Win Today
Win Today is a performance enhancing podcast filled with actionable insights and inspiration to come out on top in life. Through captivating interviews and solo episodes, a powerful tool is created and given to listeners to be able to push through any situation in life.
Hosted by Ryan Cass, he delivers messages that align to his purpose of helping people establish a foundation for sustained success, break trends of adversity, and chart desirable courses for life. Win Today!
Win Today
#208 | Bears, Barbed Wire, & Cold: The 2025 Spartan Summer Death Race Recap
Waist-deep in freezing water, questioning everything, I faced the brutal reality of the 2025 Spartan Death Race—72 hours of nonstop, unpredictable suffering. From bear encounters to barbed wire crawls and cement hauls, the experience shattered comfort and tested my mental limits far more than my physical ones. What I learned is simple but powerful: the body rarely gives out before the mind does, and most people quit not from fatigue, but from belief. This race wasn't about finishing—it was about finding the part of myself that only reveals itself under extreme pressure.
3 Key Takeaways:
- Mental endurance outweighs physical strength—the true battle is with the voice that says "quit."
- Discomfort is a teacher—when you make pain your ally, you unlock resilience and clarity.
- Adversity creates "memory dividends"—lasting lessons that outlive the moment and shape your mindset forever.
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And the storm it's coming. I ain't quitting. No-transcript. No, no, no, no. It's this fucking simple. Yes, it's fucking simple, yeah.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Wednesday Podcast, a weekly resource thoughtfully crafted to help people build and refine discipline, accomplish their goals, fortify their mindsets and be of service to somebody in this world. My name is Ryan Cass and I am your host, and it is my mission and commitment to deliver amazing episodes to you every week, where you'll learn from myself or a renowned expert in their field. We love helping people win in every aspect of their lives, and you can help us win by sharing the show with somebody that you believe will benefit from it, subscribing and leaving a rating and review. We believe that everybody in this world is meant to do something great with their lives, and we're here to help play a role in that. Thank you for tuning in and let's win today. Well, I live to tell the tale.
Speaker 1:2025 Spartan Summer Death Race. The opening audio that you heard there. That is from the 2022 Spartan Summer Death Race. You can go on YouTube and it's one of the first videos that pops up. Butister, that's Don. He is the task master and he was yelling at us in a very similar tone and may have even said the exact same things to some people, so that was very resemblant of the things that we heard over 72 hours. I'm really excited to share this episode, and what I'm going to do is my best take on the recap, and I've written everything down to the best of my memory and have gone back and looked at other folks' recaps and want to help create the experience for you as to what my 72 hours in Pittsfield, vermont, looked like during the death race. So we'll go through that and then, as always, so that there's something to walk away with, I'm going to extract some lessons for you, some things that I learned that I'll certainly be applying and reframing in my mind, but then also for you to incorporate into your life. That's one thing that we always aim to achieve with every episode is that it's not just me talking or interviewing somebody, but that you are being given a tool each and every single Monday that you can put into your arsenal, and this experience offered plenty.
Speaker 1:As I go on about the race, the question why? Is likely going to pop up in your mind why the heck did you do this? Why the heck did you stay in? Why the heck would you sign up for this. I go in depth as to why I decided to do this.
Speaker 1:Go back to episode 206. That's two weeks ago. But to reiterate very simply and briefly why I chose to take on this challenge in the Spartan Summer Death Race, there's a multitude of reasons, but really I love discovering, continually discovering, what we are truly capable of as beings, when we push past adversity, push past the voices, push past the noise, what we really have inside of us, and I believe that the best way to do that is through endurance, through extreme endurance events, whether it's a marathon, ultra marathon. I believe that is one of the easiest ways to really understand what you have in the tank. Now, there's other ways that you can find out what you have in the tank, but I believe that endurance is the best way because it's a you versus you battle at all times, and that's what I love to do. So I will continue to take on extreme challenges. This is certainly not the end. I can already tell you I will be back at this race at some point in the future and I will continue doing extreme things. Not sure exactly what all that entails yet, but this isn't the end and I don't believe that this is the furthest that I can go and that we can go. So I've got some even crazier things in mind, or perhaps crazy.
Speaker 1:A lot of people also may be thinking along the way, and I'll just cover this. Get this out now. You might be thinking you are crazy for doing this. You are crazy this because I've been hearing some of this and I'd say you're damn right that I'm crazy. I'm crazy motivated to inspire people, to show people what they can do. I'm crazy dedicated to this mission of helping people become unshakable and I'm going to put myself in the most challenging arenas so that I can help people conquer their arena. There we go. That's why I was there Now going into the. Let's just get straight to business. I know y'all are likely like oh all right, tell me the details, tell me the details, tell me the details.
Speaker 1:So, pittsfield, vermont this race takes place at Joe DeSena's farm. Joe DeSena is the founder and CEO of Spartan and this was also really cool because I had Joe on the podcast two years ago and Joe was the first big name that came on to win today and I remember when I reached out to him I thought there is no way that Joe is going to reply to me, but you don't know the answer to a question that you don't ask. So I sent him a message on LinkedIn and crafted out this great message in my view, sent it out, don't hear anything for three weeks, and then he replies back and from there he came on the podcast. We exchanged text messages. He wanted me to help his son with some stuff with goals, which was really neat. So we've actually been able to keep in touch. So it was really cool to also deliver on my word because I told him I will do this race. To also deliver on my word because I told him I will do this race and I got to meet Joe a few times, talked to him for a little bit and now helping him out with potentially getting involved with Spartan involved at the Citadel. So we'll see there. But he's got this beautiful farm in Pittsfield, vermont, which is kind of in the middle of nowhere, as you would expect a farm to be.
Speaker 1:I drove from Charleston, south Carolina, on Tuesday, dropped off my dog at my mom's house just outside of Charlotte and then I was on my way to Vermont. Why did I decide to drive to Vermont? Why did I decide to drive Because, again going back to episode 206, there was a lengthy packing list, one of which involved an ax and a handsaw and things that I really didn't want to show up to Charleston International Airport with for potential fear of retribution and ending up on a TSA random checklist for the rest of my flying career. But in all seriousness, with that as well, the last thing that I wanted to have happen is I get to Vermont and there's lost luggage, a lost bag, and this packing list was quite extensive. So I figured, hey, why not drive? What an opportunity to go and listen to books and podcasts. So I made it to Vermont around Tuesday night, so I had plenty of time to get everything I needed ready and finalized on Wednesday before all of the fun started on Thursday morning.
Speaker 1:This race can last up to 72 hours. So Thursday morning to Sunday morning is what I was prepared for and, I believe, what participants were prepared for, and I knew that I was there to go the distance. There was no other option. There was no quitting. The only way that this is getting cut short is if something happens to me medically or if I am cut by the staff for whatever reason, which we'll probably get into here in the future. So, as I'm at my Airbnb, I'm about two miles down the road from this farm Riverside Farm and I knew that from previous videos and information that's available online about the race that we're definitely going to be getting into the river.
Speaker 1:And so my place was right on the river and it's Vermont, so it's not a very warm place and we're only a couple months from snow being off the ground there, meaning that snow stays on the ground until April, may and then when it melts it goes straight into the river, straight into the ponds and streams, so water is cold. My place is on the river. I decided to do some evening and morning cold plunges and get myself acclimated with the river water, which I actually found to be quite peaceful, and I was sitting in it and laying down. I mean, it was chilly about I would say about low to mid fifties, but I keep my cold plunge at home at 46 degrees and I spend a lot of time practicing cold exposure. So this river was relaxing and I figured I'm going to get in this thing on my own will first before. I'm sure that I'll be doing aqua burpees and all sorts of fun things in this river that I couldn't even imagine doing. So that's what Tuesday and Wednesday morning looked like.
Speaker 1:And then on Wednesday, the day before I remember, I ran by the farm just to see what might be visible from the outside. But I really didn't want to spoil any surprises for myself, and Spartan actually told the participants don't go onto the farm until the event starts. So I honored that. But I wanted to see if there was something maybe on the outside, so went for a nice little run, calm before the storm. And the day before the race the race director said that they were hosting a pre-race meet and greet and we're on a call about three weeks ago with Andy Hardy, who's the race director. She's been the death race director for quite some time. She had mentioned this pre-race meet and greet and of course I'm thinking as well as many of the other participants, some of us were're feeding us nails and barbed wire for dinner, which that would make sense. But this pre-race meet and greet was from 4 to 6 pm. So as the day is going on Wednesday, you know I've enjoyed a nice little cold plunge. I got lunch at the general store, which is really cool, like a little farm general store.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking in my mind okay, I'm all packed up now. Do I go to this meet and greet knowing that it's probably not a meet and greet, or do I skip it? But then now I'm upset at myself because I'm only skipping it for fear of potential additional physical training or PT. And then I'm thinking, well, why the heck are you here, all right to test your limits, to push yourself. So why the hell does it matter? If the pre-race meet and greet is actually a trick and it's nothing but PT, you didn't drive up here to not get your butt kicked and not sweat. So, freaking, suck it up, dude. So we get an email that day that says if you're going to the meet and greet, bring all of your required gear, all of your required gear. So then I'm thinking, okay, maybe this meet and greet really is the race starting the day before, which, at this point, I'm fully prepared. I'm thinking do I need to check out of my Airbnb? Because I will. If that's what it takes, that's what it takes. I'm here to go all the way, to be there at the end, to win, to finish.
