Beast: A Short Story

 I have written a short story. It is a long-form story of my first Spartan Beast, interspersed with vignettes from my life. Hopefully this will go a long way toward explaining how I got to this point in my life, and letting you all know who I am. The story takes up 17 pages in a Word document, so be warned that it's long and it's all on this one post. Enjoy!

Beast

By Clare Snyder

2018 

BEE-BEEP BEE-BEEP BEE-BEEP BEE-BE- 

I slam the button on my travel alarm clock to stop the awful sound. Five forty-five A.M. The Ambien did its work last night – I got a solid 8.5 hours of sleep. I lay in bed and take a few deep breaths. This is it. Race day. I’ve been training for this for…wow, sixteen months. Feels like more. 

I throw back the fresh duvet cover and sit up in bed. The Hampton Inn is my preferred choice of hotels. They’re clean, they’re cheap, and they have a good breakfast. And that’s just what I need right now. My heat takes off at 8:45, and there’s a 30-minute drive to the venue. Better get cracking on First Breakfast. 

I put on most of my race clothes and my orthopedic flip-flop sandals (perfect for recovery!) and walk down to the breakfast area off the lobby. First Breakfast requires some protein and slow carbs. Fortunately I get first pick of everything, since breakfast isn’t even technically open yet. I get eggs, bacon, and oatmeal, along with coffee, and quickly retreat back to my hotel room. 

As I sit and eat, I get that feeling I often get the day of a big event. Especially one I haven’t attempted before. Something big is going to happen today. Whatever happens will change me fundamentally. Either I will finish or I won’t. I don’t want to think about how I’ll change if I don’t. I just continue sipping my coffee. I think about the two wedges I’ve already earned this year, back at my house 400 miles away. Today’s wedge will complete the Trifecta. If I can finish. 

I will finish. I want to finish. I need to finish. That need has never failed me before.

 

2000 

Senior year and I have three study halls a day. Fortunately one of them is sixth period, and the band room is empty. This is my practice time. I take my case and go into practice room 3. I put my current favorite reed in my mouth and start putting together my clarinet with practiced ease. I’ve gotta work on this solo. I’ve gotta get it perfect. 

Every other Wednesday after school, I drive two hours each way to take lessons at the college. I train under Doctor Andrea Rosen, who herself trained under some of the best clarinet professors in the country, so I like to think I’m learning from them by proxy. She is tough but she gets the job done. And the job we want now is to get me to the State Solos and Ensembles contest for this piece. It’s different from other solos I’ve done in the past. I’ve always been more of a Mozart girl. He wrote such awesome repertoire for clarinet, full of fun runs and arpeggios and effervescent joy. This piece is not Mozart. It’s not effervescent. It’s…sad. It’s romantic. It takes you on a journey. One that I, at 17 years old, do not have the life experience to understand. 

But I need to master this piece. I need to get a First at State in my senior year. 

I lift the clarinet to my mouth and inhale.

 

2018 

First Breakfast is down the hatch, my race clothes are on, including socks and foot lubricant. Trail shoes are tied to perfection, not too loose, not too tight. I take one last look around the hotel room and leave with my backpack of provisions. Time for Second Breakfast. I stop by the lobby, grab a couple miniature boxes of Froot Loops, and make a giant waffle to bring with me in the car.

It is misty and chilly. The sky is dark and the air is damp. I toss the waffle plate onto the passenger seat and crank the car on, turning the heat up to maximum. Then the most important part: music. My pre-race tradition is to play booty rap on the way to the venue. Tradition must be followed. I select disc one of my Monsters of Rap compilation and start at track one (“Walk This Way” with Run DMC and Aerosmith) as I pull out of the parking lot and make my way east.

 

1999 

It’s one of those summer days in northern Wisconsin where the outside temperature and room temperature are one and the same. The sky is blue and the air is crisp and windless. From a tenth of a mile away I hear our neighbor boy playing the drums. He is one of the most talented musicians I know. He is the only popular guy at school who doesn’t bark at me when I walk down the hallway. There is a mutual respect. Not enough for him to make his friends stop barking, but I’ll take whatever reprieve I can get. 

He finishes drumming thirty minutes later. I open my bedroom window, get out my clarinet, and play Mozart’s Concerto K622, first movement. Joy. Effervescence. Arpeggios. I’ve played this song a million times. The notes carry well over the still air and I play with perfect technical proficiency. I hope the neighbors enjoy it.

 

2018 

I am directed to the farthest reaches of the makeshift parking lot at this venue. I passed by the festival area almost half a mile ago. I am at the bottom of a very large hill. The race starts at the top. I get out of the car, put my keys in my backpack, and start walking.

There’s that energy in the air. Whenever thousands of endurance athletes, trained and carbed up, congregate, you can feel it. It’s not like the crowd at a concert, or at a play. It’s a physical, almost tangible electricity. It’s the reason marathon training plans only make you go up to twenty miles. That electricity will take you ten more kilometers at the event. 

I see a group of women sizing me up. Admittedly I cut an imposing figure, at 5’11” and 156 pounds of well-trained gangly muscle. If only they knew how hard it was for me to get here. I see a group of stocky men who look nervous. They are trying not to look nervous. 

