-to-back. I’m not sure how long it has been since the water in those sections had moved or been rained on but both pits smelled like dead animals and mold. It was horrible. Nice of them to make us run for another two miles smelling like death.

I loved some of the new obstacles they threw at us, such as the almost-vertical wall and a rope swing over a mud pit. The wall was near the end and was, from what I can gather, the obstacle almost everyone hated. Here’s why.

While slightly distorted from the fisheye lens, it’s almost a perfect picture of the wall. It was approximately 20 to 25 feet tall and at least a 75 degree angle, nearly straight-up. If I thought the mud-covered walls from the Spartan Races were tough, I was seriously wrong. Sure, a 20 foot slog up a 35-40 degree graded wall is tough, but when met with a nearly vertical wall of equal length, you realize how puny those other walls were. Of course, the trick to doing any of these wall climbs is to get a low center of gravity while still allowing for adequate forward movement; needless to say, most people were almost standing up and wondered why they’d get five or 6 feet up and slip off. I got all the way to the top but managed to slip at the rope-to-wall hand transition, I haven’t reviewed my race video but I suspect that I ended up standing up a bit for leverage and that’s how I slipped. That was definitely a fun obstacle, it required a little planning, something antithetical to my course ideology: don’t think, just do it. 90% of the time, that’ll get you over or through nearly any obstacle. The rope swing was fun as well, I know this is a staple at other obstacle course runs. I just wish it had been BIGGER. Overall, it was probably an 8 foot swing over a tub full of grimy green water.

Sean and the rest of the SuperHERO Scramble team put together a course that was not only just as fun as the first race back in November, but threw enough wrenches into your game plan to give it a good challenge. I’d love to see the taller Leap of Faith, the Vertical Wall, and tougher USMC obstacles at their other races in the future, they’re definitely the equalizers in the course. While I do think that some obstacles either need to be made larger or the obstacle volunteers need to be given better instructions on what to do with people who are holding up the other races. Case in point: Leap of Faith. Even before I got to the platform, there were perhaps 100 people in line waiting to jump, despite the fact that the platform itself was large enough to hold about 6 to 8 people comfortably at a time. The problem wasn’t the number of people, it was the people standing on the platform that were hesitating to jump, for whatever reason. I suggest that they allow for no more than 15 to 20 seconds on the platform before you jump (i.e. you have to wait for people to swim out of the way or lifeguard clearance, for safety reasons) or they make you get down, go around, and do your penalty exercise. That would clear up major hold-ups at most of these obstacles. Of course, there are others where this is not feasible (cargo net climb, up-and-over cargo container climb) but for the most part, the queues would go much faster.

Other than that nitpick, I think the race was fantastic. It was a quick 4 mile run with three adequately stocked water stations, excellent trail selection for both technical and non-technical runners, and a good variety of obstacles. I managed to cross the finish line with a huge smile on my face, tired but not exhausted, and I had one hell of a time, it was so much fun. I hope Sean & co. come back to Oleta River State Park next year and expand the course to include a few more upper body-centric obstacles and incorporate some of the infinite switchbacks that I experienced at the Super Spartan. From the looks of it, their future course offerings include their first night race in Waldo, FL in July and the possibility of a longer race, probably to keep up with the likes of the Super Spartan and Tough Mudder, although I do not think it’d be as long as the typically 11+ mile Tough Mudder races.

And now, let’s see some shots!

Just came off the 30ft tall cargo net climb

Just came off the 30ft tall cargo net climb

I told you I was smiling!

I told you I was smiling!

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Publish date:
April 5th, 2012
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Georgia Spartan Sprint 2012 race report

About two weeks ago, I took part in the Spartan Sprint in Conyers, GA. This race was my second one for the year and was almost as tough as the first one, the Super Spartan in Miami at the end of February. I’ll tell you, I was shocked at the level of difficulty in the Sprint as I realized I was totally unprepared for it entirely. Obstacles were no contest, for the most part, because I’d seen them all two weeks prior, but it was the terrain and order that obstacles came in that beat me up 1000% more. Beaten up and cold, I finished in 1 hour 41 minutes for an overall placing of 1410 and took 231 in my age group, not bad for racing on a sprained ankle.

