My First Ultramarathon?! – Part 1 (The Pre-Race Chapter)

October 10, 2014

Aurora beginning to mount on wall at Spartan raceThe first ever Spartan trifecta-in-a-day! AROO!

Let’s start with  – what’s a Spartan Trifecta? Spartan offers 3 main race distances: Beast, Super, and Sprint.

The Beast is 12+ miles. Super is 8+. Sprint is 3+. (More on this soon enough.)

When you do any Spartan races during the year, not only do you get your normal medal, but you also get kind of a pie piece medal. If you get one from each of the 3 distances (in a calendar year) and put them together, they form a fun new trifecta medal.

Basically, if you do all 3, you get to say you’re cool. I think that’s pretty much the gist behind it.

If you missed (or just didn’t read) the posts on my first Spartan race, that race was cut short due to heat issues. So, we all got free entries to a new race.

Once I found out the first ever trifecta-in-a-day was happening (and in a place where some friends and family live) I felt I pretty much had to do it, right?

After I signed up, the show I was working on got extended – then extended again. I thought I was weeks safe, but alas, we ended up having a day of work on the day of the race.

So, I went back and forth on whether I should do the race. “Oh, I’m paid on a day rate. So, I’m gonna lose the money of that day, plus the travel day before. Plus I’m gonna pay to travel. This race is gonna cost me a ton!”

When I started putting dollar amounts to it, it just wasn’t seeming all that practical. So, I shied away from it. Then my work schedule kept changing. “We are working Saturday. We’re not working Saturday. We are. We’re not.” And on an on.

I finally decided the week before the race that I needed to be responsible. So, forget it. I wouldn’t go…

And then on Wednesday of that week, I decided, “Nope. Forget it. I wanna go. Money’s not everything. I bet we don’t work Saturday after all anyway. [We didn’t.] Sometimes being practical isn’t cool or fun. I know this’ll be a great experience (or at least a new and interesting one, if nothing else) experience. Forget it. I’m going.”

And I bought a plane ticket for the following night.

I’ll pick up here tomorrow.

I'd love to hear from you! So whaddya say?