4 Races in 4 Weeks: Week 3: Review of Spartan Sprint in PA

The third race in this series is the Spartan Sprint.  The Sprint is the shortest distance in the Spartan Race Series (Sprint, Super, & Beast).  The Sprint is promoted as “3+ miles and 15+ obstacles.”  The one I completed at Blue Mountain Ski Area in Pennsylvania was 4.9 miles.

As with other obstacle races held at ski resorts, they have you running up and down the mountain.  Well I should say walking and even climbing, at parts, up the mountain; there wasn’t much “running” up the mountain.  There was a 2,000 ft. elevation difference between the lowest and highest points of the course.  It is surprising how easy your legs start burning from walking up an incline. 

They had a variety of obstacles from spear throwing to monkey bars to sandbag carries.  Just don’t fail or try to skip an obstacle.  If you do there is 30 burpee penalty and there are volunteers at each obstacle to ensure you complete each obstacle.  Considering this is the shortest of the 3 types of Spartan races, I found it pretty difficult.  My legs were smoked from going up and down the mountain.  Then they managed to wear out my upper body with various carries (sandbags and 5-gallon buckets of gravel), heavy item drags (cinder blocks or large tires) and 2 different style monkey bars obstacles.  For each obstacle where you had to carry or drag something, it was never on a flat terrain; usually down and then back up a small hill.  For most of the carries, I couldn’t do it without stopping for several quick breaks along the way, as I believe everyone else did as well. 

Along the course I heard several people say this particular course was harder than the recent Sprint in New York and even harder than Tough Mudder.  Maye it has something to do with the recent announcement of a deal between Spartan Race and NBC to start airing races on TV (NBC SPORTS VENTURES ANNOUNCES STRATEGIC ALLIANCE WITH SPARTAN RACE).  Either way I completed it in 3:25:28, which goes to show you how difficult traversing 4.9 miles of a ski resort with obstacles in the way. 

Overall, I thought it was a great course, with some new and challenging obstacles.  I look forward to more Spartan Races.  In fact, I will be completing the Spartan Super and Spartan Beast this year so I can earn the Spartan Trifecta (Finish one of each Spartan distance - Sprint, Super and Beast - in a calendar year).