Speaker 1:So I show up, I put everything in my car, all the rucksack with everything the ax, the handsaw all the random things we had to bring in the ruck. The ruck weighed about 30-ish pounds and this also had water bladder pounds, and this also had water bladder, food, electrolytes, everything and then a 27-gallon gear bin. So this is where we could have any additional clothing. We thought we would need extra shoes, extra food, electrolytes, because at times, which we didn't know when we'd be able to go to our gear bin and stock up, which was very useful, especially for people like myself that did not have a crew member there with me. So I've got that. And then I've also got my 55 pound sandbag, which we're required to have on us.
Speaker 1:And this year, one thing that was different is there's a required uniform for this year, so in previous years you could wear whatever you want. Obviously, you want to wear something that is able to dry quickly, that can withstand water, that you have no problem getting absolutely trashed, because it's probably going to get ripped apart, it's going to get dirty, it's going to get muddy, it's going to get everything. So we had to bring black pants, black cargo pants, white cotton shirts and a black or army green windbreaker, so you could bring as many white cotton shirts as you wanted. You could bring as many pants, as many shoes, as many windbreakers as you wanted, but you always had to be wearing some sort of combination of that. There was no bring your own stuff, bring your own favorite orange windbreaker. That wasn't allowed, which I thought was pretty neat, having gone to the Citadel, that they were making it more uniform this year, I pull up to the meet and greet and I'm thinking, okay, all required gear.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe I don't need to actually be wearing the uniform right now, because maybe that's for tomorrow. So I'm wearing shorts and my t-shirt and I pull up to the farm and from a distance I see that there's roughly 75% of the folks decided to come to this and they're all wearing their required gear. So they're wearing their black pants, their white cotton shirts. I see from the distance that there's some people doing burpees, and so now I'm thinking, all right, yep, it didn't take a rocket scientist to know that this is not a barbecue and meet and greet. This is the race may as well be starting. So I change in my car into the required gear and get out, park my car, get out and again, I'm fully prepared now for them to say you're stuck here Like this, is it Bring all of my gear over and we go through gear check and they're listing off every item that we have to bring.
Speaker 1:So the saw, the hands, the ax, the hand saw, flint and magnesium, fire starter, emergency safety blankets, headlamps, sandpaper, bamboo straws Very weird. Again, I'll cover that one Bunch of random things that you wonder what the heck are we going to do with this? They check all of that and I passed gear check, got my race bib early, which was nice, and then I got an orange chip. No idea what this orange chip is for, but they said hold on to it and make sure that you do not lose this orange chip. And then they also gave an envelope and in the envelope you opened up there was a challenge and then they gave you another. They gave you a punch card and on that punch card, every 25 reps of the challenge you would get a punch.
Speaker 1:The challenge was, by the end of the race you had to complete 550 tire flips and there were two tires on the farm. For the men it was about a 400-pound tire, for the women about a 200, I believe, about a 250 pound tire. These things were freaking massive both of them, and we knew that by the time this was over, we had to complete 550 tire flips. This was actually the June entry. Challenge was 500 tire flips with a tire that weighed twice as much as you, and I had just done that the week before. I hated that challenge. That was very difficult. It took me about four hours fresh, so, not having worked out at all, now I'm thinking how long is this going to take after I've been going through an absolute beating. So I'm thinking through how that's going to work out. But you can do tire flips whenever you have the opportunity and I decided to take a bet on that. We'll cover that. But yeah, and then in that envelope there was a black chip. So I've got a black chip and an orange chip and I've got a punch card with 25 punch circles for every 25 reps of tire flips. That have to be bought off by somebody on staff. And then shortly after that, my gear is checked. My bib is good.
Speaker 1:Now I see a bunch of my fellow participants. They're all lugging a bunch of heavy stuff around. So what do we do for the next two hours? We're moving heavy stuff around from barn to barn. Hours, we're moving heavy stuff around from barn to barn and we're basically doing manual labor Great business model from Spartan, by the way. You'll find out that we did a bunch of free labor. We're paying to get tortured and do free labor. Genius, who thinks of that? Who thinks of that? So two hours you kind of get to see who's who and you get a good mix of who you're going to be working with and who are the people that want to take the lead, who are the folks that are likely or might be getting targeted. I'm glad I went and got to see that.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, spent the next two hours moving a bunch of heavy stuff around and then on our gear list we brought a five-gallon bucket, a normal bucket, and then a four-gallon ash bucket. And for those that got there the day before, they had us go run down to the river, which is about from our base area. Running down to the river is about a little less than a quarter of a mile and they said go and fill up your buckets with rocks from the river, like flathead rocks, and fill up your buckets to where they're about 75% full. So now you're doing a double farmer's carry with these buckets full of rocks and you have no idea what these rocks are for where they're going, why you're carrying them. These rocks are for where they're going, why you're carrying them, but you go and fill them up and we took it to the base of a mountain and then they had us filling up bags of cement about 80 pound bags of cement and we're putting all of this stuff on the base of a mountain that we're likely going to be using the next day when the actual race starts.
Speaker 1:But that was day zero. There is no meet and greet, there was no actual barbecue. It was work but we did get our bibs and roughly 75% of people showed up to that. So I'm thinking man, this is going to be fun. We've got the cadre, which are basically the Spartan staff members that are yelling at us already. This is bringing me back to my freshman year at the Citadel. I'm laughing at this stuff internally, thinking, oh my God, I'm reliving my freshman year experience and I actually loved that experience at the Citadel so much. And then I'm seeing who is taking this stuff personally and I'm wanting to tap them on the shoulder and be like hey bro, hey sis, this is a game. You got to play the game.
Speaker 1:So I go back home that evening down the road and they tell us to be ready at 7am tomorrow. Don't be one minute late. So knowing that, spartan, I'm thinking okay, this means that everything is really going to get started at 6.45. So I get a pretty good night's sleep and go do one final voluntary cold plunge in the river, and really it was an opportunity to just be grateful for everything. And soak in the environment, I mean absolutely beautiful. Soak in the environment, I mean absolutely beautiful. This is a place I would go to in the future just to vacation and go hike and spend time relaxing.
Speaker 1:So now I wake up on Thursday morning around 5.30 or so, make sure that I'm pounding my electrolytes and water and carbs and not knowing exactly what's to come, get over to the farm at about 635 and I'm one of the first people there and I'm a little surprised and I'm thinking is this a prank or did I go to the wrong place? I have no clue. Rank or did I go to the wrong place? I have no clue. Why is there not a thousand cars here at this point? People start rolling in. A lot of folks that were there had already completed a death race before. This wasn't their first rodeo, so clearly they knew some things.
Speaker 1:Now the check-in was. It was again beneficial doing it the day before and it was also another opportunity to go and do burpees and move our bodies until the folks that did not go to the check-in the night before or the meet and greet the night before until they had all of their gear checked in and bought off. So that was about an hour of our time while that happened. So nice, good sweat. In the morning it's about 60 degrees and overcast and we knew some rain was going to be coming in that day. So after we did that, now it's 8 am, we're all huddled up and the race is starting.
Speaker 1:So Andy Hardy, the race director, is introducing herself. She's introducing the staff and they're called the cryptea, which I believe that's the Greek word for cadre. But this is I'll just keep calling them cadre from here on out. I'll just keep calling them cadre from here on out. This is again the staff members. These are folks that have completed multiple death races. They're military special forces. They've got some pretty decorated backgrounds in a variety of disciplines. So these are people that know what it's like to be going through what you're going through. These are people that know what it's like to be going through what you're going through. These are people that have gone through what you're going through and these are people that know how to push you to the limits, but they are qualified. They are folks that aren't just yelling at you because it's fun which I'm sure for them it was fun but we get to meet all of them. Joe DeSena comes and shares a few words and then now we're off to the races.
Speaker 1:One thing about the death race is that you don't know much of anything, so you don't know what's coming next. You don't know when you're going to be coming back to home base. You have no clue what time it is. You have no clue how much of your food and electrolytes you should pack, because you don't know when you're going to be going back to your gear bin. Everything is unknown. I go back on one thing, in that this year they did allow participants to wear watches, which I found interesting because there was one phase where this would have come into play. I chose not to because I really wanted to embrace the unknown and see what it was like to not have that potential mental barrier present, meaning that I don't want to be looking down at my watch and thinking that hours have gone by and maybe it's only minutes, because there were times where it felt like we were doing something for hours and eventually several hours did go by. But some of those hours, mentally, were actually only maybe 20 minutes. So I did not want to have that as a potential distraction, so I put my watch in my car and that was that.
Speaker 1:So 8 am now we are told go to the base of the mountain where all of the rocks and the bags that we had put there the night before are Now. The people that showed up day of they had to go that was their first task was go fill up their buckets and rocks. So there was an advantage to coming in the day before. Now they tell us all 39 of us at the start go take all of these rocks and bags of cement to Miguel's cabin. There's three cabins to take note of here. There's Miguel's cabin, there's Fiona's cabin and then there's Shrek's cabin. Shrek's cabin we go to the most, but we're basically at the home base, which is a nice little white barn, and if you look over to the left, this is where you can see the entire mountainside and you look straight up and this is where most of the cabins were, so lots of climbing. So Miguel's cabin was the furthest one away. It's about a three-ish mile trek uphill and we're taking 80 buckets of rocks. Each bucket probably weighs 30 to 40 pounds in each hand, and then we've got our rucksacks on, so another about 30 pounds on your back, and then we are also moving the bags of cement. So we're taking the buckets and the bags as far as we can and then kind of making like an assembly line. But it took us a few hours to get to Miguel's cabin. At this point you're starting to get tired just carrying all of this weight that long of a distance and you don't know what the heck you're carrying this stuff for.