Frankly, I’d spent the entire two week interval between the two races worried about my sprained left ankle that I suffered in the Super Spartan; it hurt on an off for two weeks and I could find no discernible method to quell the pain. Ice, heat, stretching, compression, nothing really worked more effectively than just staying off my feet, something wholly untenable but I did what I could. When we got to Georgia, things got even worse as the cold front that had rolled through put my ankle in pain overdrive. When we left Florida, it was in the 70s, so my muscles were adequately warm and loose but it was in the low 40s when we got to my mom’s house, a temperature difference I certainly did not anticipate and it put my entire race on Saturday in jeopardy knowing that two weeks after the Sprint, I had another obstacle course race in Miami — the Superhero Scramble, held in the same park at the Super Spartan — and there was no way I was going to take myself out of that race as I’ve been looking forward to it for months on end. So I took as many precautions as I could to keep warm and stretchy, which I have no doubt did absolutely nothing to aid in recovery. But on the flip side, holy cow did we eat well that weekend. My mom grilled up some amazing steaks while my girlfriend fixed an excellent batch of mashed sweet potatoes. I must have eaten nearly a pound of those alone! It was an awesome meal and a great way to end the night before the race.

The next day, it was just as chilly as ever and my body was stiff as a board, thanks to a combination of sleeping on a bed stiffer than a board and the fact that it was 35F when I woke up. After a hearty pre-race meal of some stout coffee and a banana, we were off to the International Horse Park in Conyers that was built for the Olympics in ’96. I was still contemplating not running, everything was riding on how I felt after a warm up. I was worried all morning and everyone could tell because I was pretty much a jackass to everyone; my pre-race jitters typically only include a decision on whether I’m going to wear a shirt or not, but today was different and I had a decision to make since this was not my “A” race of the season. I was freezing cold and nervous but I picked up my race packet anyway and proceeded to bib-up, get my numbers scribbled on me, and generally act like a fool. I warmed up and got in the zone by jamming out to some Throwdown and Fall of Olympus.

Note: sexy shorts

Note: sexy shorts

Then I made my way to the starting corral and readied myself to run. I was there, so I was going to do it. If push came to shove, I could just walk the course.

My goodness, this race started off so easy, the first mile was the easiest part of the whole thing to be honest. After that, it was literally nothing but hill climbs and trudging through freezing cold water all day. All. Damn. Day. In fact, the second obstacle was jumping over road barriers into 1 foot deep troughs filled with freezing water…five times in a row. So not only was it about 45F outside, I now had freezing feet and little did I know that was going to be the theme of the entire race. Like I said at the beginning, the obstacles didn’t beat me, this course did, it was brutal. Living in Florida, I have almost no way to train running hills on a trail because we have no hills anywhere around here to run on. I can run stairs but it’s not the same thing, it won’t compare to trying to maintain grip with a shoe caked in mud. My lungs were on fire from the cold air, something I can train in only about two months out of the entire year.

Within the first two miles of the race, we were forced into a single track creek run that was probably about 100 yards in length and freezing, of course. After that, more hills and some obstacles. I was not prepared for the hills at all and it’s now my secondary training goal for the rest of the year. If this had been a flat course like the Super Spartan was two weeks prior, I would have finished much more quickly, probably. Once I ran what seemed to be another 100,000 miles up hills covered in pinestraw and Georgia red clay, I hit the course’s true equalizer: a 500 foot long mud crawl, complete with water troughs and a 15 foot sliding descent. Even if you could speed through the hills and the obstacles, the amount of stamina needed to crawl that far under barbed wire — complete with getting mud completely caked inside your shorts — was unreal. After the slide down, I noticed that most people had to stop and rest while realizing we were only halfway done with the crawl. Frankly, the race could have finished after the mud crawl and that would have been great, but no, it was back to more hills, seemingly another 15 bazillion miles up and down. But I only realized the worst was yet to come. The spear throw was comically put after that mud crawl, what a cruel joke. I missed the mark and did my first set of burpees for the day, the first of many.

