Preparing for the Spartan Race

As far as obstacle course races go, The Spartan Race is probably one of the most well known and heavily competed in races worldwide. So I had the bright idea that I would get involved and jump on the ‘awooo’ bandwagon. Good thing is that I managed to convince a few other nutters to get involved with me. They were excited and that made the run up to the event all that much more fun.
Preparation
In terms of preparing for the Spartan Race there are loads of guides and websites to get you spartan ready. Probably the best place to go is the actual website www.spartanraceuk.uk. All you need to know is on this site with free downloadable PDF files that get you ready day by day for the main event to video tutorials of each obstacle. I would like to say that I stuck to this training guide like gospel…but I would be lying. I did take elements of the training guide like practicing dead hangs and burpees (nobody likes these) but continued with my everyday strength training program. Most of my focus was on upper body strength: pullups, rows and chest press variations.
An area where I have never been terrible but by no means superior at is running. The Spartan Sprint is a comfortable 5k, so I felt ready after doing a few 3k runs throughout the 2 weeks leading up to the event. I avoided doing any kind of long distance run the day before to avoid the muscle soreness that comes after a general run. To increase my endurance, I also added sprints to my long distance runs. This just allowed me to give that extra push when I was fatigued.
Knowing that there would be obstacles like wall climbs and crawls, I did exactly that. Any wall I could find that was high enough, I would tackle. Getting a few practice climbs in definitely takes away any fear when you come up against the real thing on the day. Finding an 8ft wall to legally climb over was difficult though, so my practice only allowed up to 6ft. Crawls are a little easier to get ready for; I got down and crawled. You find that being on the floor is a lot more tiring then expected.
Two things I was 100% sure about in my preparation for the race was that my diet and hydration needed to be point. I didn’t want to cramp up all of a sudden so an easy way to stop that from happening was by drinking loads and loads of water. People always say that you should drink plenty before any fitness event, but thats a rule often overlooked. In terms of the food I was eating, I avoided sugary products that would make my energy crash. I did get a load of carbs in (potatoes, rice and veggies) the days before just so that my muscles would be able to pull out all the stops when needed.
Knowing whether you are ready for a race like the Spartan Sprint isn’t always the easiest thing, but the key is researching what kind of obstacles will be there and preparing your body so that it will be a well oiled machine on the day. When you are waiting at the starting line, you’ll be more confident in the fact that you made an effort to smash the race.
How do you prepare for obstacle course races? What are the kind of things you do to make sure you show up on game day? Comment in the space below.