Speaker 1:We get to Miguel's cabin, which is actually really pretty All the cabins were very pretty and again, this is where we see that this is the genius business model of Spartan. So get a bunch of crazy people to sign up for this race where they don't know what the heck they're going to be doing, and then occasionally give them things that they can do for us free labor. That's also going to be really hard for them because they're really tired. So we get there. We're told to clean out the cabin, which there's a bunch of junk in there, like all heavy stuff, a bunch of bags of cement in there as well. So more cement for us. Clean out the cabin, build the front patio, so pour a new concrete patio for the cabin and then, on the backside, add on to the existing rock wall with more of the concrete. So we are now doing construction on this cabin and then meanwhile we are occasionally being brought off of our construction duty to go and do burpees and do PT.
Speaker 1:And this is where the first person quit. There were a couple of people there that I don't believe had too much of an endurance background, which I'm not sure how, because there is an application process for this. The first person quits after about two hours and, by the way, if you quit on the mountain or anywhere, there's no parking lot where you go. Jump in a car, you're walking your ass back down to the mountain. So if you're going to quit, the best place to quit is at the base camp, because they tell you at the beginning after you sign your life away on the waivers if you get lost in the woods or if you quit here, you are basically on your own. We are not responsible for you. Now, if there's obviously a situation that required medical attention, there were EMS available for the majority of the race and where we were. But other than that, if you quit because you're tired, you don't feel good, your foot hurts, whatever. You're walking your ass back to wherever we came from.
Speaker 1:So we build things, for In the first seven hours we're lugging stuff, we're building things. So this is now seven hours and we've done burpees and stuff for a while and the cadre are calling people out. You can see who's starting to take things a little too seriously. And again, this is so nostalgic for me, so it's fun. After that we rucked back to the base, so we go a few miles back. Very nice to be going back with empty buckets, because now we have a bunch of that weight off of us and we get back to base and then this is the first time that we climb to Shrek's Cabin, which Shrek's Cabin is where we spend a lot of our time. There are a lot of visits to Shrek's cabin. So go and this is straight up about 1500 foot of elevation gain all at once, and we did that quite a bit First visit to Shrek's and then from there now we get to go into the pond.
Speaker 1:So we're back to base and we get to go to the pond and I remember thinking, okay, I was mentally prepared for the river. And I told myself, anytime we're in the river, this is recovery, for muscle recovery, because I just looked at it, I mentally reframed it as a cold plunge. It's a cold plunge, no big deal Muscles are going to be hurting. I forgot about the pond. How could I forget about the pond when I'm mentally preparing for everything that we are going to be doing? And this pond is in a secluded area, it's totally shaded, it doesn't receive a whole lot of sunlight. So we go, we're told to bring our sandbags with us as we go into the pond. That first step into the pond it is freezing. Again, I mentioned that I keep my cold plunge at 46 degrees. I'm used to getting cold. This water is freaking cold, all right. Well, a whole different type of recovery. I suppose.
Speaker 1:They break us out into five teams of about eight because we've got 38 people now and they tell us we're going to have a swimming competition. So this swimming competition, we're relay down and back, so end of the pond and then back, so about, I believe, 50 yards total, and if you're swimming, obviously you don't have your sandbag, but the person that is next is carrying two sandbags. So the men had 55 to 60 pound sandbags. Women had 35 to 40 pound sandbags. So at one point in time you could be waiting and I've got 120 pounds on my back waiting for my turn to go and swimming fast in extremely cold water. When you are fully clothed and you're already wet at this point and you've already been hiking and working on a mountain for a couple hours, for a few hours, is not ideal. That first dive into the water and now you're paddling fast. It's kind of a shock to your whole nervous system. So my team finishes in second. The winners actually got to get out of the water and sit on the dock and then everybody else that did not complete did not win, rather had the pleasure of doing another round and another round and another round, until there were, I believe, two teams left and then they said, okay, stop. But my team won the second round, which was nice.
Speaker 1:But you can see that people are getting brain freezes and I can't express enough how cold this water is. I can't express enough how cold this water is. Then after that we stay in the water and they tell us all to circle up, get one big circle. So at this point people are literally shivering and we are told to submerge and come back up, submerge, come back up. And then we are told to do 38 reps of up-downs in the water. And it all has to be in unison, so everybody has to go down at the same time, come up at the same time and we've got 38 reps for the amount of people that we have in our circle.
Speaker 1:Now that may seem simple in that, okay, dip your head underwater and come back up. One and then two, three, four, five. How difficult can that be? When your head submerges in this water? And then now you've got all this cold water that is constantly moving around you, it will give you the brain freeze of your life. Like this is worse than the brain freezes that you got as a kid when the ice cream truck came around and you were so excited and you housed an entire ice cream in like two seconds. And then you're sitting there holding your head and you're like, oh, mom, dad, I got a brain freeze. It was that times 10 going in this water up and down.
Speaker 1:So we get through two reps and then one woman bows out. She calls out. She's actually falling and stumbling out of the pond because it hurts that bad and she's got signs of hypothermia. Spartan actually posted that video on their Instagram account of this woman falling out of the formation and literally falling down on the side of the pond. And this video goes viral and I remember after the race hearing about it and going and looking at the comments and thinking, wow, this really did go viral. Go on Spartan's Instagram page and you can see this of this woman struggling in the pond.
Speaker 1:She eventually got pulled out of the race there. Ems took care of her, but they were very clear to us again when we were signing up. You know what you're getting yourself into. This isn't a race where we're going to help you do anything. There are no aid stations, there are no water stations, there's nothing. It's you versus you. Obviously, if there's some serious medical attention issues, we will be there. Every time we were in the pond, ems was always available and responsive, but they're not going to drag your ass out of the pond unless, obviously, it looks like you're drowning, which she was not. So we lost our first person in the pond right there and we can only do about two of these reps at a time and then we needed to rest because of the brain freezes. So we eventually get through the 38 reps. We get to go out of the pond. We've we've been in there for for quite some time and then we get shuttled out to another.
Speaker 1:Another person quit outside the pond and he graciously gave me his sandbag, which had handles on it and which was a really nice one, because mine was actually falling apart. So it is nice to look out for people. Because this man was getting called out when we were doing burpees up at Miguel's cabin, they were singling him out. He wasn't doing burpees right, so I pulled him next to me and showed him how to do proper burpees and just made sure that he wasn't a shit screen anymore, since he was next to me. So he quit after we got out of the water and my sandbag actually started to break and I just had a crappy sandbag that you would use like if a flood is coming, and he gave me a very nice one. So it helps to be good to people. Look out for people. So there's the first lesson.
Speaker 1:So we come out of the bond and now we are told to form a human tunnel and we are low crawling. Every person has to low crawl under everybody else, so, as the last, if you're the first person, then you crawl, and then, once the person gets to the end, then the next person goes, next person goes, next person goes. So we do that. And then we are told to get our axes out. And we're holding our axes, arms locked out in front of us, and we're doing that for a little while, and then we apparently upset the cadre or weren't doing things fast enough. So we got yelled at and we're told to go back into the pond to get cold some more and do some more submersions, some more dips, and then we got to go back to what we were doing.
Speaker 1:One of the items on our packing list was a hundred feet of paracord or paracord rope, and again, you have no idea why, but you've got a hundred feet of paracord rope. We were told to cut a jump rope for ourselves. So cut a jump rope out of paracord. For those of you that are avid jump ropers, you know that paracord is not sufficient material to serve as a jump rope, but we cut a jump rope out. We were told to go jump rope around this quarter mile field and it pays to be a winner. So we're jump roping and are doing what we believe is jump roping, and it was more like skipping and throwing your rope over you. We do that. There's no incentive for winning, there's nothing. It was to kill time and probably to look silly.
Speaker 1:And then we go back, we're in front of our bags again with our jump rope and we're told now to run to the river. So at this point I believe it's probably about 12 hours and now it's starting to get somewhat dusk. We're about 12 hours into the day and we then go to the river. They say bring your jump ropes to the river. And in the river we're then told to start doing aqua burpees. So that is a burpee, but your face has to be totally submerged underwater for it to count as a burpee. So you're doing a burpee in a pond and your face has to go totally under. And then this was also a partner exercise. So one person was on the shallow side, the other person was on the deep side. If you're on the deep side, the water's basically already up to your hips. So imagine doing a burpee with the water already up to your hips. It's quite a comical sight to see. We do those for a while and then from there, we are then told to jump rope down the river to this pine tree that's probably a little over a 10th of a mile away.
Speaker 1:We're jump roping quote unquote. Jump roping. We're jump roping quote unquote jump roping really looking like fools, skipping with this paracord down a river. You're attempting to move fast, jump over a rope and then determine which rocks are slippery and which ones are safe to step on, and at some points this is deep water. So these are times where you have to sit and laugh.
Speaker 1:And then also, that's where I was asking myself so what did I think I was doing, getting into this? Why am I out here? A lot of those moments came up, and again, this is go back to the beginning. If you're asking yourself, why are you doing this, that answer is made clear in the beginning. And then, a couple of weeks ago, I knew that there was definitely going to be some maniacal things. So if you want to do something fun, go and cut yourself a jump rope out of just normal rope. Go find a body of water and attempt to jump rope for a while and tell me how much fun it is, as we're doing, that this gentleman from Australia, bull, who has done this race several times, slips, knocks his head on a rock and goes completely unconscious, freaking nuts, and well, ems goes and gets him.