I go through the check-in line in the light drizzle and head over to bag check. I was hoping to race today in just my crop top and tights, but this rain makes me uneasy. I’ve never gotten hypothermic before, but I sure don’t want to start today. I decide to keep my jacket on. It’s a pink UnderArmour, it’s good for this kind of thing. Time to get organized. Put the backpack in a garbage bag to keep it dry. I put on my hydration pack full of essentials and grab my Third Breakfast (the Froot Loops and Gatorade). Check the backpack and find an awning to wait under. My heat isn’t for half an hour.

Standing around before a race is kind of like hanging out at your spouse’s office holiday party. You don’t know anybody, but if you feel like making small talk, it’s easy to find a topic. What other Spartan races have you done? Is this your first Beast? It’s my first Beast. I figure I’ve done marathons with no training so this can’t be that bad, right? Ha ha ha! Nice weather we’re having! A young man comes over and offers me a caffeinated energy strip. He works for the caffeinated energy strip company. I stick it in my hydration pack with no intention of consuming it. Try nothing new on race day, everyone knows that. I eat my Froot Loops instead.

Finally they start the last age group wave. Time for those of us in the first Open wave of the day to get into the corral. I take a deep breath and walk out into the rain.

 

1999 

I walk through the classroom door. This isn’t my high school. I have no idea what subject is taught in this room. Today, it doesn’t matter. Today there is a music stand and chair at the front of the room, and a stern older man at the back. He is there to determine whether I am worthy of one of the 22 available spots in the all-state band or orchestra. There will be over 400 clarinet players auditioning. 

That strange sensation flows to my fingertips, the same one I always feel before a public performance. The pressure is immense to execute this audition perfectly. I wonder whether my hands will work. But of course, they do. I’ve practiced so many times that my muscles twitch just thinking about the movements. I play a full chromatic scale up and down, from a low E three lines below the staff to a high A over four lines above it. I know that my range is bigger than everyone they’ll hear today. It took me months to achieve it. Getting from that high G to A was surprisingly tricky to master. 

I play my other scales. I play my solo excerpt (Mozart K622, first movement). Then the stern man puts it in front of me. The sightreading. A piece of music you must play for the first time with about ten seconds to look it over. The piece makes no logical sense. It changes time signatures every couple measures. It changes key signatures. There is a section with five sharps. I’ve never played anything with five sharps. A flash of panic. But I realize: nobody is going to play this perfectly. It’s designed to trip us. It’s my job today to trip and keep running. 

I play it fairly poorly. The stern man thanks me for my time and dismisses me. 

My band director is waiting for me in the hallway. “How’d it go?” she asks.

“Pretty well,” I respond. I must not get my hopes up.

 

2018 

“AROO! AROO! AROO!” And we’re off. The 8:45 wave starts on time and we begin to jog in that way a mass of people always does: gingerly. We quickly move from packed sand to pot-holed grass, and it is hard to tell whether it’s more prudent to watch our feet or to watch the mob ahead of us scatter to avoid larger obstacles on the ground. We all avoid stepping in the big puddles, afraid to get our feet wet despite the inevitability of being completely soaked within the next five minutes anyway. 

As the faster runners take off and the slower runners hang back, the crowd thins as we enter the woods. There is a downhill with rocks and broken concrete blocks to navigate. At the bottom of the hill is a rocky-bottom stream. Although it is cold, the water feels good. Like an early ice bath. It is a strange sensation to be submerged in water with shoes on. It’s like being in a ballgown at a gas station. 

I see a large drainpipe, about twelve feet in diameter. I enter it and feel like I’m in a movie. Unfortunately it’s the movie “It.” After a hundred feet I emerge from the other side into a large pool of water that stretches on like a small lake. To get down from the drainpipe requires me to climb down a small three-foot waterfall into the pool. I briefly wonder how the hell the elite racers managed to sprint through this part of the course, because they most assuredly did. 

The water ends and we enter a forest. This section is pure, glare mud. It is so slick that I walk slowly, trying to maintain my footing. A man in his twenties who must have just started in the 9 AM wave shoots past me at a full sprint, sliding with every single step but not slowing down. My mouth drops open. He is on the edge of disaster but rides the wave until he is out of my sight. This terrain, designed to trip us, didn’t even slow him down. I continue to walk slowly with my arms out for balance. 

Finally I emerge from the muddy woods and see the first obstacle – a six-foot wall. I grab the top, walk my feet up, and hook my left foot on the top. The next step is to leverage that left foot to get the left knee on top, then straddle the top of the wall and prepare to dismount the other side. Before I can complete this move, a middle-aged man below me on the ground pushes my butt up in an effort to help me. In an instant I am furious. Not with the unwanted butt grab, which is bad enough, but now I can’t say I did this obstacle by myself. I want to punch this man. I do not thank him as I’m sure he expects. I dismount, angry, and continue up a hill that is destroyed by muddy footprints. I stay as far to the outside edge as I can, where the mud is still mixed with just enough grass to prevent my feet from sinking in. I climb the hill and see the festival area and obstacles two and three: Olympus and monkey bars. The part of the race I dread most, so early in the day.

