When hard becomes harder!

This past weekend I, along with 2 of my mates ( Justin Welling & Noam Elharar ), who are now the core team we refer to as “NY Spartans”, drove up to Montreal to compete (or rather complete) the Spartan beast in Mont Tremblant . It was my 12th Spartan race!!

For those of you that don't know what that is, it's a grueling 15 mile+, 30 obstacle race. With mud, water, steep elevations, climbing, jumping, carrying, crawling and anything else you can think of that a difficult race may include. We’ve done two Beasts in recent years and did them in 4 hours and 4 hours 30 mins respectively.?

So here, we thought, well we’ve done a few before and we’re feeling fit, let's go for under 4 hours.

Boy, were we wrong. Something about doing it at up ski mountains, didn’t quite register for us. It actually took us 6 hours and 50 mins to complete it and that's by not being able to do the last 6 or 7 obstacles because we were physically and mentally finished!?

In short, the elevations and the terrain nearly killed us. The summit is at an elevation of 875 m (2,871 ft), which makes it one of the tallest peaks in Canada.?

That first steep climb floored us and then continued to challenge us throughout the entire race. Not only was the climbing hard, but as they say, what goes up, must come down. The steep descents were also very difficult. I will have blue bruised toes from the pressure of coming down on such steep descents for weeks.?

The mental challenge of watching every single step was exhausting, as one wrong step could cause twisted ankles, bad falls, or worse broken bones. The ascents and the declines were relentless. Just when you thought they were nearly done, you would turn a corner and more climbing was ahead.?

Unlike other beasts we have done, all the ground covered here was either up or down, no flat ground to catch up on time or anything.?

I expected it to be hard, but not this hard. Every “in the moment” thought of “not long to go now”, “a little bit further”, never worked. My mental toughness was being tested like never before. Quitting was not an option as you’re up in the mountain with nowhere to go except the trail.?

I was mentally fatigued through the race and repeatedly got very frustrated at just how hard it was. Cursing was regular over the last few hours and every time we thought we were nearly done, it just kept going uphill. FFFFFF*******CCCCCCKKKKKK!!!

It's the hardest spartan race I have ever done in my life.?And likely the hardest physical challenge.

In recent days I’ve reflected about the hard moments that at the time were the worst but after it's done, you’re like, that wasn’t so bad. Right? Wrong!

This was seriously bad and I’m writing this so that I can read it again prior to more challenges so I never forget what it's like. Being able to do this is a gift and one I greatly appreciate. I know that many people in the world couldn’t do this, or just wouldn’t do this, so for that I’m grateful and fortunate.

The pain of climbing the equivalent of 502 flights of stairs (which was the final number) will be remembered forever. It's now Day 4 after it and I’m still hurting.

I’ve written about doing hard things , but this was intensely harder on so many levels. This pushed me to my limits - both physically and mentally.