Speaker 1:We keep moving forward and we're doing more aqua burpees and now we're all very cold because we're going from the pond to here to the river and we're all kind of huddling around each other doing like a penguin hug to attempt to get warm again and it wasn't working very well. But I'd say we do this for about 30 minutes to an hour and now it's roughly 8ish PM, something like that, and we are then told okay, go get your packs, go get your sandbags and go back to base camp. So we go back to base and this is now really the first opportunity that we have to go to our gear bins. Now this is where you had to be a little strategic, especially if you didn't have a crew that could go to your bin for you. But your bin if you brought a gear bin with extra food and shoes and everything that you could possibly need you weren't allowed to keep it at the main base area. You had to keep it against a tree line, which was about two-tenths of a mile away. So think about this You're wet, you're tired, you are hungry, or you want replenishments, you want dry socks, you want a dry shirt.
Speaker 1:You may only have five or six minutes, depending on how much time they tell you that we have. You may only have five or six minutes, depending on how much time they tell you that we have. You may only have five or six minutes and you've got a four-tenths of a mile round trip. Now, if you run that, okay, that isn't too bad, but then again, now we're consuming energy that we're likely going to want to have for whatever the heck else might be coming next. So that always made it somewhat of a game, in that I would bring more food than I thought I needed and really just tell myself that I'm not going to be able to go back to this bin for 12 hours, and I'd say it worked out decently well when we go back to our bins.
Speaker 1:A lot of people went for this first trip. Somebody's bin was missing because they're along this tree line that isn't really near where people are moving around every day or frequently throughout the day Now that it's like a treasure trove for a bear. So somebody's gear bin got taken by a bear. They found it in the woods and they lost their stuff and I'm thinking, man, that sucks, I would hate for that to be my bin. You can tell by the way that I'm saying this. There might be some foreshadowing here.
Speaker 1:So we go refuel and then we go off to the next task. The next task is we're now broken out into two groups. One group is going to do a PT test. The second group is going up to the top of Shrek's cabin with their buckets. But we don't know what they're going up to Shrek's cabin for. So they go off into the night it's dark now and they go to Shrek's cabin with their buckets. We are doing a PT test. Which the PT test was?
Speaker 1:100 chest to ground pushups, which people are watching you you have to call out your reps 100 sit-ups, a two-mile run to Shrek's cabin with your gear and back, 50 burpees. A one mile farmer's carry with a bucket filled up 80% with water. So a farmer's carry is you're carrying a heavy object with one hand, a one mile farmer's carry and then a five minute wall sit with your sandbag. So at this point I go out pretty hot with the pushups, and because typically pushups, body weight exercises, those are my strong suits, that's what I do a lot of Go out pretty hot, probably a little too hot, don't realize that I'm a little tired from the day. So I had to slow down a good bit on my pushup reps. But get through those, get through the sit-ups, and now it's time to run up to Shrek's cabin and put on my gear everything except for the sandbags. So I've got the ruck about 30 pound ruck and then my buckets, I've got the ax, everything and it's time to go to Shrek's cabin.
Speaker 1:Now one thing that I told myself in preparation and my strategy for this race is you don't want to stand out, but you don't want to be a ghost. So I didn't want to be the person that was attempting to come in first in everything, because then now you've got eyes on you and that could lead to additional things that will then additional things that will then oh then the cadre may decide well, this person just needs to do a little bit more PT or get a bunch of extra tasks. So I figured I want to be kind of in the front, but not the person that again is attempting to be the hero. So I ran up all of the climbs. The mountain climbs actually worked out very well for me because that's what I've been training for and have been spending time getting additional elevation, spending time on trails back home. And then in the afternoons, majority of my runs have been with full sweats on and a weighted vest.
Speaker 1:So my afternoon runs leading up to this for about a month were extremely, extremely difficult, in that I've got a weighted vest on. It's about 90 degrees and I'm wearing full sweat pants, full hoodie, everything just to make it suck, because I knew that there are going to be parts of this experience that absolutely sucked. So run up to Shrek's and get up there pretty quick decent time, rather but again, it's straight uphill. On the way down I'm remembering okay, you don't want to be the hero. And so I conserved some energy coming downhill. And then we had the 50 burpees, the one mile farmer's carry. That was brutal, that was not fun. Whoever invented that? A one mile farmer's carry with a bucket of water, well done. I tip my cap to you because that will smoke your forearms and your upper body. So it helps to have forearm strength because this thing it just it freaking hurts, it hurts. And then did my five minute wall sit. So the first PT test, I believe, took me about an hour and 50 minutes or something like that. And while we on that first run up to Shrex, I see that there's people in the second group. They're all in there in plank position. So I'm thinking, okay, well, we're definitely going to be doing some more PT when we get to Shreks and no idea what it's going to be, but it looks like we're going to be doing planks. So we finished the PT test, the PT test.
Speaker 1:The second group comes down from Shrex and now it's our time to go up to Shrex. And we go up to Shrex and we meet the quote king of the mountain. So the gentleman Don who you heard in the intro there is the king of the mountain and we must fulfill a grass tax. This is probably like the first maniacal thing that we do. We've got the grass tax which we are told. After we plank for a while, we're told from the king of the mountain that we must fill our buckets with nothing but grass and we can only use our scissors. So that was one of the packing list items. So we are cutting grass with scissors for two hours in the middle of the night on the top of a mountain, which I really treated it as a recovery period. But we're cutting grass on top of a mountain and I'm thinking again. Here comes the why question again why or what the heck are you doing? And I remember making light of it. In that this is fun and this makes me think back. And here's another lesson is that I remember one of my favorite speeches of all time is Admiral William McRaven.
Speaker 1:He's a retired Navy SEAL and he was the one responsible for leading the mission of capturing and killing Osama bin Laden. He gave a speech, a commencement speech, at the University of Texas about the 10 lessons that he learned as a Navy SEAL that can be applied in the real world and many people know his speech from one of the most famous lines that if you want to change the world, start off by making your bed. Well, later in that speech he talked about during SEAL training. They were often getting cold and wet and sandy and there was one phase where they were rolling through a obstacle course in mud. So they're rolling in mud and they're all freezing. One person started singing and the cadre were threatening them all these SEAL candidates that if this person doesn't shut up, they're all going to pay for it. And then another person starts singing and next thing you know, regardless of what the cadre is saying to these candidates, they're all singing in the mud and the mud starts to become warmer and they start to feel that they are you know what. Maybe this mud doesn't suck so much or it doesn't feel so cold. And the lesson that he shared is if you want to change the world, make sure you sing when you're covered in mud.
Speaker 1:Now, there were times in that night where I was actually was covered in mud, didn't sing out loud, but I'm thinking, as I'm cutting this grass, that one thing I can do is I can smile. Something new, something I never would have signed up for, because I don't think anybody in this world would sign up to cut their grass with a freaking pair of scissors at one o'clock or two o'clock in the morning, whatever time it was. But I sat there and smiled to myself and that was one of the many moments where my reminder to smile and smile and sing when you're covered in mud and we bring our buckets down, the king of the mountain gracefully dismisses us after some more PT and we bring our buckets down. Our buckets get weighed, and I had four pounds of grass that I cut with my scissors, so I'm not sure if I was supposed to be proud of myself for that, but got the four pounds of grass and got done with that, so that was nice.
Speaker 1:Next thing is now it's about three o'clock in the morning and I know this because some people are talking about what time it is and then also one portion of one of the required items this year. We actually had to have our phone in a waterproof case. We weren't told when we could use our phone, but we had to have it for a certain thing. And we were told to also download this land navigation app. So I figured, okay, at some point we're probably going to be given some random coordinates, and we also had compasses with us. I figured that we were going to have to do some charting on a map, but we actually didn't use the compass at all.
Speaker 1:We download this app, cal Topo, and we've got our base camp where we're at at Riverside Farm, and then the race director sends us these coordinates of another location that is about five miles away up a mountain, up a ridgeline, and we are told we signed another waiver that basically says, if we get lost or hurt, that Spartan's not going to come find you and make sure you have enough food to survive. So we download the second set of coordinates and we are told that we need to bushwhack our way to this location before nine o'clock in the morning. We're not allowed to use any trails or any roads and we are sent off on our way. So now we're in the middle of the Vermont woods and there's no staff with us at this point, it's just us. There's a group of, I believe, probably 20 something of us now, so a few more people had quit before before we got to this point.
Speaker 1:Uh, we were told we have a cutoff of 9am and we start bushwhacking our way through the mountains in the middle of the night. And I actually thought this was pretty cool, challenging for sure, because we've got all of our gear with us. But we are certain points. We're literally scaling up sides of a mountain and one bad misstep somebody's falling and probably knocking down five or six people, and those people are going straight down a mountain and that's not good. So fortunately none of that happened, but there were some people that took some pretty good falls and the sun in Vermont comes up or first light is about 5 am, so you always know when it's about 5 am and 9 pm, because that's sun up and sun down. Sun comes up. We're still navigating and we actually arrive at the location at about 7 am and we're told we cannot leave until a cadre member or some Spartan people get up there. So this is actually one of the first times where we got to sit down and someone started a fire. We had fire starters with us, like Flint and Magnesium, so old school fires, and we're putting our feet up by this fire, which was actually amazing and because we have no clue when the staff is going to be there, where they're at, when they're coming.
Speaker 1:But we figured, well, we may as well take advantage of what we do have right now. And so some of us were taking dirt naps. I think I've shut my eyes for about 20 minutes. Another question is dirt naps. I think I've shut my eyes for about 20 minutes. Another question is are there sleep breaks? There are not sleep breaks. If there is any sleep, then it was unintentional, as this one was.