 

1999 

Upon arrival at all-state band camp, we are sent with the others in our sections to do chair auditions. We will play for a three-person panel and they will decide which position we will have within our section. Clarinet is the biggest section at eighteen musicians. Six third clarinets, six second clarinets, and six first clarinets. We all want first clarinet. Two-thirds of us will not get it.

I play my scales, including my full chromatic scale, and a solo excerpt. No sightreading. Within thirty minutes we have all been evaluated and are let into the concert hall to find our names on the music stands. The clarinet section is in the first three rows on the far right. I enter from the back of the stage and look at the stands in the third row. 

I am not a third clarinet.

My head starts feeling a bit light as I walk forward to the second row. I look at the stands. 

I am not a second clarinet. 

My mouth opens as I check the first row. My name is on the folder at the fourth stand. 

First clarinet. Fourth chair.

My neighbor at third chair is named Becca. She is a sophomore. The boys in the first two chairs are both juniors and they are both spectacular players. I am the top-ranked senior in the section.

 

2018 

I stare at Olympus. The steep pitch of the wall, the different styles of holds that I must somehow hang on to while walking my feet laterally across its thirty-foot length. I have tried this obstacle several times and failed every time. I know I will fail it immediately on this rainy day. I do. I go to the burpee pit and start my set of thirty. The sandy, wet ground feels strange. It is not normal to touch sandy, wet ground. It is not normal to lay down on the ground, then do a pushup and jump up. But I do this abnormal movement thirty times, because I have to. 

I wipe off my sandy hands on the sleeves of my jacket and look aghast at the monkey bars. They are soaked. The burpee pit is full. I know I don’t have the grip strength or technique to do this. I have already failed. Falling off the first transfer is a formality. I go to the burpee pit, about sixty feet away from where I just did a set of burpees and do another set of burpees. I take off my soaked jacket as if shedding the extra weight will help. It does not. 

At the start of my two sets I did my burpees ten at a time. Now I do them three at a time. I stop to rest between each set, bent over with hands on knees, breathing hard. Trying to calm myself. Stay calm, it’s a long event. When I finish the burpees, I put my hydration pack back on, tie my jacket around my waist, and continue down the trail that leads into a large sand field. It’s almost as if we are on a different planet from the muddy forest. We are now in the world’s wettest desert. 

An obstacle appears before me. Hurdles. Essentially, a railroad tie stationed five feet off the ground that one must get over. As I approach, I see there is yellow “caution” tape strung around it. The obstacle is closed. Someone asks a nearby volunteer why, and they say it is structurally unsound. I briefly wonder if I am walking on quicksand right now. But I shake off the thought and continue uphill to the next obstacle, which is open for business: vertical cargo net. I grab hold of the net and pull myself onto it. The net sags under my weight. It is shifting with the weight of others moving on it. It feels disorienting, almost inducing motion-sickness. I continue to climb. It is difficult to gauge where to step. The net moves six inches down between my deciding where to place my foot and my placing the foot. I hear the groans of others around me who are not happy with this loose netting.

I come down the back side of the net and finally reach the ground, turning around to run down the slope. Oh, shit. My lower left hamstring gives a sharp ache and I realize that, somewhere on that net, I lightly pulled a muscle. I walk. It feels fine. I try to jog again. It hurts. Landing on a bent knee seems to be the driver of the pain. It is 1.5 miles into the race and I cannot run anymore. I will walk.

 

2006 

The podiatrist asks me to stand in front of him. I do. He looks at my feet. “Hmmm.” It does not sound like a positive noise. “Your feet are extremely flexible.” 

I look at his poker face. “…Is that good?” 

He laughs. “Oh, no, not at all. See, your tendons and ligaments are all wobbly. There’s no structure, no stability, no support. This is why your shins hurt after a tenth of a mile of light jogging. We’ll fit you for custom orthotics. You might consider lower impact activities, like walking.” He calls in a nurse to tape my feet to create a mold for the insoles. “Meanwhile, based on the results of your bone scan, it’s six weeks in a boot. While sleeping, too.”

 

2018 

I see O-U-T. Over, under, through. I pull myself up over a six-foot wall, then crawl under another wall, then through a wall with a gap at hip-level. As each obstacle ticks by, I make a mental note of how many I’ve done. There are seven or eight obstacles that I’m likely to fail today. Two down.

At the top of another hill is the A-frame cargo net. This net is also loose. The top of the A-frame is about 25 feet off the ground. I don’t like to look down. I have to look down. I have to place my feet properly on this ever-shifting net. I climb over the top and back down. I jog a couple steps. My hamstring feels exactly as bad as it did before. The trail leads back into the forest, where there are muddy puddles scattered among the trees. It is impossible to see how deep these puddles are. Men sprint past me as they do every fifteen minutes with the next wave, and they are stepping awkwardly into puddles that are much deeper than expected. I stay close to the edges to avoid surprises. 

The barbed wire crawl begins. The wire is strung a couple of feet above the tops of the puddles. I use the slick mud at the bottom to pull myself gracefully through the larger puddles. I feel my hydration pack catch on the wire with a small “pop.” A barb has gone through the top of my water bottle, about two inches below the cap. Water sloshes out of the bottle and joins the rain that has soaked my back. I curse but assume that a majority of the water will still remain inside my bottle. And there are enough water stops to refill as needed. The situation could be much worse. 