The next fun obstacle that caught my attention was a sandbag haul up a hill whose height, at the time, seemed to rival the Himalayas or at least Stone Mountain on the other side of Atlanta. This hill was my breaking point at which I was either going to finish the whole damn thing or give up because my ankle was barely able to contend with hauling the 50lb sandbag up the 600 foot hill and back down, I slowly limped away grimacing in pain. Then came the course’s other torture device: a marsh run/walk. I’m sure I cursed in my race video but as I approached this, I knew the RD was simply torturing all of us by this point. I believe this “obstacle” was a 600-700 foot trudge through freezing thigh-deep water with a nice log in the middle we had to swim under. You can imagine my reluctance to do that one. But hey, the finish line was just on the other side of this cold, wet hell.

I managed to nail the rope climb this time, complete with hitting the bell! I still fell off the horizontal wall climb, it wasn’t worth it. Then at the finish, one of the gladiators slammed his giant Q-tip straight into my elbow, tip first, granting me a safe passage across the finish line with a massive bruise. Thanks, guy! This was also the first race I’ve completed where I have been completely dehydrated at the end, nearly vomiting as soon as the girl handed me my finisher’s medal. That sucked, badly. So then I pounded a quart of chocolate milk, washed the 15lbs of mud off my freezing body (with water that was colder than ice), iced up my arm, drank a beer and then met this guy.

Hobie Call, the nation's best obstacle course racer

Hobie Call, the nation's best obstacle course racer

Hobie Call, ’nuff said. I’ll be seeing him again in Miami at the Scramble. Overall, this race was 5 times more difficult than anything I had anticipated and clocked in at nearly 5 miles, 2 miles further than I had expected. Clamoring up and down the side of Georgia hills for almost two hours was extremely humbling but I’ll be returning next year but this time, I’ll have a race partner: my mom! She was so geeked up about the whole experience, she has pledged to run the race with me if her doctors clear her to compete, she has to make sure her hip holds up.

This makes me more proud than anything I did that day. It made catching a horrible cold completely worth it, my mom has made me so proud.

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Publish date:
March 22nd, 2012
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Florida Super Spartan 2012 race report

First things first, I finished and got my shiny Super Spartan medal to join my Warrior Dash medal and my SUPERHERO Scramble medal. I was more than pleased to finish, so my rank and time were irrelevant. However, I finished 2575 overall with a time of 2 hours 59 minutes 32 seconds.

Second things…second? The event organization was atrocious. Since no one was allowed to park at Oleta State Park where the event was taking place, we had to park at the FIU campus next to the park and either take a bus to the park that had a line of at least 250 people waiting or walk the “half mile or so” to the park as a warm-up. Well, I walked ran and it was two miles, which was a great warm-up, but it was still two miles of suck. Apparently a bus driver about ran my girlfriend over while barreling down the road. The biggest problem with the bus situation was that they were loading one bus at a time while another one or two sat there and waited with no volunteer or official from the race staff expediting this process. That was all before I even got to the race, which was just as bad. No one had any idea where the lost & found was, including the volunteer table, one of the Miami officers at the front gate, no one at bag check; an intrepid gentleman at the Registration table endured my questions about the L&F table and cordially answered me all three times that I asked him. I needed L&F because I laid my prescription sunglasses down to change shirts and forgot to pick them back up…Then there was the start corral. I and a few other racers missed the start by about one minute thanks to no one at bag check…checking bags (only giving them back out) so when I ran to the start flag, I was directed to the finish area by an event photographer, which was about 10 yards from the actual start corral. Why was the flag misplaced? I have no idea.

Other than that, the race was great. If you register or go to spectate, bring a lot of money, they nickle and dime you for everything.