Speaker 1:So we've got our first little nap and then the cadre finally come up and they ask us who has a black chip. So some of us randomly got a black chip in our envelopes when we were checking in, no idea what it's for, but I pull out my black chip. I still have my orange chip, which will come in play later, from the very beginning. But I pull out my black chip and this cadre member his name was actually Santa, so he puts a Santa sticker on it and if you didn't have a black chip then you had to go do burpees, but you could take the trail back down. If you did have the black chip, you could go on your way, but you had to bushwhack back down. So, back down the way we came. Uh, we had, we had Allie leading our group, which she did a great job, tough cookie.
Speaker 1:We get back to base at about 11 am. We're on this eight-hour hiking adventure and bushwhacking adventure. We make it, we survive, we make the time cutoffs and we make it, we survive, we make the time cutoffs. Now, at this point, we go briefly back to base and remember our friend that had the bear visit their bin. Well, now I'm going to my bin and I'm very excited because I'm going to have a scoop of my Bear Performance Nutrition, bpn Go One More Plus, which is the new electrolyte supplement with caffeine and nootropics, and I absolutely freaking love this stuff. It is awesome fuel before runs. This is a great endorsement for BPN, by the way.
Speaker 1:Well, my bin is now missing and I'm frantically going up and down. I'm wanting to change my socks and get a new shirt on and I can't find my bin and get a new shirt on and I can't find my bin. So I go back into the woods and, sure enough, what's back there? A nice blue bin that now has the corner completely broken and it's open. And it's open and I see that my beloved Bear Performance Nutrition G1M Plus and my Bear Performance Nutrition Go Bars, which are 200 calorie oat bars that lots of carbs and they amazing my box of those are gone.
Speaker 1:A bear took my bear performance nutrition gear, which I still don't understand why. This bear decided to take a freaking tub of electrolytes when there was a whole box of Chomp's beef jerky. Sticks right next to it, didn't touch my beef jerky, takes my electrolytes, takes my carb bars, claws through my sour skittle gummies, but doesn't like those, and claws through one of my two water jugs gallon water jugs and I'm thinking great, this is just awesome, start singing in the mud and I just start laughing. You can't make this up. I'm in the middle of Vermont doing these maniacal tasks that I signed up for, that I paid for, and a freaking bear takes my bin. A bear takes my bear performance nutrition gear that I was so greatly looking forward to having. Well, I pull my bin back out. I change. I restock on my beef jerky sticks, which I'm still grateful to have those. I have a handful of my sour Skittle gummies just to get some blood sugar up, and I've got my. I take my first of three ramen noodle dry ramen noodle packs that I just smashed up and had dry ramen noodles, which is something we used to do at the Citadel. Quite a bit, it's like a prison there, I'm telling you. So I take what I can get and we go back to base.
Speaker 1:Now we are met with the people participating in the hurricane heat. So Spartan had a few events going on that weekend. Thursday to Friday. They had a kid's camp, which was actually really cool. They had a kid's camp going all week. So they get kids, they start to expose them to a life of discipline and accountability and the kids they put them in the river. They don't put them in the pond, but they put them in the river. It's really cool. And then on Friday they have the Hurricane Heat, which is a 24-hour event and it's basically like a Spartan death race appetizer. So a lot of people that participate in the death race they're often encouraged to first participate in a hurricane heat so you can really get a taste of what you might be getting exposed to in the death race.
Speaker 1:So that was starting. And then on Saturday they had the Mount Sparta event, which is a 24-hour run up and down from the base of the mountain to Shrek's cabin, so basically an ultra marathon. For some people that were able to get those many laps in and that was really cool. So they link us up with Hurricane Heat. They're fresh, they've only been there for three hours and they put us in a last man standing competition. So we're holding up our sandbags and we're going against the Hurricane Heat people who are holding up their 25 pound weight. So they've got twice, rather half, the amount of weight that we're putting up. And of course the cadre are yelling at us like why are you guys so freaking weak? Why are so many of you guys dropping your sandbags. What's wrong? Hurricane heat's kicking in your ass. No one's saying that. Hurricane heat just got there and they're fresh. That doesn't matter. They say you're the death racers, you should be the best. So we get to do some PT for not winning that challenge. And then they make us go march around and go to another location on the barn. And now we're doing another last man standing competition. This time we are the Death Racers, are holding out our axes, we're locking out our axes and the hurricane heat is locking out their buckets. So again, the bucket weighs nothing, the axe weighs something, axe weighs something. And we actually won that one. So your boy was one of the last man standing for the death race. So that was cool that we got to beat them there.
Speaker 1:And then we're going back to the beloved pond and the death racers are told to show the hurricane heat what it is like to get cold and to set the example. So we get in the pond, we are doing some submersions and some dips, and no swimming competition this time, but we're going up and down and basically now the new pair of socks that I just put on now that's toast. So basically I had wet feet for 72 hours straight. Beautiful, amazing. And we, we do that. And then we're bringing a bunch of two by eight pieces of wood and lumber over to the pond and somebody from North Shore Saunas shows up.
Speaker 1:So in the middle of this cold, cold exposure, we are then told to build a sauna, which another maniacal task. But we are building this sauna in groups of five and you can only wonder. There's a sauna right next to the pond. So what are we going to do? We're likely going to get our butts inside of this sauna, which I was actually kind of excited about, because now we can do some contrast therapy and who knows how long we're going to be in this sauna for. So we go and do that.
Speaker 1:We've built the sauna, and then now, here is where the hardest part of the race is, in my opinion. We go back to base and it's just the death race, folks now, and it's about Saturday at no, it is Friday, uh, friday, probably around 6 pm or something along those lines and we're told to go back to strex cabin, this time with the sandbag. But full gear, full ruck and sandbag go to strex cabin and the last four people to get there are getting cut. So now we're in the stage where people are starting to get cut. The first 12 to 20 hours there were people that quit, but there were no introduced cuts yet. So this is where now we're starting to think okay, this is where time limits are going to get introduced, this is where time limits are going to get introduced. This is where there may be cuts that we don't even know about, meaning that we may need to get a required amount of reps of something, but they're not going to tell us that until afterwards. So this is where you've got to be smart and, again, not exert all of your energy, but make sure you're exerting a strong effort so that you're not last or even close to last in anything.
Speaker 1:We go to Shrex and I'm one of the first few people there If not may have been the third person there, but one through three. We all arrived together in a pack and again felt very strong climbing, even with the sandbag. We get there and I'm thinking, okay, I know I'm not going to be last four, no way, so maybe they'll just send us back down to the bottom. And after we get there they say, well, now go to Fiona's cabin. So we're thinking, well, what the heck, what is Fiona's cabin? We haven't been there yet. We've been to Miguel's, we've been to Shrek's a bunch. They say follow the orange markers and you'll get there. So we follow the orange markers. Now we're rucking again and now there's a fork in the trail and both left and right are orange markers. So they, of course, do this by design and they do this by design. We get to Fiona's cabin and we are told to roll a dice. We get to Fiona's cabin and we are told to roll a dice, and we roll the dice. You get a number. Let's say number five. Okay, so, number five, number five.
Speaker 1:You need to go and memorize stanza number five of a poem that is hanging upside down on a tree. Now this tree is located at the bottom of a stream that is running down a mountainside and to get to the stream you need to get into a black drainage pipe, slide down it. So there's water going down this thing. So, basically, get into a water slide, put your sandbag, your ruck, your buckets into a water slide, go down the water slide. Now you're at the mouth of this stream. Now you need to go to the bottom of the stream with all of your gear and you have to low crawl down the stream under barbed wire to get down to the bottom of the tree. So you're going at this point. All of your stuff is wet now. So this 60 pound sandbag is now like a 70 pound sandbag. Your 30 pound ruck is now like a 40 pound ruck. You've got these buckets. It's tough to move because you are going under barbed wire. You can't put any of your stuff over the barbed wire. Everything has to go under and they're watching you do this. So getting to this tree, I would estimate, takes at least half an hour and you're tired, you're wet, you're muddy, it's gross, muddy, it's gross. And now you get to the tree.
Speaker 1:Now you've got your looking straight up, attempting to read the stanza which I had to remember what a stanza was and was it. Is it two lines or three or four? So a stanza is two lines. You do your best to memorize the stanza which at this point I believe we're about 40 hours in. Your cognitive abilities start to rapidly diminish and memorizing anything is a daunting task at this point. And after you memorize the line, now you've got a low crawl all the way back up. So as you're remembering a line of this poem which the poem is if by rupert kipling great poem, actually recommend checking it out. You have to remember that stanza. The second you get clipped by barbed wire. You forget the freaking line that you had to remember and your brain is so mushed that the line could have literally been the red dog ran up the red tree. You go low, crawl all the way back up to the top and you recite the line which they have the poem there with in front of them to check you and you could be like the red dog ran up the blue tree. It's like what the hell the blue? There was nothing blue about it. You just start making stuff up because you're literally that cognitively impaired. Imagine what I just told you. Imagine what I just told you. We did that for nine hours, nine hours Down the drainage pipe, down the stream. Memorize the line of the poem. Back up through the drainage pipe with all of your gear. Go recite the line of the poem now, roll the dice and get a new line.
Speaker 1:This is where a lot of people started dropping like flies and this is interesting. This was something that really stood out to me because when I think about key lessons learned and some things that really, from a human performance perspective, that stood out. Quitting at that point, in my view, was nothing to do with the physical element, because at that point, everybody's tired, everybody's been going for a while, there's nobody that's fresh. Everybody has the voices that are yelling at them in their minds Stop, this is stupid, this is hard. You don't need to crawl all the way down under that barbed wire again. You don't need to crawl up under the barbed wire again. You can be done.