The muddy crawl blends into a sandy uphill slope with a “Mile 3” sign. About ten miles to go. At the top of the slope is a seven-foot wall. The left side of the wall is underwater, while the right side is on sand. I grab the top of the wall on the right side and accept a boost from a nearby gentleman. My sandy, soaked hands nearly slip off the top of the wall on the dismount. I will need to be careful.

 

2012 

My friends and I are doing a half-Iron distance triathlon as a relay. Finally it is my turn to start the “run” portion. I leave the transition area at a walk, letting my hips swivel and open up with a long, practiced stride. The technique and the hip flexibility take a lot of practice to master. I’ve been walking for years, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it. 

A man in his sixties jogs up from behind me. He tells me how beat up his body is from doing these events. I tell him I’m injury-prone as well, which is why I walk. “If I could walk as fast as you,” he responds, “I’d never run again.” It is by far the most generous comment I have ever gotten from a runner during a race. It almost makes me feel satisfied with my inability to run. 

Almost.

 

2018 

This wall is fucking enormous. There’s no other way to describe it. I cannot remember what the map labeled this obstacle. Probably as an eight-foot wall. This is easily 9 feet, at least. The crowd gathered around is sizeable and it takes a few minutes for my turn. Two men boost me up by my feet and I grab the top of the wall and straddle it. Looking down makes me dizzy. The top of the wall is slick with sand and water. I move both legs to face the backside and I prepare to slide off, my hands next to me to catch myself on the top of the wall as I flip myself around to face it. But as I come down, my timing chip smashes against my right wrist and I let go of the wall, landing awkwardly. Someone asks me if my knee is okay. Apparently it didn’t look okay upon landing. But the only thing that hurts is my wrist. The plastic bracelet holding the timing chip scraped a chunk out of my skin and it is bleeding. And covered in sand. 

Shit. 

I walk down into the little valley where there, blessedly, is a water stop. Grabbing a cup and filling it, I wash out the cut on my wrist. It stops bleeding quickly. Thank god. But this will not be clean for hours. I pull down the plastic bracelet so it is wedged around my forearm and not scraping my wound further. And I refill my bottle that has a hole in it. 

Climbing out of the valley, I approach the multi-rig. Rings, a horizontal pipe, and more rings. They are soaked, and so am I. I cannot do this obstacle. I grab the first ring and yell to the photographer, “please take my picture now, because I won’t get any further!” I ham it up for a few seconds, then let go of the ring and walk to the burpee pit for my third set of thirty for the day. There is a woman next to me doing one-arm squat thrusts. Her other arm is in a wrist-to-shoulder cast. 

Suddenly my problems seem very small.

 

1999 

This dress, blue with a black lace overlay, is long and tight. I have to hold my clarinet out above my knees to play in it. But it is the only thing I own that is glamorous enough for the occasion: the All State Band concert in Madison. Since the concertmaster moved to Michigan a month ago to attend Interlochen, I have been promoted to first clarinet, third chair. 

I’m backstage, my instrument is put together, and I’m warmed up. We’re just standing around, waiting to take the stage. I look around the room at all the other high school musicians, the best in the state, who all appear vaguely nervous yet excited. Some of us are reasonably cool kids at our own schools. Most of us are not. Most of us get made fun of on a regular basis. Most of us are misunderstood or treated like garbage in our often-small towns. 

Not here. Not tonight, in downtown Madison. We are talented. We are the chosen ones. We will entertain a crowd. 

Tonight, with each other, we fit in.

 

2018

The burpee area is crowded with others who, like me, fail the grip obstacles in the rain. When I am done and head back down the other side of the dune, someone will immediately take my place in the pit. I’m now on a gravel road, dodging puddles on my way to the next obstacle. Atlas Carry. Pick up a 75-lb concrete ball, walk about thirty feet with it, drop it, do five burpees, pick it back up, walk back, drop it. A simple obstacle, normally. Today most of the balls lay in puddles three inches deep. They look sad. They look like the concrete-ball equivalent of the word “welp.” I choose one and kneel down to roll the ball up my thigh. It slips back to the ground. I wrestle it back up and use as much of my arms as possible to maintain a grip on it. I barely make it the thirty feet before it makes a sickening SQUELCH sound back to the wet gravelly sand. 

Five burpees. A total of ninety-five so far today. 

Pick up the ball, waddle back through the puddle. SQUELCH. And I move on down the road. 

I pass the mile 4 sign. Four miles. That’s it. I’ve already failed three obstacles. There’s at least eight miles left. Will I fail nine obstacles today? I briefly try to remember how many grip obstacles are left before realizing it does not matter. I will do as many burpees as it takes. No sense borrowing worry when plenty is coming down the pike.

Another eight-foot wall looms. A strange sense of déjà vu. I swear we already did this, and it hurt. There is one other person nearby, and he is kind enough to help me up over the wall. I do not bang my wrist again. 

