Boston Spartan Super

Oh the fun of a barb wire crawl

So the "boston" (barre) super finally came around, and it was an interesting course. Plenty of people cramping up, hot day, very technical course, but also very flat, made for a fun day. The course is on a farm, and it seems that the Carter and Stevens farm may be the new IT place for ocrs in mass, now that Amesbury is no longer in the ocr worked after last year. They got into trouble that the venue got into from the last spartan race, but there was too much here say for me to go into detail. But this farm is pretty cool, and will host battle frog when they come around, and the spartan sprint is also booked here as well. As for the course, they have plenty of ticks, uneven terrain, way to much single track on the course for my taste (but could easily be changed with a machete), You know it is bad when almost the whole elite field is walking in the first 1/4 mile of the course. There was also a whole bunch of cow poop, random holes, pricker bushes that could easily take people down, rather than the bush being ripped out of the ground. And the mud on course was minimal on Saturday (however from what I heard, and saw via Facebook, it was a monsoon on Sunday)

 Parking was about 2 miles from course, pretty easy to get to, it looked like the far end of the farm. The course was barley a super, it was about 7.5 miles, from what  understand, they were struggling for more room on the venue from what I heard. Spartan has also brought back the snacks on course again this year, from their sponsors, the cliff shot blocks on course are nice if you messed up your fueling, not feeling it that day, or for what ever reason are not in shape enough to do the distance, regardless of the race (so far I have seen them at the beast and super that I have done this year).

New wall, this thing is awesome

So the course, as I said, was very flat, hardly any inclines on the day, the obstacles were typical, walls, carries, bucket brigade, inverted walls, sled pulls, rope climbs, monkey bars, Traverse ropes (I LOVE the Traverse rope!!!) Multi bar rig (still need to get that one), Hurc hoist, spear throw, cargo nets, even a memory challenge (unless you ran elite, they did not have enough volunteers, so the rd told us to skip it, and I did not even notice it until I ran past the board, it was facing the opposite way from where you were running). But this was still a spartan, so the last half mile, it was rope climb, short run to the traverse rope, shorter run to the multi bar (pipe traverse to hanging knotted ropes about 2 ft long, then another pipe and a bell) then a few tenths of a mile later (and the only real bit of mud, which was shin deep and unavoidable) and then the hurc hoist, a a frame cargo wall, then short slippery run through woods, with plenty of holes, and slippery rocks, and fire jump.  One thing I forgot to add, it was the first i had seen, and i like it a bunch, because it is a little different. It was like an a frame wall, about 14 ft high and 6/7 ft tall solid, then the rest was slatted, it was pretty cool, and my dimensions are probably off (see Pic). So the cool wall pictured above, was in a cow pie field (fancy word for cow poop!) As usual, they had obstacles stacked to burn out body parts, the bucket brigade was about 50 yards from the cool fancy wall. At the end it was a rope climb, then 50 yards, then the Tyrolean traverse ropes, finally the cliff multi bar about another 30 yards away.

Cliff Multi Bar Rig

All that just before the end, but before the end, you hit the trails for a few. Those trails had about a 1/10 mile of ankle/shin deep mud that lead to the Hurc hoist, cargo a frame, shorter trail run (with a whole bunch of slippery rocks, slippery trails, and mud pools) then the fire jump and you are finished.

A couple of grips about this race I have to share. Whoever the announcer was I was almost late or the elite heat because they did not announce it, I know it is m own job to know the time, but I forgot my gps watch, my bag was checked and it had my cell, and it is not like they put up clocks at these events. Add that t the fact that the start line was WWAAYYYYY out of the festival area, It was annoying to not hear anything about the start times in festival area, that is the first time I have had that happen at any event, and I have been doing a whole mess of them lately. Also, Again, Last year I got the impression that elite meant harder races, not just the first to go out. Hell it was earlier, the memory challenge was not manned until later in the day, so we were told to run right by it. Apparently they did not have enough volunteer, understandable, but come on, they could have easily moved 2 people, I do not know, I was not working this event. Another issue I had was that the hurc hoist (I missed this one) was yet again, not the correct weight. This may not be a big deal, but when they are trying to standardize the whole race, and the hurc hoist is never the same weight, it gets annoying, yet another mixed message they are sending out! It may not have been nearly as annoying if the bags were not marked 25lbs each, the men had to lift 75lbs, trust me I would not have struggled if that were the case, but i struggled to get that bag up 3/4 of the way before I gave up.

Another issue that I noticed was the referees, now I know it was not an nbc event, so they probably did not care as much. But still, if you are going to have refs for the elites, they should be there for more than just the top few, it is better than not having them, and they did disqualify some people, which is nice. But they only had a few refs, that moved through the course, they did have cameras, but only a few, and the ref took them when they moved. But honestly Panasonic is a sponsor, get more cameras, to keep there for the whole elite wave, for all the obstacles that you know people will fail. It was nice to see, but when I was doing my burpees at the multi bar, I saw a bunch of people that failed walk right past me as I did my burpees, shortly after the ref left. I must say that they had wonderful volunteers at that obstacle though. There was a woman yelling you got this, right at people giving so much encouragement as you went. Even as people failed (like me) she looked me in the eyes and said"you are going to rock those burpees!". Than was awesome! I love to see volunteers that care like that, and actually do their job, I know you can not screen for people like that, but I feel the need to praise those people doing it well. I was not in peak form, so my 2 hour finish (wile not horrible) was no where near where I would normally be, especially for a super (pun intended) flat course. So that means she was giving all that encouragement for a wile, which you do not often see, even less so when it is an elite wave. So bravo, random woman, and thank you!


So Until Next Time
Keep training
Stephen