Speaker 1:Those voices at that time were screaming and I know they were screaming in my voice and in my head, and I'm sure that they were screaming in the voices of others. And this is where it's so important to. When you learn how to master your mind, and one of the best ways to do that is by putting yourself in these tough situations and just simply challenging yourself to not buy into that voice, your body will follow. I can think about countless times in ultra marathons and even marathons but ultras where my mind is telling me to stop this show right now. This is enough is enough. I can think of countless times where that happened and by pushing past that then followed some of my best miles, some of the next string of hours where I felt amazing On the other side of these voices in life that are telling you to stop or that you're not enough, or that you can't do something, whether it's personal, professional endurance on the other side of that is a better version of you and the next best version of yourself, because I don't believe there's a best version of yourself.
Speaker 1:There's always a next best version. When we're on this journey of continuous improvement, there's always a next best version. There's always something that we can improve upon. There's always a next best version. There's always something that we can improve upon. There's always something that we can optimize, sharpen up, sharpen your sword, sharpen your mental sword, sharpen your physical sword.
Speaker 1:So at that point I'm hearing people that are quitting because they don't want to go back in the water or it's too cold, and I'm thinking you've already been in the water. What's another couple trips in the water? It's just water. But again, I could understand how that voice is also saying this water hurts, this water is bad, this water is dangerous. What if we break it down and reframe it to what it is? It's just water. Or, like Truett Haynes likes to say, it's just pain. But that was a very challenging, very, very challenging nine hours Got dehydrated at this point because now we're out of water and even with our water filtration systems that we were told to bring, our only option was to drink out of the water that now our dirt covered shoes are in, and that wasn't happening.
Speaker 1:So this is now the first time where I'm behind on water supply and I believe many of us got dehydrated. I know that at pretty much after this point. I don't think I peed for another maybe eight to 12 hours, and that was even after housing a bunch of water once we got back. So we rucked back in the middle of the night to the base camp. So we did that till about three o'clock in the morning, something like that. We rucked back to up through Shreks and then down Shreks again and we're at base.
Speaker 1:And now Joe DeSena, the CEO of Spartan, comes and now it's his turn to have some fun with us. And where are we going? Just take a random guess where are we going? We're going to the pond. But before we get in the pond we are going to in the pond, we are going to well, enjoy our fruits of our labor and we're going into the sauna. So he packs all of us into the sauna and tells us start doing burpees. And so we're in this oven and we're doing burpees, we're doing pushups. All this PT which I will say it did, help kind of wake us back up again, because at this point we're now at the 48 hour mark and it's, you know, we're tired, you're starting to become a little delirious, and he's and Joe's joking like we need to get this on up to 700 degrees, you know, and I'm gonna cook, all I'm gonna smoke, you guys, and and I'm loving it. But I'm also thinking, man, like, please, you know, I really just want to get in that pond to wake up.
Speaker 1:Then the race director, andy, says or rather, we had to bring our phones in there with us too. So again, like you better have had a waterproof case or something. And we were told that we need to write a 1000 word essay about. I can't even remember the topic. It was something about you must. That was the topic. You must dot, dot, dot. So you must have discipline to live a rewarding life. And then you go from there. And it had to be. She said needs to be perfect, punctuation, spelling, everything. And it needs to be. And no one's coming out until they finish their 1000 words.
Speaker 1:So I'm sitting there attempting to write an essay on my phone while getting cooked in a sauna and at this point my head is bobbing. I'm doing the head bobbing Like oh my God, like in school, where you are attempting your best to listen to the teacher and you're freaking, sleeping or maybe I was one of the few people that did that, but I certainly did that a lot where I was a head bobber and, heads bobbing, can barely write this essay and then she's coming back in the sauna saying you guys, better, it better be a thousand words, and I don't know how many freaking words. On the notes app I'm looking to see how many words I've got and I'm attempting to smack myself to keep my eyes open. And I attempted to open chat GPT just to see. I copied and pasted my essay to see like, is this 1000 words? Well, there's no freaking reception in the mountains, so I got nothing. I got nothing.
Speaker 1:We're told all right, now joe gets us out of the pond or out of the sauna, and now we're in the pond, which, thank god, at this point, is actually the happiest I've been to be in the pond. It was a reward because now at least you are nice and alert and awake and it's almost like a fresh start after 48 hours. So we do sauna and pond and essay for about two-ish two hours or so is my best estimate. And then from there we actually did some more PT surprise, more burpees, more moving things around and we go and attempt to get Wi-Fi signal by the barn. So we're all running off like a pack of probably look like a pack of idiots at this point running with our cell phones attempting to get reception so we can email our essays to Andy the race director. Turns out that that wasn't something that ended up mattering actually, so it was just a maniacal task, I believe, to help keep us awake or at least make sure we didn't go to sleep. So I still have that essay. I should go and refine it and maybe read it on here. It actually I did my best to make it sound philosophical and inspiring.
Speaker 1:So after we disassembled the sauna and we are before that actually we went back to base and they told us to they actually gave us coffee, which was surprising. So I guess I somewhat lied in that they give us nothing. They actually gave us espressos. So Spartan Up Coffee was there. It's an actual thing. They have their own coffee brand and we got some espressos, which was quite nice and Joe was being friendly. Actually, that's where I had a conversation with Joe about getting involved with the Citadel and he remembered me from the podcast a couple years ago, so that part was really cool.
Speaker 1:And then we go back, we disassemble this sauna, we take all of the lumber to one of the barns and then we're told to go and bring these two massive tree stumps to the pond. And I'm thinking, man, like what are we going to do now? Are we going to have to throw them in the pond and then show that we can retrieve them, or what's going on? So these tree stumps are several hundred pounds and they're going from the brown barn, which is right next to our base camp, all the way across a field to past another barn to then go uphill to the pond. So about a little over a quarter of a mile these massive stumps needs to go. So we roll them and carry them over, we bring them there and we're in front of the pond.
Speaker 1:And now this was where it got a little cryptic. Andy, the race director, she came, and the crew members came, and the cadre and they brought popsicles. So I guess, second thing they gave us, she brought popsicles and she's asking us how our experience is so far. And we're down to 13 people now. And these are the 13 people that are, for sure, looking around me. These are battle hardened people. These are tough, tough, freaking cookies. These are the folks I'm thinking, all right, these aren't the people that are going to quit at this point. These are the people that are going to have to get cut doing something, because that just is what it is. You know, that's what we're doing, so we have popsicle.
Speaker 1:She's sitting there talking to us about, about our experiences and then, uh, I'm thinking like this is a trick, or. And then I'm also thinking like, is this potentially going to be the end of the race? It's like 57 hours at this point that we've been out there, or 50, 52, 53, something like that, because in the past, like this race is, it's lasted 72 hours, it's lasted 60. It's lasted 66. It's lasted 58. You just, you just don't know. And I'm thinking they've got crew like, they've got family, like are we here to celebrate? They have us take pictures with our skulls, which, if you finish everything, that's what you get your prize, you get a skull.
Speaker 1:And I'm thinking, man, this is strange. And then they tell us stay put, don't go anywhere, don't talk to anyone, don't say anything, don't communicate with your eyes, nothing. And so we're sitting there, kind of like crisscross applesauce, just thinking like all right, this is weird, what's going on? And five minutes go by, 10 minutes go by, 15 minutes go by, nothing is happening. So of course now we're all tired, there's no activity, so some people start falling asleep. We're all tired, there's no activity, so some people start falling asleep. I closed my eyes and knocked out for about 20 minutes. Our buddy, gio, completely passed out, like literally just snoring out in the dirt.
Speaker 1:And the race director, andy, she comes by again, this time with a cadre member, doesn't say a word, walks away, and we're all looking at each other as if like, are we supposed to be following? Are we going to get in trouble? What are we doing? But we stay put. And then, sure enough, all of the cadre come out shortly after that and they're basically like get your fucking asses in the pond right now.
Speaker 1:Well, that celebration was short-lived and we're back in the pond doing more submersions this time. They're telling us you guys, whoever can't hold their breath underwater for a minute is getting cut. And so now we're doing long holds underwater. We're holding our skulls above our heads above the water. We can't make it for a minute. We're just getting yelled at and they're telling us to keep bobbing or dipping our heads. We do that for a while, and then this is where the orange chip comes into play now. So now Andy, the director tells us to go get our bamboo straws. So this is why we had bamboo straws on the packing list, one of the reasons why Go get your bamboo straws and come back into the pond. Go get our bamboo straws.
Speaker 1:And the next challenge is we need to breathe underwater with our head submerged for four minutes through your bamboo straw. And if you don't do that, then you're cut or you can use one of your orange chips and buy out of the challenge. So that's part of me. I was thinking, okay, I can do this. I can muscle my way through this four minutes. I'm sure I can learn how to breathe underwater with a straw.
Speaker 1:Well, this is freezing cold water, and she gave us a few opportunities to practice. So at first I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to take my bet, because really I want to save this orange chip to see if I can buy my way out of these tire flips, because I already know that this is going to be the hardest thing for me and there's people that had already been doing tire flips when we did have some breaks. I chose not to because I did not have a crew. So I had to go and get all of my things and fuel. But had I had a crew then I could have knocked out some of the reps. But it's always at risk because you never know what's going to be next and if those tire flips are going to burn you out for the next thing.