Finally, I see an obstacle I know I’m good at: the sandbag carry. These sandbags look different from the normal race ones, though. They look like the kind that go up against the town levees when the river floods. I grab one, hike it up to my shoulder, and set off down the serpentine route that goes up and down a dune of deep sand. Dozens of people are out here, and they look like they’re struggling. I pass by several people who are resting. I quickly feel exhausted. The sand is deep, the bag is heavy, and this course reminds me of a queue at Walt Disney World that just keeps going and going around every corner. But I do not stop to rest. I cannot stop to rest. If I stop, I will look as weak as I feel. As weak as I possibly am. I can’t let everyone else see that. 

Finally, I get back to the pile of bags and drop mine. My shoulder screams with relief. I look at the group of eight people sitting in a clump near the bags, gasping for breath. I hold my head high and continue down the path.

 

1998 

I sit in my usual seat at the back of the bus. The ride home takes an hour and twenty minutes. Generally it’s enough time to finish any homework that I wasn’t able to do in study hall. Today I have no homework, so I get to enjoy the attention of my bus-mates. 

The freckled kid, one year younger than me, stares at me over the back of the seat. Finally he speaks. “Why don’t you get a nose job?” he sneers. His nose is bulbous and he has almost no chin. 

The girl in the seat across from him, wearing a ton of eyeliner, chimes in. “Same reason she doesn’t take care of those gross eyebrows. It won’t help.” 

Laughter. 

By now I’m used to it. The comments themselves don’t hurt my feelings anymore. I just wish I understood why they say anything at all. I wish, not for the first or the last time, that I was invisible. 

I look out the window at the trees passing by and retreat into myself.

 

2018 

At the top of the next dune I see a tall metal structure. Our next obstacle: Bender. It is an inverted metal ladder whose first rung is six feet off the ground. I must get up to the ladder, climb up the underside, get over the top rung, and climb back down. 

I approach and grab the first rung just above my head. It is wet from the rain and speckled with sand. I sweep my hands off it and feel how easily I could slip. My heart quickens as I solicit a boost from one of the men nearby. I walk my hands up to a higher rung and try to stand on the bottom one. 

Nope. Nope nope nope. My brain keeps repeating it, like some sort of crab meme come to horrifying life. Nope nope nope nope nope. I am certain that if I stand on these bars, I will fall. I am as certain of that as I am of my name. 

“Can someone help me get down?” My voice cracks slightly as I call down to the people who seem far below me, even though they are just beneath my feet. 

A man in his forties happily complies. “Safety first!” he cheerily says as he catches me in his arms and lets me down. I thank him profusely and tell him to be careful as I walk over to the burpee pit. I am not the only one there. We exchange pleasantries about how we don’t want to die today, and I know I made the right decision. But my gut aches. I feel like a failure. It’s not the first time I’ve skipped an obstacle, but it’s the first time I’ve skipped an obstacle that I’ve successfully done before. 

Thirty more burpees in the deep, wet sand. Four obstacles failed, five miles in. 

From the burpee pit, I watch a stream of other racers fearlessly climb up the slick rungs of Bender, get over the top, and clamber down the other side. They move on down the trail. I continue doing burpees. I’m starting to feel like I belong here in the pit.

 

1995 

I get on the second bus, the one that takes us from the elementary school to the secondary school. I always ride with my best friend, Amanda. Today she is sitting in our usual seat with another one of our friends. I sit in the seat in front of her and say hi. 

She looks at me, her eyes cold. “HI,” she says, mocking me. Our friend – her friend – laughs. My face twists with confusion and Amanda laughs too. They spend the rest of the fifteen-minute ride making fun of me while I wonder what the hell happened between yesterday and today. 

I don’t know it yet, but they will make my life a living hell for the next three months. They will call me names. They will slam my locker shut when they walk by. They will shove me. They will ostracize me. They will tell any embarrassing secrets they’ve ever heard about me to the entire class. I will fake illness at least once a week to avoid them until the school calls my parents about my truancy. My father will take me to a psychologist, who will ask me “did you really mean it when you said you wanted to kill yourself?” while we are still in the waiting room of her office. I will run out to the parking lot and refuse to go back in. 

I will run away into the woods one cold winter morning rather than get in the car to school, and sit in the snow for an hour and a half with a box of cereal for sustenance before my father finds me. I will cry almost every day. 

And in three months, on a random weekday, I will get on that same bus, and Amanda will greet me warmly as if nothing had ever happened. 

And she will never mention it again. But I will never forget.

 

2018 

The path to the next obstacle is long. And every fifteen minutes like clockwork, as the new waves are set off, I am passed by streams of people sprinting past me. I try to stay out of their way, feeling as if I am impeding their greatness with my own mediocrity as I continue to walk on my tweaked hamstring. 

I come out into a large clearing with an imposing obstacle in front of me. The Tyrolean traverse. Metal scaffolding of sorts holds up each end of a rope, and you maneuver across at a slight upward angle. Most people crawl underneath the rope, holding it with their hands as they walk their feet. This appears to be the most straightforward way. This rope is maybe sixty feet from mount to bell, which you have to ring if you want to be done. I want to be done. 

I face away from the bell, grab the rope and get my feet on top, hooking my ankles. I walk my hands, then my feet. My feet feel as though they could slip off at any second. The rope is wet and slightly coarse, and it hurts my hands. I try to empty my mind of thought. I focus on the movement and ignore however much distance remains. I will continue, hand over hand, foot over foot, until I reach the bell. 

