AROO!

Growing up I would never have described myself as athletic.  I swam during the summer and skied during the winter, but wasn’t into competitive team sports.  As I got older, I worked out here and there, but nothing that was all that consistent.  About seven years ago though, I started to not even recognize myself in the mirror due to the baby weight that I had been carrying around for a few years and my incredible lack of energy, so I decided to try my hand at running.  As a kid I hated to run. I would always get a cramp in my side, and was often the last to finish usually sucking wind. But with two babies at home, a full-time job, and husband that went to work at 3am, running seemed to be my only choice because I didn’t need a gym membership, I could just step out my front door and run in my neighborhood.

Initially I was extremely frustrated because I couldn’t even make it through a song on my iPod before having to take a break to walk.  Given my personality, I knew that the only way I would feel successful was to set a goal, so I signed up for a half marathon to motivate me (Go Big or Go Home!).   Over the course of about a year, and many training miles later, I achieved my goal of not only finishing the race without walking, but I actually beat my time goal by one second – 1:59:59! (The finance professional in me appreciated my accuracy).  Over the next couple of years I ran another six or so half marathons, becoming more confident but at the same time a little bored.  In my last race I crushed my goal and my personal best time by close to 4 minutes, so I decided it was a good time for me to go out on top and look for a new challenge.

Coincidently, this happened at the same time that a trainer at my gym became a certified SGX coach, which means that he had learned lots of new techniques to kick my ass and he opened up this completely new world of racing for me – Spartan races.  Spartan races are obstacle course races that combine trail running, which I was now comfortable with, with some variation of all of the exercises that I dreaded as a kid during the Presidential Physical Fitness Test in gym class.  Exercises like holding a bar in the pull up position for as long as possible, climbing a rope to the ceiling of the gym, and doing as many squat thrusts as you can in a minute.  For the pull up, I would last about as long as it took the gym teacher to pull the chair out from under my feet.  And for the rope climb, I am not sure I ever successfully got on to the knot, let alone off of it to go up.  And the squat thrusts just made me hyperventilate.  Funny, always…athletic, not so much.

So when these Spartan races first came up, initially I was very reluctant to even try the training let alone do a race.  “I can’t do any of those obstacles (thinking of gym class 32 years ago)!”, “Are you out of your mind?”, “Good luck with THAT! Let me know how it goes.”  But similar to the running, as I got more confident and realized that I was stronger than I was at 10, I had to set a goal and see where this was going to go (and my coach and my fellow “warriors” were wearing me down with peer pressure).  So about a year-and-a-half ago I finally found the courage and signed up for my 1st Spartan race with the “Warrior Team.”  One race was all it took to get hooked.  I had never felt so physically empowered in all my life.  Many times I after the race I thought “If my gym teacher could see me now!”  I conquered obstacles that I never thought I could or would ever want to, and I lived to talk about it (seriously, they actually have you sign a waiver telling you that you could die – enjoy!).

Reflecting back on it, part of what also kept me away was the fact that I usually shy away from participating in group physical activities because I don’t want to stand out as the weakest link. That’s why I gravitate towards sports like swimming and running, I can be part of a larger team and enjoy some of the camaraderie, but it is an individual sport so no one is relying on me to perform.  What surprised me the most about doing this race was that I genuinely enjoyed being part of a team…of course it was with people that I liked, which made it a lot easier. But the comfort of having a team of people that I could rely on, and that just as equally relied on me, helped to quiet the performance anxiety that I was feeling.

There were a lot of other unexpected benefits too…benefits like having someone there to push my ass over the inverted wall (literally), having someone there to coach me over the 30 foot cargo net as I froze with fear at the top, having someone there to go first and show me what not to do, and having someone there to give me a high-five and not make me feel like a dork because I really wanted a high-five!  And I was able to be there for others to lend a knee to climb on or hands to put their tush in, to give a pep talk to when the negative thoughts started to take over their head, and to shout out an “AROO!” to pump up the team as we started to tire, both mentally and physically.  But the best part of it all was having a team of people to share this tremendous, personal growth experience with. We faced our fears, we grew as people, we held hands as we plunged ourselves in cold, dark, murky water, we hugged and jumped up and down together after we leapt over fire and crossed the finish line, and most importantly we laughed A LOT and we built A LOT of character!  AROO!