Held at Killington, Vermont on September 20, 2014. Had the first run of the day at 7:30 with the elite men. Cold and blustery for most of the race with temps starting out around 39 F (felt like 35) but then leveling out to low 50s or so by race end. Elite women started at 7:45 and this was the first time I've seen them run a course in person. They are FAST. Didn't take them long to catch up to the guys. Good job, girls! Takeaways from the race: Leg strength not what it used to be. The continuous pounding going down the hills roughed up my knees and ankles by a fair amount. Also, forgot to tape my ankles, so they rolled quite a bit. Was making decent time through the first half of the race...I think I reached mile 6 at about the two hour mark. Went downhill from there, though. Ended up somewhere around 6:30, so not good at all. Legs just didn't have much left around mile 8, and ankles wouldn't support running, so I had to sandbag it the rest of the way. Ugh. Anyway, I've been training for American Ninja Warrior and that really helped me in this course. 33 total obstacles and I only had to do burpees on two of them: both spear throws. Surprise, surprise. Think I need to build a replica spear and practice that. As far as supplies go, I went in with a CamelBak - no bladder - a 2MM wetsuit jacket, a windbreaker, and some gloves. This was an excellent combination and I recommend everyone at least have something like this. The last two years at this race I'm pretty sure I went hypothermic, so I wanted to take measures to prevent against that this year. Before the water obstacles I put on the wetsuit jacket and kept it on for maybe 20 minutes or so after getting out of the water. Afterwards, I would just tie it to the Camelbak strap. Windbreaker was key at the top of the mountain as the winds were very fierce. Gloves helped a lot the last three miles of the course. Food / drink: Two water bottles, 5 packets of electrolyte tables (used 3 packs, I think), a few ounces of potato chips, chocolate chips mixed with PB, and 8 cake balls. Cake balls were okay, but ended up being kind of thick. PB mix was good and had it a few times throughout the race, but the big winner was the chips. I stored these items in snap top containers (also windbreaker was in a big snap top so it wouldn't get wet in the water) in my CamelBak. Everything stayed dry and they provided the added benefit of making by bag buoyant in the water, which made swimming a piece of cake. Unless, of course, Camelbaks are designed like that already...not sure. To the obstacles! 2:18 Walls and Crawls 3:12 O.U.T - Over, Under, Through 3:57 Sandbag Carry 4:42 Bucket Brigade 4:51 Wall Traverse 5:41 Tarzan Swing 8:23 Stone Carry 9:16 Barbed Wire Crawl 9:31 Log Carry 9:56 Log Jump / Balance Beam 10:57 Wall Climb 11:11 Cargo Net 11:28 Weather and conditions 11:56 Cargo Net 12:41 More fog 12:50 Tractor Pull 13:43 Tire Pull 13:58 Sandbag Carry 14:09 Ring Swing 14:50 Tyrolean Traverse 15:48 Rope Climb 16:18 Spear Toss 16:33 Wall Climb 17:32 Barbed Wire Crawl 18:27 Bar Traverse 19:08 Hercules Hoist 19:59 Monkey Bars 20:29 To the finish line!

• published: 21 Sep 2014
• views: 5