Speaker 1:So I used my orange chip to buy my way out of this challenge because in the practice period I was only able to breathe through the straw for about 10 seconds and then couldn't figure it out to where water keeps getting in my nose. It looks like I'm about to drown. There were two women. One of the women and one of the guys actually were able to do it, which was very impressive, but it was scary because you're looking at them, it looks like they're having like an exorcism. They're like impressive, but it was scary because you're looking at them. It looks like they're having like an exorcism, they're like and they're literally looks like they're drowning in front of you, but they did it. There were two other people that, and one of them a previous finisher that was not able to complete, and two more people got cut during that.
Speaker 1:So I believe we're down to the final 11 at this point, and now it's about midday on Saturday and we are then told that we are now in the around midday, I would estimate, around probably 4 or 5 pm, I'm not exactly sure, but somewhere in the afternoon period of Saturday, and I could be missing some more PT sessions in the middle. But now the 11 of us we go back to base, we refuel, we are now in what Andy says is the death phase. So we are down to our final four tasks, or five tasks to complete the death race, and we can only get the next task after you complete the previous task. So now this is where some of these other items on the packing list come into play, and the first task is we need to take our ash buckets and go and burn, create a natural fire with whatever we can find around the farm around the farm and tape our bamboo straws to the top of the bucket and build a fire, and so that's why we had the flint and magnesium starters. So you had to spark a fire.
Speaker 1:Now this is where I'm a little nervous, because this is not something that I have much of meaning the outdoor wilderness skills other than being able to muscle through some things, macgyver, some things but I have not started my own fire before with a flint and magnesium stick. So I'm a little nervous. I'm getting a bunch of Christmas tree fur because I know with a lighter that stuff works very well, but with a spark it does not, and we have to put out our fire with water from the river. So you go, run to the river, fill up your other bucket with river water. My fire is taking forever to start. I've probably hit this flint and magnesium thing 500 times. And there's other people that they've already built their fire, they have already burned their bamboo straws and they are advancing to the next challenge like it was nothing. And I'm thinking all right, ryan, well, this might be one of those time cutoff things, and if you get cut, at least you didn't quit, you know, and you made it to the death phase, which is the last bit.
Speaker 1:One of the cadre graciously gave me a tiny tip because we had now again like this is where, again, it just pays to do your part, don't stand out a bunch, but also make your presence known. And he said, hey, that green stuff in there isn't going to burn for you that well. You might want to consider the brown stuff, the leaves, and so like, oh my God, what an amazing tip. And then there was someone that had cotton balls which I didn't know you could bring because it wasn't on the list. But I may have acquired some of those as well, because those take on sparks really well. So my fire gets going. Burn the bamboo straws, I'm in last place and go, and now it's time for task number two. So task number two.
Speaker 1:Sure enough, the thought that I had two days before about the PT test coming back. What did we have to do next? The PT test. So the PT test. We were told to do the same PT test 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, two-mile run to Shrek's cabin, one-mile farmer's carry, 50 burpees, five-minute wall sit. We had to do that again and we had to beat our previous time. So instantly I'm thinking okay, I know where I can make up time. Running is my strong suit, so I can certainly run faster, and on the downhill I can run faster too. And knowing that, okay, we're nearing the end, at this point I don't need to worry about energy conservation. This is just. This is time to go all out. You know, balls to the wall, make things happen.
Speaker 1:So as I'm getting ready to, I do my push-ups and sit-ups. I'm getting ready to get my gear to run up to Shrex, because we had to run up with gear. And I'm hearing on the radio because every time we went to Shrek's, they would radio your number back to base to make sure people weren't cheating, and so there was a check-in system. They were saying who had their flint and magnesium and who didn't, so they would do random gear checks from time to time. So a lot of people that had just started the fire thought, okay, I did my fire, I don't need that flint and magnesium stick anymore. Well, if you didn't have that when you made it to the top of the mountain, then you had to restart your PT test again. So had I not heard that on the radio, I probably would have left mine at the base too, because I'm thinking, okay, we're not going to make another fire At least I don't think we are. So I put mine in my bag. So certainly an advantage.
Speaker 1:I run to the top of Shrek's and they ask where's your flint and magnesium? So I showed it to them, got sent back down. No issues there. I start running fast on the way down and, mind you, this whole time, especially now, my feet have been hurting so bad because even with the change of shoes and socks a few times, we're going back into the pond. So they're wet, my pants are wet, I'm starting to chafe wet. I'm starting to chafe down low. It is brutal and it literally feels like my right big toe and my left big toe are so blistered that it literally feels like they're sliced in half. I was literally expecting to take off my shoe and socks at some point and just see a whole stream of blood gushing out, because that's how brutal they felt.
Speaker 1:And at this point, as I'm coming down the mountain, I'm also seeing things. I'm hallucinating for the first time. So I'm seeing houses. I'm seeing like, what is this white picket fence house doing in front of me? And I'm passing people that are doing the Mount Sparta challenge, the 24-hour challenge, and I'm saying hi to them and good job. And literally forgetting two minutes later that I even had a conversation with them and my whole concept of time and everything is out the window at this point and I'm seeing dancing bears in front of me probably the freaking bear that took my bin, seeing all sorts of things and I make it back down and I do my farmer's carry.
Speaker 1:This time I had a nice little rhythm in my head, so I was counting to 20, like 1, 2, and 3, and 4, and 5, and 6, and 7. And every 20 seconds I would alternate arms for this farmer's carry. I ended up beating my PT test score by 17 minutes from the first one to the second one. 17 minutes from the first one to the second one, which just goes to show that we're often so much more capable of what we believe we are in a certain moment and we have so much more in the tank. I believe the first PT test I took within what I might've been on hour number 17. And then the second one at hour 62 or something like that, and to beat it that substantially and I didn't sandbag the first one just conserved my energy a little bit more than I would have when I'm on the run but still went at it with the other things and struggled with the farmer's carry. The first time we have so much more than we can believe.
Speaker 1:It's just so important to stay in the fight. And one thing that really kept me, one of the many things that kept me going and another lesson to extract is I heard Cameron Haynes say this a long time ago that if you become friends with pain, you'll never be alone in life. So there was a lot of moments where, when my feet were absolutely killing me especially as I'm going up and down Shrek's cabin multiple times that I'm literally saying like hey, pain, it's good to see you, man. Like missed you, you can't beat me, you can't break me. And I believe, mentally at least, what I tell myself, what that does to the demons. The demons can't handle that man. The demons cannot handle an abundantly positive mind and somebody that literally just can't be stopped. It doesn't matter what you put in front of me, I can't be stopped. It doesn't matter what you put in front of me, I can't be stopped. I might struggle. There might be things that you'll find out here in a minute that I can't do that great, but I'm going to do them to the best of my ability, but I'm not going to not do them or quit or falter or say, oh, that's too hard, yeah, I'm not going to do it at all, no way. But pain is my friend and pain comes to visit and that's fine, let's go. It's good to see you again. So finish the PT test.
Speaker 1:Task number three this one is brutal. So we now need to run to Shrek's cabin, to go inside the cabin and look at a Lego puzzle for 30 seconds and attempt to memorize the puzzle. Not attempt. You have to memorize the puzzle and then reconstruct it at the bottom at base camp. It at the bottom of the base camp. So there's probably like 20 something pieces and they're all. Some of them are the mini pieces, some of them are the big pieces, like this wasn't just some five-year-old Lego set, this was, I would imagine we'll call it like a teenage Lego set, so something that required a little bit of cognitive ability to put together. And my first one there's a whole box of Legos at the bottom and then you grab the pieces that you think you need, put them in your bucket and then put together the puzzle.
Speaker 1:So the first one I'm way the heck off, not even freaking close. Looking at this puzzle for 30 seconds after you've run up a mountain and you're tired and you're hallucinating isn't the best combination. So I think, even if this puzzle is down the street and I just had to run down the street real quick and look at it and then run back, I don't even know if I'd be able to do it then on the first attempt. So, first attempt, not even close. Second attempt, feel a little better about it. And at this point again, as I'm running up, I'm really battling these demons now. So I think these types of adventures it's like a roller coaster. You keep riding the roller coaster, you're eventually going to go back up. You might be down, but it has to come back up and it has to get back to center. A roller coaster doesn't start on an incline or a decline. It starts at center, it goes up, it goes down, it comes back up but it comes back to center. So you keep riding that roller coaster. You are going to eventually get those highs, highs.
Speaker 1:And remember that it's very rare that a situation is unique to you, especially in something like this or in a marathon, and you think like, oh man, you look at the person to your right and you make up this story, that man. They're just stronger and they're not in pain. But I'm in pain, like no, you don't know that and you know damn well. They are in pain. Being in pain, having messed up feet, that wasn't unique to me. Everybody was feeling that and that was something that helped. Just hey, we're all riding the same roller coaster, man, it says who's going to stay on, who's going to stay on it? And I'm also finding things to have fun with and just kind of questioning my life decisions Like why have I spent over half of my life now between wrestling and then to the Citadel and now to marathons and ultra marathons, to now this? Why have I spent over half of my life literally paying to get tortured? Is something wrong with me? Maybe I am crazy, and I am crazy, crazy motivated, crazy inspired, crazy dedicated. You might be thinking, no, ryan, you're actually freaking crazy and that's fine, that's fine, you can have that story.
