partners, each with a different strength and plenty of encouragement
all the way through. Our time? An hour and 10 minutes. Aroo!
Jitander also loved her race, which she did with 25 people making
up the Impakt HK team. “The feeling of doing it together, helping and
encouraging each other was the best. It’s not every day you get to
roll around in mud, climb walls and ropes and do it all with friends,
helping each other and laughing non-stop along the way,” she says.
“Each one of us completed the race and waited for each other to do
every obstacle – the feeling of team spirit was amazing. We trained
together, did the race together and then drank together. I would totally
do it all over again!”The next Spartan will take place in November 2017 and instead of
a Sprint will be a Super – that’s 13–15km long and 24–29 obstacles.
Venue to be confirmed. See you there!speed-crawled through mud and under barbed wire. Still covered in
mud, the monkey bars loomed. So wide a small hand won’t close
around them, plus slippery from previous contenders, I gave it a
shot but my upper body and grip strength fell far short. Later on,
the rings were so far apart there was no way I could even take one
reach. And the spear throw was another washout. We had done
120 burpees each already (30 per failed obstacle) and still had the
rope climb to come.
A few days beforehand I’d had pointers from Billy Tam at the
fabulously equipped The Warrior Academy. He dismissed the
S-Wrap Marines method and taught me the BUD/S Navy Seals
method; under one foot, over the other. Armed with the technique,
and finding less slippery ropes than last year, I hauled and squeezed
my way triumphantly to the top, hit the bell and added to my
bruises with a shin burn on the way down. Who cared? I aced that
rope climb!
“The monkey bars and the ropes are really hard if you don’t get
the technique right, but as soon as you manage, it’s super easy,”
agrees Jitander. (Well, I’m not sure I’d say super easy...) “The monkey
bars took me one session to get the hang of and the rope climbing
two sessions,” she adds. “On the actual race day I did the rope
climbing but couldn’t do the monkey bars as they were too fat for
my hands and way too far apart.”
My other favourite obstacle was the cargo net. I climbed fast up
the first side, put both hands over the apex and grasped one of the
horizontal straps on the other side, then forward rolled over the top,
scooting down the other side as fast as possible. And just 15 yards
from the cargo net was the finish. Lindsey and I had been perfect
July/August 2017 AsiaSpa 67