I Believe

This weekend was a very powerful weekend for me.  I climbed up Stone Mountain caring 100lbs of Steel Plates in a backpack with my friend Michael Mills.  It reminded me of my second Spartan Races that took place in Pennsylvania   I had been training in Vermont for about 14 weeks, and this was the first time that Margret and I completed a race together.

I will never forget that sandbag carry, and having Hobie Call on the course with us taking photos of Margaret and myself, can you say a surreal moment! After the race, I was walking though the venue when Ty from ibelievebandz.comI_beleve gave me the black band I wear on my wrist.   It has been with me for almost every race since then.  For me it is a constant reminder that I can do anything I set my mind to do including: facing my fear of heights, climbing over walls, even climbing a mountain with 100lbs of steel plates on my back.  The world is yours to enjoy as long as you believe in yourself.

Spartan Race: 2012 Gulf Coast Spartan Sprint

Since coming home to Atlanta, I have felt like I was so far behind on everything,   There are several projects at work that I am behind on, most of my stuff is still in boxes, and I still have not taken any time to relax, so I was not planing on going to the Gulf Coast Sprint, instead I was going to hang out and try to make some progress on these projects.   But what I plan and what happens are usually two different things,  my plans started to fall apart when I got a text message from Andi Hardy, asking me if I wanted to join her and Ang Reynolds on a road trip to the Race.   I told her that I would think about it and get back to her.  Later that day I got an email from my boss reminding me schedule the reset of my vacation time so that I do not take it all at the end of year.   So what can you do but just say OK… I get the message, and Go for it.

On Friday I took a half day off, and headed up to meet with Andi and Aug.  When I gotthere, they were all ready getting the car ready for the road trip.   When I saw what they were doing I knew this was going to be a totally different experience for me compared to the other Spartan Races I have been to.   I jumped into the back seat and we were off.  If was funny how many people would look and point as we drove past them.   It was a really fun and it reminded me of driving to Rode Island in the Spartan RV.   A couple of hours into our drive we decided to pull over and get some gas.   But being Spartans  we could not just simply fill the tank and go, oh no that is not the way this crew rolls.

Our first adventure started out as we walked in the door to the gas station,  I can not forget the look on Andi, and Ang faces when they saw there was a mini football display set up.   Before I knew it they had jumped into the display and we trying to do pull ups on the mini field goal post.  So you know I had to jump in and join them.   This is when
 for the first time in a long time I started to feel my inner kid scream… LET ME OUT AND LET ME PLAY!!!!   So it was on…  My kid mode was out in full force, after taking a killer Epic Racing Arena Application Video for Ang and Andi, we headed outside to continued our adventure.

Once we were outside and found a push cart next to the truck scales.   When we turned it over we were shocked to find 6 black widow spiders had decided to make the cart there home.   Most people I know when they come across things like this back up slowly and walk away, but not these two, both of them just wanted to sit back and and check them out.   I mean how often do you really see black widow spiders.  After that we deiced that it was time to move on so we got back in the car and we were off.

The next stop was at a Winn Dixie, and after our little adventure at the gas station, Iknew this was going to be the most interesting trip to a grocery store I had ever had. For the most part everything was quite and normal until they headed to the back of the store when they found an empty goldfish display.   The next thing I know I am helping Ang get up and into to it and Andy starts to push her around the back of the store.   I could not stop laughing,  I ended up laughing so hard that the back of my head started to hurt.  Then the store manager showed up, and in my head I thought oh no… this is were we get in trouble, but no not these two, the next thing I know they have not only talked there way out of the situation but has talked the store manager into selling us the display.   So “Uncle Cracker” has now joined our little adventure and joined us for the rest of the trip.

Once we got to the cabin we meet up with the rest of our party, this included Melinda BranchJeff Bent, Joe Kauder. It was getting late for a race night so it was a very quite night, When I work up there it was crazy as everyone is getting ready and had started to do there per-race rituals.  Around 6:45 am we head off to the race,   I signed up for the 9:00 o’clock head and started to get ready.   It was great seeing all of my friends including Joe Desenasetting things up and getting ready for the day.Once my heat started I teamed with one few of my fellow 9:00 am racers name Britney and we headed down the course, this was her first Spartan Race.    It was not to long before we found a third member of our team, but for the life of me I can not think of his name, I think it was Rick, but I am not sure. He had sprained his ankle but did not want to quit so we move on though the course supporting and helping each other.   This is one of the things I love about Spartan Races, 3 strangers meeting up and helping each other get though the course.  Being a founders race, most of the designed for the local terrain  this was very true for this race, It was full of Pitts, and river crossings.   Most of the man made obstacles were walls, including a couple of them built for Joe.  They were over 10 feet tall.   I have always feared the walls so these were very tough for me, but asI started to go over them, I keep hearing Margaret Schlachter from Dirt in Your Skirt telling me use your arms and lower your self down, and for the first time I had enough strength in my arms to do it with out falling flat on my face.  Finally all the time I had spend with her on her training wall at Dirt in Your Skirt HQ had payed off.  I still can not believe I was able to get up and over one of Joe’s monster walls.As we finished the last of 3 barbed wire crawls,  Andy, Ang, and Jeff found me.  Seeing them gave me a new burst of energy, and it helped to get though the last few obstacles.  Since there were no gladiators at this race they deiced to spice it up and make everyone do 30 burpees at the end.  I can not tell you how badly that sucked… I would rather take on 10 gladiators then do burpees covered in mud,  I was so grateful when  Andy, decided to jump in and do burpees with me to keep me motivated   Also Amy Sadd, jumped in and joined me as well… It was so nice to have all there support, then in the back

On the way back to Atlanta, Andi, Jeff, Ang and I stopped back the Winn Dixie to share our stores and photos with the store manager that had sold us Uncle Cracker.  It is funny what happens when you start asking the employees if the store manager is around, they automatically think they have done something wrong, and then when you ask them for his email address the looks get even better.   Its is a shame he was not there I would have loved to seen the look in his face when he heard the adventure Uncle Cracker had been thought in just 3 days. ground I hear Joe on the megaphone making fun of my Burpees, that was just the icing on the cake!   This was by far the funnest Spartan Race I have ever been to.

Click Here To see all the photos from the 2012 Gulf Coast Spartan Race