I came into this race extremely hesitant because I was worried about my overall endurance. I knew the race would be right around nine miles and it was 8.5 miles on the nose, with my Timex Run Trainer clocking 8.3 miles due to a weird mapping error during the first water obstacle. This worried me because in the last year of running, I’ve never gone over 5 miles in a single session, but for this race, I somehow managed to run somewhere between 6 and 7 miles, it must have been the adrenaline because I did’t stop moving unless there was a line at an obstacle. Next, I was worried about my strength endurance because I knew the obstacles were going to be very upper body-centric and they didn’t disappoint at all. There was only one obstacle I didn’t finish and that was the final wall climb, which consisted of a wall designed to mimic rock climbing and we had to climb it horizontally rather than go over it. The biggest problem was that all the grip blocks were caked in mud and I couldn’t get a grip at all; I didn’t see a single person complete this obstacle without cheating (using the top of the wall for grip). I also didn’t fully complete the rope climb as the rope I had chosen somehow was missing its cowbell at the top, so I couldn’t ding it signalling that I’d gotten all the way up, so in an act of honor, I did 15 burpees as well.

The only obstacles I found to be any type of challenge were the wall climb, rope climb, and the monkey bars. I found the latter to be an exceptional test of grip strength because it came immediately after a 30 yard water crossing, so we were all soaking wet and extra heavy, with dripping wet hands. Just about everyone at the obstacle when I got there was pumping out burpees, so I opted for the manly Spartan option of just doing the obstacle and I nailed it. Almost lost it on the second to last rung though, the bars covered in water and dirt wrecked my grip. But I made it across, that’s what matters. Every other obstacle was either a pull (40ft pulley bucket lift, rock drag, rope climb, 200m C2 row) or a push motion (tire flip) or static (tire carry) and as long as you cold maintain grip, you could complete it. Unfortunately, there was no fire jump, which was kind of a let-down but was better than what we had at the Warrior Dash — basically a starter log on fire.

The entire end of the race is made for failure. Once we got out of the two mile hell of infinite switchbacks in the woods, all of the heavy lifting came into play along with a nearly endless stream of walls to jump over or crawl under. Then we came to the end of the course where the spectators were and that’s where the fun began. Order of obstacle:

  • barbed wire mud pit crawl
  • incline platform traverse
  • mud-covered rope climb
  • horizontal mod-covered wall traverse
  • 200 meter row on C2 rower
  • cargo container climb (also completely covered in mud)

    • So everything after the barbed wire was caked in mud, which increased difficulty by over 9000. Of course, since I know this was designed to be only part of the course where the spectators actually have fun, they had to design everything to be as difficult as possible. I hated that wall and I hope they have one at the Spartan Sprint in GA next week, I’m going to dominate it. This last part of the course is where I think the super part of Super Spartan comes into play. If the whole race was designed like this, I don’t think so many people would finish it just because they’d be physically exhausted. I give the RD a lot of props for making us run on the mountain bike trail that had literally endless switchbacks and hills covered in roots, ripe for twisting ankles.

    Overall, I really had fun despite all the problems I had before the thing even started but I showed up and proved to myself that I can run farther if I just go out and do it. I consider this to be my A.2 race as I’m also going to be doing Tough Mudder in December which I know will be much more difficult based on reports from my friends who did it a few months ago and other racers I spoke to at the Spartan. I’m not really sore or anything from the race except I believe that I’ve got a stress bruise under my left ankle, making walking tough but not impossible. It better heal up by next weekend, I’ve got a course to dominate. Expectedly, I’ve already registered for the 2013 Super Spartan in Miami, so let’s hope that I continue training until then. But for now, I’ve got three more races on the docket and a strongman competition to complete.

    All of my course data, including map and HRM data, can be found over at TrainingPeaks.