“Dude, you’re halfway there!” The man on the next rope over has a very helpful friend who destroys my concentration. I continue side by side with this Man With A Friend. “Bro, like 75% done!” My left foot starts cramping. I stop climbing and attempt to stretch it out while still on the rope. I cannot do it. I release my ankles and swing down to the ground, turning around so I can see how close I was to the bell. About twelve feet. 

I walk over to the burpee pit and see, just past the marked perimeter, there is an old wooden door on the ground. It forms a little platform on top of the wet sand. I step past the edge and do my fifth set of burpees on that door. It will save my poor, chafed hands from the caustic ground. I am only halfway through the race, and I must save my hands. 

The Man With A Friend clears the obstacle and moves on with his buddy.

 

2005 

I get on the treadmill in the fortunately unoccupied fitness room of my apartment building. Today is the day. I am going to run a mile. I’ve never run an entire mile before. But I am determined to do it or faint trying. 

I set the treadmill for 6.0 miles per hour. In ten minutes I will be done. 

Two minutes. I try to keep my breathing calm. Think of a rhythm. Four beats in, four beats out. Relax. 

Five minutes. My lungs are pained from effort. My heart rate is easily in the 190s. My legs have never had to move this fast for this long before, and they are fatigued. Relax. Calm. It isn’t as easy as it was three minutes ago. 

Eight minutes. My heart feels like it might explode. My legs struggle to keep up with the moving belt of the treadmill. My back is hunched and hitched to one side. My tongue is hanging out of my panting mouth. I have never been so tired. But I can’t quit now. 

Ten minutes. One mile. I slam the stop button, shakily step off the treadmill and fall to the ground, laying on my back. Hyperventilating, I check my pulse. Two-forty. I didn’t know it could go that high. 

I start to laugh. I did it. 

I really did it. 

I can’t stop laughing.

 

2018 

The next obstacle is the plate drag. It is positioned on a dune in such a way that you are dragging the weighted plate uphill through the sand with the rope, then you pull it back down the hill with the smaller chain loop. I grab the rope and easily haul it in. Heavy carries have always been my strong suit. I drag it back to its starting position with the chain and continue on the course. 

I pass the mile 8 marker and come out into a small clearing with a new type of terrain. Wet, gray clay surrounds us. A change from the usual sand. I pick up my foot and look at my goopy shoe, perplexed. Then I look at the obstacle in front of me. The Z-wall is a zig-zagging traverse wall with wooden rectangles attached as hand- and footholds. You cannot fall off the wall before hitting the bell at the end, and you cannot grab the top of the wall. That’s thirty burpees.

There are five walls to choose from, and two sides of each wall. I select the middle wall, left side. I’ll be rounding the outside corner first, which is good. Get it out of the way. I count back footholds and visualize which foot I need to start on to be straddling that corner. The left foot. I kick the clay off my shoes and step up onto the first hold, grabbing the hand holds near my face with a pinch grip. I slowly make my way to the first corner. Around the first corner. I cannot fall off. I do not want to do burpees in this clay. 

I’m on the second of three wall sections when I look over and see that a man is right behind me on the wall. He has obviously overestimated my speed. “Sorry, I’m being super cautious today,” I say. “Take your time!” he responds congenially. I continue past the second corner and finish with a triumphant smack of the bell. The guy behinds me hits it a nanosecond later and takes off. 

I’m cold. I unwrap my jacket from my waist and go to put it on when I realize the zipper is broken. I have no idea when that happened. Oh well. I wear it anyway. 

It is a long walk to the next obstacle, called Stairway to Sparta. The tall wooden A-frame looms over us. The first eight feet are a wooden panel, then it becomes a wooden ladder that you climb over and down. I wait briefly for my turn and ask a large guy with an elaborate hydration pack for a boost up to the ladder portion. I grab the top of the panel and he picks me up by the thighs and lifts me straight over his head. Holy crap, this dude is strong. I thank him and continue up and over the structure which, although wet and sandy like Bender, feels quite safe due to its wooden material. At the top, I hear others around me panicking about getting over the apex. It’s a common enough sight at races. Although I also fear heights, I know I won’t plummet to my death unless I allow it.

 

2009 

My left pinky toe fell off. 

I know it. 

I can feel it rolling around in my shoe. 

This is terribly inconvenient. I still have three miles of this marathon left. We haven’t even entered Disney’s Hollywood Studios backlot yet. 

Ugh, whatever. They can reattach it in the medical tent later. 

I continue walking, favoring my right foot. A quarter mile later, the pinky toe of my right foot explodes like a cherry bomb. 

“Jesus Christ!” I exclaim. Nobody else around me bats an eye. They all look tired, sallow. Haggard. Do I look like that?

A cheerful volunteer is handing out miniature candy bars. That’s insane. It’s crazy. What sort of madman would want chocolate right now?

I continue, my toe still rolling loose in my shoe, through the Disney theme park. I start to sob.

 

2018 

Nine miles. The Beast is two-thirds over. I have not failed any obstacles for about two and a half miles. 

Thank God.

I see the bucket carry ahead. Another heavy obstacle. My strength is my strength. But this carry goes straight up a sand dune, and I see people sitting on their buckets on the top of it.

