Conquering fears and preparing for the Spartan Beast – Don’t Die…
Over the past couple of years, we have become increasingly open to challenging ourselves and reaching new heights mentally, physically, financially and emotionally. We have seen the positive results that can come from letting go of the word ‘no’ as well as pushing your limits. We’ve reached new heights on both financial and personal levels, heights we never even dreamed of. More importantly, heights that we once thought were unobtainable.
We’ve paid off debt, increased net worth, recreated our ‘perfect’ life, and started our own little business. We’ve gotten new degrees, added credentials to our careers, increased our income without increasing hours of work, and made ourselves better at what we do. We’ve seen new places, explored caves, mountains, oceans and waterfalls, and met people from around the world that we now call friends.
We’ve conquered so many fears and reached so many goals. BUT we found the key to doing all of this was always challenging our goals, always reaching for more, and always being better versions of ourselves. This has nothing to do with comparison, we will never make a million dollars a year, never live in a mansion, never climb Mount Everest (I guess I shouldn’t count that one out yet), and never reach the top run of our career ladders. However, we will be the best WE can be. We will create the best life for OUR family. We will always challenge OUR limits.
Let’s talk about the physical. Health and fitness have long played a huge role in our lives. We work out every day and we eat mostly healthy whole foods. We also eat buttery truffle fries sometimes but we’ll talk about balance another time ?. BUT in our pursuit to push ourselves and demolish what we thought were our limits, we recently decided to sign up for an obstacle course race, specifically a Spartan race.
If you are not familiar with spartan races they have 3 different tiers of obstacle races. Sprint which is 3+ miles and 20-23 obstacles, Super which is 8+ miles and 24-29 obstacles, and Beast which is 12+ miles and 30-35 obstacles. Between climbing slick walls with nothing but a rope, dragging tires, sand bags, and buckets of dirt across fields, and diving in the mud to climb under barbed wire, the Spartan Beast is filled with obstacles that would challenge the best athletes out there.
A quick background, I have done a few of these obstacle type races in the past but that was before having baby girl and they were some of the more fun/ less intense events. All less than 5 miles and all races that could be done with little to no training. And my hubby has always been a big muscular guy into power lifting and bodybuilding. Neither one of us has ever been a long-distance runner. So, you guessed it, we decided to jump in head first and signed up for the Spartan BEAST! Hey, I told you that we are on a pursuit to expand our limits in all categories of life and we thought what better way than this.
I write a lot about personal finance. What does it really boil down to though? Discipline and following a plan. I know I can use the same principles in preparing for the Spartan Beast.
I always say that having a plan for your goals is the best way to achieve them. I follow this advice to the letter when it comes to our finances but I realized that lately when it came to fitness I was just going through the motions. Now I don’t feel bad about that because a big factor is the fact that we haven’t slept through the night in our house since baby girl was born. That being said, I knew if I had a plan and a definitive reason to follow the plan, you know like the desire to survive this race, then I could kick my fitness into overdrive, get back in to fighting shape!
Doing a little research I quickly realized that this was a race that people took seriously. So seriously. So, I decided I should do the same! Like I said, not wanting to die is a great motivation. There was a great workout program I found to train for the Spartan Beast and aside from a few variations I add in, I have been sticking to it to a T.
I may dread the workouts some days, but I know they work. I feel accomplished when I complete them, and they are a goal to achieve. When I realized that I could run our babes up to the pool about 2.5 miles away without breaking a sweat or huffing and puffing like crazy then I knew I had to keep it up. For survival!!! 14 miles is no joke.
It may seem a little strange that I write about this since it’s not exactly a frugal event. It cost upwards of $100 per person just for the race. There is some necessary gear that you have to purchase (shoes/water pack/electrolyte chews – I’ll link our top picks at the end of the post). I can’t state this strongly enough though- I do not advocate never spending money. I am a believer in spending money on things that bring real value to your life and/or have a tremendous ROI. In this case I believe there will be both.
I recently wrote about FEAR and, full disclosure, I am shaking in my boots thinking about this race. I am scared. I have moments just while training where I think “what have I gotten myself into? I can’t do this!”. That is usually halfway through a workout and… I keep going. I find that I’m more afraid of the possibility of failure (or death) on the day of the race, I’m more afraid of not keeping up with my husband and my peers, and I’m more afraid of not accomplishing my goal of finishing this race than I could ever fear these workouts.
I want to conquer all my fears (or at least give it 110% effort) and this is just next on the list. I was afraid the day we decided we were going to become debt free and started this financial journey. I was scared the day we started infertility treatments. I was terrified the day our daughter was born. Some of the greatest and most important moments of my life have been realized due to overcoming fear. I believe the triumph at the finish line will be yet another great feeling.
This experience will undoubtedly be intensely physical but I am tackling it as an exercise of the mind, of mental fortitude as much as physical. Mindset is such a powerful force and we are attempting to push the comfort zone of our mindset in all aspects of life. We are challenging ourselves financially with goals that would have seemed completely absurd a few years ago. We are challenging ourselves in our travel- we have our first hiking/camping trip planned for April when we intend to hike Havasu Falls and then the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim. We have a lot of exciting new adventures to take on in the coming years, maybe we will hate them, maybe we will love them but we are damn sure not going to look back and say that we regret not attempting them.
Stay tuned for the post-race article where I may have a completely different attitude with a lot of whining. Until next time!
What are some fears you have conquered recently? What is something you never thought you would do and you’ve achieved?