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    Publish date:
    February 29th, 2012
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    minimalist
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    Race report: SUPERHERO Scramble

    Last Saturday, 12 Nov 2011, was the first SUPERHERO Scramble at Quiet Waters Park in Deerfield Beach, FL. I finished in 1:04:02, placing 84th in my age group and 205th overall. It was my first obstacle race, the first of many I have lined up. First of all, I want to say it was crazy fun. It was a roughly 3.5 mile course with 18 obstacles that really put me through the ringer, especially the first two obstacles which were water-based obstacles. I say roughly because somehow I hit the STOP button my new Timex Run Trainer and so 12 minutes of the course were not recorded and I do not have an exact distance. I have no idea how I stopped recording but I suspect it was done around the same time as the sandbag carry. This is another minor annoyance with this watch that I have: those super squishy buttons are apparently easy to press on accident and there’s no way to lock the display (which there is on the Timex Global Trainer).

    Over the months, I have heard these obstacle course races were tough and truth be told, they are what spurred me on to start running, I just wanted to participate in something really fun but challenging but not necessarily sadistically grueling (triathlon, anybody?). And that is exactly what I experienced at the SUPERHERO Scramble. The run was cake, it was not the tough part — except for all those damned switchbacks we ran, there must have been 12 of them. But the obstacles whipped my butt and they were totally fun! Skipping the first two water obstacles which killed me, the rest were not terribly troubling. There were wall jumps and climbs, ammo can shoulder presses, tire runs/jumps, and even a childhood favorite: sack race! And the organizers through in some slimy goop on two obstacles for extra grossness and/or fun. I have no idea what that junk was but it felt completely hydrophobic and felt so gross against my skin that was covered in dirt, mud, and gobs of sweat. It reminded me of the gelled fat in a can of Spam, if that gives you any idea. As for the course itself at Quiet Waters Park, it was pretty nice. The dreaded switchbacks were the existing mountain bike trails and ran along the rim of much of the park’s lakes, which was awesome. That always gave me a good view to keep me moving forward. It was covered in loose chunky coral rock which sucked, I saw a few people roll their ankles pretty hard and I even did once. I finally got to use my Merrell Trail Gloves on their intended trail terrain and for the most part, they worked pretty well. There were some times where the traction did not hold but that was probably due to the loose dirt and not a total failure of the Vibram rubber. When I got home after the race, I immediately washed them, they were absolutely gross.

    After I plowed through the final obstacle — a giant slip-n-slide — and I finally showered off, I noticed that I had lost one of my earrings (how?!) and I ended up losing my RoadID bracelet too. The bracelet popped off on the 3rd water obstacle, probably after latching onto a rope. That sucked but it happens. The best news of the day was the fact that my TRT held up excellently except for the accidental problem with stopping the track recording. I was more worried about the slime penetrating the internals but I have seen no such evidence so far, it had no issues with the water of course. My race data is missing most of the heart rate data since the ANT+ straps aren’t exactly waterproof and they are not exactly meant to be used in water. From what I could tell and observe, I stayed in the 150s for the most part. I will try to replicate this next month at the Warrior Dash which is also at Quiet Waters Park but is a shorter race so hopefully, I can bump my time to sub-1 hour (there’s no swimming!).

    The most important part of the race for me was that my ITB issues were mostly not to be found. There were times later in the race where my form was suffering and I could feel my hip starting to hurt but on the whole, I walked out of the race with no ITB pain at all, no pain on Sunday either. I did hurt my right shoulder on some obstacle, that still hurts. I heard one guy actually separated his shoulder in the middle of the race. I have absolutely no idea what obstacle that could have happened on unless it was the cargo net climb. I could not imagine how the guy would have even done this at all unless he was in the special Scramble Gamble wave at the end of the day that was a wave competition for money. If I knew there was probably $500+ on the line, I would go HAM too. I wonder if it was one of the juiceheads I saw getting hyped up before the wave who looked like they were prepping for an MMA match and not a 3 mile run. One dude was even warming up for his wave (2PM) when I got there at 10AM, which is just absolutely bonkers.

    Overall, I am pretty sure this was a success for the company behind the SUPERHERO Scramble and I know they are already planning the next race on March 24, 2012. I have already registered but I am also trying to get some friends to run with me, it would be much more fun with a team. In fact, the next three or four races I have on my schedule are all obstacle course races and they should all be a blast!

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    Publish date:
    November 18th, 2011
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    exciting
    minimalist
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