THE BROOKS BLOG

I am still recovering from Germany where I spent the last rainy and overcast week of my life. Last Sunday Brooks Germany sponsored a race called the Strongman. The given name doesn’t really tell the story so I decided to rename the event. The insaneman race was roughly 18-20k long and included two loops of 17 separate obstacles. I will do my best to paint a picture

The obstacles- these little inconveniences ranged from running ankle deep mud to swimming 75m across a 45 degree lake. Sometimes they throw in a hay wall about 15 ft high that you had to climb over and jump off. Sometimes they also had you run over these cute little mogul type hills of about 20 ft in height. Running up was the easy part.

The distance- to be debated really. They called each loop 9k and the total distance 18k. I would guess it was much closer to 20k overall. Afterall, it took me 1 hour and 42 minutes to run this distance with obstacles.

The race- my race was ok. I was moving my way up through the field and trying to pace myself. Not the greatest strategy for this race I found. About half way through the 2nd loop I had moved up to 2nd or 3rd when we started to lap runners. It’ was no normal situation. You had to just stop and wait your turn to go over obstacles. This really ticked me off. I wanted to race and I was just starting to make progress. I decided to embrace the idea of this event and basically just started plowing through people. They loved it! Push a guy off the hay wall, drown an innocent runner, kick a guy�..no one cares. It’s the freaking insaneman! They actually respect you more for pushing your way through. I ended up 10th since I didn’t know running around the last water swim was allowed and cost myself about 5 minutes. Oh well, it was a unique experience to say the least!!

The aftermath- my legs are really sore. I think I was granted official navy seal status based on completing the run so that is always nice. I really can’t put it into words or describe any better�..so I will just post this video to help.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9v-tzfGWQ&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblog%2Eseattlepi%2Ecom%2Fmarathon%2F&feature=player_embedded