Speaker 1:So task number three is to solve the puzzle and I run up the third time and I'm confident as can be. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm going to solve this on the third attempt. I'm going to be back in first place and we're good. And I give them my puzzle and they say are you sure that you've got this right? And there's actually a video of this on Instagram on the race director's page. And I said, ah, and you can hear me kind of deliriously like yeah, yeah, I think it's right. And they say congrats. And I'm thinking, oh my God, like really. And then they look at it again like nope, you want to talk about demoralizing. So I slammed down the freaking bucket. I'm like what the heck? And I just started laughing with them too. I just start making jokes and I was like, all right, well, here we go, I start doing my Grinch impersonations. I don't even know why I started thinking about the Grinch. I told them I was hallucinating, I said maybe I'll see the Grinch on the course, and then we start doing that and I kind of thought that would be fun. But anyway, I run back up to Shrex. Now this is my fourth time, so we're at about nine-ish miles to solve a puzzle plus the trip, so about 11 miles now with the PT test. And there's some people I'm really feeling for them because of those that had to redo their PT tests and then some people it took them like six times up to Shrex to get this puzzle right. So some people ran upwards of half marathon even more just to solve this Lego puzzle.
Speaker 1:So now we're on to task number four, which is to build a yoke with a piece of lumber. So we went and ran to the barn, grab a piece of lumber that we use for the sauna, and now you use your paracord rope and you fill up both buckets with water and you build this yoke, which is basically just think about it like a barbell and you've got two buckets of water hanging by rope on both ends. So it's not stable, it hurts, and you need to do this. You need to walk around the barn six loops so six tenths of a mile and not spill any water. And this was actually our February entry challenge. So I felt good knowing that. Okay, hey, I've done this before, I know what to do. Thank God I didn't skip that monthly challenge, or else I wouldn't know what the heck a yoke is or how to build a yoke. That would not be good. So it pays to do your monthly challenges. I get that done. I've actually finished the four tasks and I'm in first place.
Speaker 1:So I have one task to complete to finish the Spartan Death Race, and that is the 550 tire flips. They're 400 pounds or roughly 400. I don't know what the heck it was. It was huge. And I haven't done any tire flips at this point.
Speaker 1:I knew this was the gamble that I was willing to take because I didn't want to do tire flips earlier. In that I'm then wasting a lot of energy, and perhaps maybe that's what would have stopped me from being able to beat my PT test score, and then I'm spending time redoing that. So you have no clue when this, this may came up, come up and potentially bite you again. But I figure, okay, I've got, I've got a few hours left before. I believe we're getting near the cutoff. So we're at about 60, probably 67 hours at this point. So we've got five hours or so left to go, at least if we're going for 72.
Speaker 1:And so it's probably about three o'clock in the morning, something like that, and I start flipping the tire and it's from rep number one. I'm thinking, oh, my God, yeah, this is gonna, this is gonna be tough and to to make it happen, knowing it took four hours in the last one. But then I'm also. I believe in myself. I know that I can push past anything last one. But then I'm also. I believe in myself. I know that I can push past anything. I've already pushed past a lot to get to this point.
Speaker 1:There are only nine people left now. So we're down to the final nine because we lost a couple people during this death phase. Nine people and I'm flipping and then two other guys that had now caught up with their tasks. Now they're flipping the tire and they had already gotten some flips in in the previous days. So I'm in third and I'm struggling to get my reps in.
Speaker 1:But I got through the first set of 25 decent and my hands are getting cut up because we're doing this on gravel and every time I'm going to grip the tire I'm cutting my hands on gravel. My gloves are wet so I can't use gloves, so I figure, okay, well, we can suck it up here, no big deal. And I get through about 100 reps and at this point I'm slowing down. It's tough for me to get it off the ground and it was a little discouraging because the other guys that are there they're definitely much stronger than me and they're lifting this thing relatively easy every rep. And I'm thinking, man, I wish like. I know I'm tough, I know I can do this, and I keep going back to that tire and eventually I get through about 150, 160 reps and then I just start, I start no repping it, no rep, no rep. I keep coming back, keep coming back and I'm no repping it. These guys, at this point, we've been out there for hours, so they're getting near their 500 reps or 550, and I'm stuck at 170. And they eventually I said, well, what's the next best thing I can do? I said I can support them. I'm going to stay in the area, I'm going to keep flipping this as many times as I can, even if it means that I get one flip to their 10 flips, even if it means that I get one flip to their 10 flips. I'll be here but I'm not giving up, I'm not quitting. And sure enough, those were two of the finishers. There were six finishers.
Speaker 1:I did not finish the 550 tire flips. Therefore I did not finish the Spartan death race. Technically I did not quit but did not finish. So I had to turn in my bib at the end and that was that. That hurt a little bit, knowing that I had gone so far and done a lot to get to that point. And if it was, I'd gone so far and done a lot to get to that point. And if it was, I even asked Andy. I said is there any other like sadistic task you can give me as a replacement? Like I'll go and I'll go sit in that pond for an hour if I have to, or I'll run backwards to Shrex or go back to the barbed wire, like I'll do anything. I want to finish and get this skull. And she said no, which rightfully so, and that was that. That was the end of my death race, so unofficially finished all the way at the very end. But it was an incredible experience.
Speaker 1:There were many times where, again, I've experienced pain and discomfort like I've never had before, and I embrace that because I know what's on the other side of that. Now I have my, I've raised the bar even higher. So what I thought previously was the toughest thing that I've been through or the toughest set of circumstances, now that bar is even higher so I can take on even more challenges, or I have an elevated level of confidence and awareness in myself and what I am truly capable of and what my body and mind possess, and that is invaluable. You cannot put a measure as to how much that is worth knowing. Every time you prove yourself right in what you can do and how far you can go, and it's like a new baseline for me where you know I can. I'm certainly going to look at other challenges that I face or now, when I'm in a tough moment, in a marathon or wherever, I'm going to go back and say, hey, you've done this before. You've done more than this.
Speaker 1:Remember the death race at hour 64, when you were hallucinating and every step felt like your foot was getting cut open. So it did so much for me and it was really amazing to be around so many battle-hardened men and women, those folks At the end, especially. You could have told us to go crawl or pencil roll through a freaking ball of fire if that's what it meant to finish, and we would have done it. There was nothing that could have been put in front of us that we weren't going to put our best effort to go and do, and these are the type of people that I really love being around. What I'm saying is I love being around people. It reinforced the type of community that I desire to have, and that's to be around people that are constantly pushing their limits and elevating their standards.
Speaker 1:And that's really been coming into play a lot more in my life with the people that I'm surrounding myself with, and I think about my Tuesday speed group and my washed up coffee club Saturday run folks. These are people that are pushing themselves constantly and they want to win. They don't just want to participate in something, they want to win, they want to PR, they want to beat their best, and that's what the people that were out there, those final that's what the people, even the people that weren't in that final group I believe the people that really signed up for this challenge are those people that were out there, those final that's what the people even the people that weren't in that final group I believe the people that really signed up for this challenge are those people that they want more out of life than just doing something, to say they did it and to participate, and I believe that's something that, when you go out on a quest like this, where it's about more than just doing and it's about giving your best and seeing what you're really made of man, I believe that's one of the most beautiful quests you can go on, because you will learn an infinite amount about yourself, will learn an infinite amount about yourself. I also just thought about how important it is to separate yourself from the moments, meaning that in certain moments, or to zoom out, rather to zoom out and appreciate the moment. So, separate yourself, meaning zoom out and appreciate what are you really going through.
Speaker 1:So there are times where, again, especially when I'm low, crawling under this barbed wire, I'm thinking this is the worst thing in the world because it certainly it's probably the hardest thing I've ever done there. But when I zoom out, like man, I am here by choice, doing this thing by choice, to find a new level in myself that, in turn, I can then help others find a new level in themselves too, and inspire them to go and do this thing. How freaking cool is that? And I wouldn't have seen that if I didn't zoom out from that moment, because, zoomed into that moment, I'm thinking this freaking sandbag is heavy, this sucks. Whoever came up with this task can go to hell. I don't actually mean that, but I might have in the moment and you can see so much when you just take a few seconds and zoom out and appreciate what's going on.
Speaker 1:The last thing that I'll leave with is a reminder that moments can feel like years and years can feel like moments, or moments can feel like years and days can go by like moments. I can't believe that this is being recorded. A week after and it literally feels like an entire blur went by. It almost felt as if this didn't happen, meaning it was just like a flash, and I often would remind myself as well.
Speaker 1:This is another thing when we think about return on inconvenience ROI, three days of my life or 72 hours of my life zoomed out, represents 1% of 2025. 1% of 2025 is now going to create has now created a memory dividend, meaning I can tell this story for as long as I live and use this experience to inspire others to push themselves for as long as I live for another several decades, god willing. I can now use this story to inspire and captivate people for a long time because I dedicated 1% of my year, which is a microcosm of my life, of your life. You can dedicate a microcosm of your life to then share the learnings and help others and inspire change for decades to come. You can't get that type of return in the stock market, where you take less than a percent of your money and then you get to experience 10,000 plus percent returns, unless you were the founder of Bitcoin and bought it when it was a 10,000th of a a cent. But you get what I'm saying the concept of memory dividends.
Speaker 1:Very little of your time can set the foundation for the rest of your time here on earth, and that is powerful. There is beauty in taking on challenges. There is beauty in taking on challenges. There is beauty in pushing yourself to limits that you didn't believe you had, and it's my wish that this is an invitation to you to seek that beauty in whatever occurs to you as the most appropriate way to do it, appropriate way to do it Challenge yourself. Remember that it's just pain, and pain is your friend, and you can go so much further than you could ever possibly imagine. Thank you so much.
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