I grab a red bucket from the pile and flip it upside down so the rounded lid is down against my hands. The lip of the lid will not cut into my hands as much as the bottom would. But the bucket is sandy, and so are my hands. They scrape against each other, rubbing my skin even more raw. I briefly think “I must protect my hands,” but the only thing I can do to protect my hands at this point is to finish this bucket carry as quickly as possible. 

I start up the hill. My breathing becomes heavy, my pulse begins to climb. I pass by some men who are resting. I keep walking. I smile for the photographer. I keep moving forward. I refuse to stop. I do not want to set this bucket down. I do not want to have to pick this bucket back up. 

I am the only one on my feet in this section of the carry. Keep moving forward. Slowly and steadily. 

I descend the sand dune and set my bucket back on the pile, wiping my sandy hands on my sandy, broken jacket. I keep walking, up another dune, to the Hercules hoist looming at the top. I grab the rope. It is sandy. It scrapes my hands as I pull the rope hand over hand to hoist the wet sandbag up to the top of the truss structure. I lower it down. My palms are pink. Like raw hamburger. 

I smile.

 

2009

I pass mile 25 and enter the World Showcase at Epcot behind the United Kingdom pavilion. I feel so weird. I’ve never exercised this long before. I’ve been on my feet for over six hours. My brain doesn’t do right. There’s a bridge, huh. 

Countries tick by. I see them in my periphery but I don’t really see them. France. Morocco. Japan. America. Duh, we’re in America anyway. Italy. Germany. China. Germany. Wait. Germany again? 

What the fuck. 

This race course just teleported me back to Germany. God damn it all to hell. Now I have to go even farther. Screw you, Disney corporation. 

Mexico. My mom is on the right, she sees me and cheers. I want to ask her how the hell I passed Germany twice. I want to ask if anyone else got teleported.

What I actually say: “This is the biggest mistake I ever made!” 

She laughs. I laugh too. I think.

 

2018 

I’m past the ten mile mark. I see a second barbed wire crawl, this one without puddles. I crawl on hands and knees underneath, switching to forearms and knees at intervals to save the skin on my hands from further abuse. I try to think of it more positively: this is like an exfoliating treatment at a spa. People would pay good money for that. And everyone racing today has paid good money for it. I get off the ground at the end of the barbed wire and continue straight into the rolling mud obstacle, which appears to have…yes, zero mud. Just two piles of sand to climb over, up and down. 

And after the second pile of sand, I find…the dunk wall. In a cold pool of water is positioned a wooden wall, which we must submerge ourselves underneath. I take off my hydration pack and set it to the side. I have cookies in there and they must not get wet. I get into the water. It is chilly, but I was prepared for it. Women around me scream. Men around me hiss in a manly fashion. Inwardly I roll my eyes. Outwardly, I feel for the bottom of the wall, which is actually submerged in the water. 

Feel lower. Feel lower. There it is. The bottom of this wall is at least fifteen inches underwater. 

Okay. Yikes. Okay. I haven’t freaked out at the thought of a dunk wall in a while but I am starting to now. Calm down. Don’t think. Don’t hesitate. Don’t talk myself out of it. Grab the bottom of the wall with the right hand, plug my nose with my left, and throw myself under the wall. 

Woosh. Silence. Movement. Splash. 

I emerge on the other side of the dunk wall and blow the air out of my nose. It is done. I conquered the most ridiculous dunk wall in Spartan history. I climb out of the water pit, grab my hydration pack, and put it on over my soaked jacket. Looking up, I see a line of spectators at the top of a hill. We are approaching the festival area, and people are watching now. 

I stand up a bit straighter and move onward.

 

2009 

I have finished my first marathon. I can hardly believe it. It took me six and a half hours, but I did it. 

And I can barely walk. 

After the race, my ankle dorsiflexors stopped working. Out of nowhere. How dare they, right? But I have tied strips from my free mylar blanket around them and I am back in the United Kingdom at the World Showcase, sitting on a bench, drinking Guinness with my proud mother. 

A couple of twenty-something guys walk past, looking at me with my medal around my neck. “She runs a marathon and drinks Guinness! I like her!” I raise my cup in their direction and smile. 

My next beer will be a Bass. I’ve already decided. 

The carbs seep into my brain, restoring full function. Of course my toe didn’t really fall off. A blister just popped. And I didn’t pass Germany twice. Germany 2: The Sequel was actually Norway.

 

2018 

The spectators stare at me. They stare at all of us. There is an occasional “whoop” as they recognize someone here and there. But mostly just staring. It reminds me of the Stephen King book “The Long Walk.” They are trying to figure us out. I am trying to figure myself out. 

The line of people has some gaps of a few feet. I walk through one of them and grab the top of the inverted wall. I walk my feet up the rungs on the underside and stretch my hip to get my leg over the top. I make sure my torso is over the top before I commit and roll over with a gut-punching “oof” to slide down the other side. And I see it. 

The rope climb. 

The trusses, forming an X, hold up a total of twenty ropes. Sixteen feet off the ground is a cowbell that we must ring to clear the obstacle. 

I barely – BARELY – know how to climb a rope. 

I take a deep breath. I choose a slightly frayed rope, hoping it will give me better traction. I look down at my hands. Strong and capable, but rubbed raw and cold from the rain. I grab high on the rope. I wrap the rope around my right leg. I pull my hips up. And I lock my feet. 

