Picking up from yesterday – let’s just rip the band-aid right off and talk about the part that got lots of people complaining.
The race was cut short.
Thankfully, I started early enough in the morning that only a mile (and no obstacles) were cut off for me… But still, that was a mile I wanted!
As a group of us started making our way out of this one area toward a shore/lake area, we ended up merging with a group coming from a different direction. Everybody was looking at each other. “Where are you coming from?” “Where are you coming from?”
Then they started realizing we got to do some obstacles they didn’t. “We’re coming from the spear throw…” “There’s a spear throw?”
Then, some official person from the course showed up and started telling everyone who wanted to go to where we were coming from that no one else got to go back there anymore, as they were shutting down that part of the course.
The last couple of miles were then spent with people trying to figure out who missed what and why they missed it.
I noticed I never got to see mile marker 10. (Edited to add: Though in my second Spartan race, I learned that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.)
I learned we did indeed miss out on a mile, but some people missed out on more like six!
We all later learned that the heat was becoming such an issue that the powers that be decided to close down a big part of the course.
In the moment, people were really livid about this. (And it’s possible some still are.) Even I was thinking, “Oh, Spartan Race, lovely Spartan Race that’s been showing me how strong I am… Please don’t be shutting down parts of the course! Please don’t give me a free race entry and then basically force me to write-up a bad review.”
They were also a little slow on social media – which is practically the ultimate sin for a company. I’d gotten a hotel room in Temecula in part because I was thinking about doing the sprint the following day. I learned through other Spartan racers it had been cancelled – but there was no announcement on social media!
People were demanding answers about what was going to happen to the people whose course had been cut short. Were they getting money back? Would they be able to finish a trifecta? What’s happening?
And Spartan wasn’t answering right away – of course the reasoning for that is most likely because they didn’t know what was happening. But that didn’t seem to make racers feel great.
So, what did they do? We’ll get to that tomorrow.