Reflections on my 2026 Las Vegas Sprint
This past Sunday was my 4th Spartan Sprint! This year I did the 10am Open heat. I aimed high to set a new PR, but went backwards from this goal by about 15mins this time...I was ambitiously aiming to get under 1hr. I felt like during sections of the race, I could have been on pace to do just that. My long breaks were what changed that result. I don't have Strava/Alltrails data to really confirm this though, as I don't believe in bringing my phone on course for fear of damaging it!
I noticed throughout a good portion of the course, my breathing and heartrate was really up there. I kept telling myself to even out my pace more. I felt like instead of steady running/jogging between obstacles, I alternated between moderate walking and shorter sprints. So there was a lot of variation in my pace. I tried following a handful of racers and taking note what their pace was. But more than once we would yo-yo each other, unsurprisingly. I think I could have helped myself by simply maintaining a more average pace. Pushing hard and early on certainly helps make up for some weaker sections, but ultimately I paid for it more heavily towards the end.
Running fatigue had already started kicking in around the Monkey bars, which was just the 4th obstacle. I took multi-minute breaks at each water station, and sprinted hard after each one to try and make up for it. But fast forward to the Atlas ball carry (obstacle 11?), I could see my strength was starting to dwindle. It took me 3-4 attempts to pick it up, when I'm used to just 1, maybe 2.
By the time I made it to the sandbag carry and Hercules hoist, I could no longer easily manage continual holds. The begging of the sandbag carry felt good, as I was going a slow walking pace and didn't drop the bag until making up the hill past the photographer (halfway point?). So up until that point, I had passed by many people trying to move faster and dropping the bag multiple times for breaks. I guess seeing so much of that ultimately made me also cave-in and drop the bag more than once to rest (it became demotivating). This was the big turning point in my race. The struggle became much more clear.
The sandbag carry was obstacle 15(?), but the next wall of exhaustion hit at the Hercules hoist (obstacle 18). This is where I felt like I lost the most amount of time. I attempted it 1-2 times, then literally stepped away and sat on the ground for what felt like 10mins or more. My forearms were dead and sapped of a lot my strength. I noticed there was a penalty loop, but mentally I figured that would still take longer than resting and finishing an attempt.
After seeing a particular racer in a Charizard costume finish the hoist and then make it to the finish line in the distance, it put the fire under my ass to push again. I was closer to the finish than I initially realized. Even though I suddenly felt like "It's so close, I can still make it", I also felt a bit let down by myself that I gassed out and crumbled with so little distance to go.
As you can see by all my results, I tend to finish within a somewhat consistent timeframe, despite encountering very different challenges/hold ups between all of them. So at least I've found consistency. As I mentioned, I would like to find a different way of pacing myself to hopefully more evenly balance out my attempts.
Some side thoughts:
What happened to the fire jump at the end?? I didn't even see evidence of it even existing. When did the barb wire crawl become a simple set of ropes you can squat under? Where did the practice obstacles go? I really wanted to practice my spear throw. Overall it felt like the event footprint shrank somehow. I don't understand why the obstacles feel a bit dialed back now?
I started taking creatine 2 months before the race, and could feel a difference in how many reps I could do training. I also wore one of those Intake nasal breathing strips during the race. I think despite those positives, my late Friday night out with friends and my exhausting busy day at work on Saturday took some energy out of me for race day. Saturday I even ran in to a low blood sugar episode from having to delay my lunch a bit longer. That was a bit concerning and something I'll look in to more, as I usually don't deal with that on a daily/weekly basis. Only a handful of times before.