Success.

I stand up. I walk one hand up the rope, then the other. I pull my hips up. I lock my feet. 

I stand up.

I am tired. I am scared of heights. The only thing standing between me and falling is my own strength. I am not confident. 

I lock and stand again. 

My hands feel numb. They have been wet and cold for hours. It all comes to a head. I cannot feel how hard I am gripping the rope. I am almost to the top. Just one more lock. My mind reels. 

I can’t.

I quickly downclimb and try not to cry from frustration. I know how to climb a stupid rope. It wasn’t that far a fall. I could have done it. But I didn’t do it.

I do my thirty burpees, landing with my hands in a rocky puddle. It feels better on my skin. The cool, small rocks massage my mangled hands through the pulled-down sleeves of my jacket.

 

2000 

I play for the judge. I play for the room full of people who specifically came to hear me. My solo. At State Solos and Ensembles. My status as an all-state third chair seems to be more widely known than I expected. 

I play well. No mistakes. I do my best to imbue the song with emotion. I walk to the judge’s table at the back of the room to the sound of applause. Now is my chance to hear what the judge has to say. Good feedback, criticism, ideas for how to perform better. 

She is writing something down. She looks up at me. “That was really great.” 

“Thank you,” I respond. I wait. She waits. I wait. 

“I have no notes,” she says.

 

2018 

From this vantage point at the top of the dune, I can see my car in the distant parking lot. We are near the start line. We are near the finish line. But we must loop through a couple more miles to get there. 

I descend the steep dune into the valley, which is flooded with a giant puddle. To call this a puddle is an understatement. This is a pond. I wade through with the water up to my thighs and emerge at the base of the slip wall, a large wooden structure at a 45-degree angle with ropes to help you scale. I lean back and walk up easily, coming down the ladder on the back end and wading through another pond. 

Entering a forested, sandy section past the mile 11 marker, I see a photographer taking pictures of racers going down the trail. I give a Fonzie-style “ayyy.” I promised myself to look happy in photos whenever possible. And at this moment, I feel pretty good. There isn’t much farther to go. Most of the obstacles are behind me. I should only fail a couple more. I hope this feeling lasts. 

In a large sandy clearing I see the second sandbag carry of the course. This one is a longer bag, which is much easier to carry. I pick up the forty-pound sandbag and sling it over my left shoulder, continuing through the deep sand. I set the bag down at the end and proceed down the trail. Mile twelve. A man near me groans. “Calf cramp, calf cramp,” he says, pained. He is not the first I’ve heard complain of calf cramps. The deep sand seems to be getting a lot of people today. Not me, thankfully. I offer him his choice of Tums or a salt packet. He gratefully accepts the salt packet and swigs it without water. 

While I have my hydration backpack off, I get out my cookie baggie. There are two Nutter Butters left. I only need one. I ask the guys near me if one of them wants the last cookie, and a guy in his forties excitedly claims it and thanks me. I hope that cookie makes the difference for him today. 

I go up a steep, rocky, slippery hill. I go carefully down the other side of the steep, rocky, slippery hill. Another. Another. Others are sprinting past me down the hills. I cannot go faster. I am not a natural athlete. I do not have the grace of a mountain goat. I do not have the devil-may-care attitude of a preschool child that seems to be required for success in this sport. 

I wonder, for the hundredth time today, how I fit in with these people.       

 

2007 

I know there is less than half a mile left. My first half marathon, almost done. I have paced myself perfectly. Run three minutes, walk a minute. Thirteen minutes per mile, every mile. I feel great. 

I think back on that first mile I ever ran, on that treadmill, almost two years ago. 

I think about why I ran that mile in the first place. 

My whole life, I’d only wanted to do things that came naturally to me. Music came easily. My hands were built for delicate, nimble things, like piano and the clarinet. I can carry a tune and have a pleasant singing voice. I didn’t have to work too hard to enjoy small successes. 

For this, I had to work hard. For this I had to put miles on my feet, sweat on the ground. I felt my confidence and self-esteem grow more with fitness than it ever had with music. Because I am not talented athletically. I had to build ability. 

I breathe easily, where I once struggled for breath. The struggle got me here. It is an essential part of the process. The struggle makes it worth it. 

I cross the finish line in my exact goal time. I drape a finisher medal around my neck. 

I’ve found it. I’ve found what I’m meant to do.

 

2018 

I know we’re near the end, because I see Twister. The diabolical grip obstacle is a Spartan staple. Small handles line a horizontal pole about twelve feet long like a helix. The pole spirals as you work your way across. You must cross a central truss to get to the second section. The bell is at the end of that one. 

I have never even come close to clearing this. And it’s soaking wet today. 

I get on the box at the start and grab the handles. They are wet, of course. My hands are wet. I know I will fail, but I grab the handles and try to hang anyway. I fall off immediately. 

Something cracks in my brain. I don’t understand why I’m upset. I knew this would happen. 

As I start my burpees, I realize why. 

Because I know I’ll fail the next obstacle, too. The spear throw. 

I will be ending this race on a low note. After everything, I know I will finish. But then, that was never the question. I knew I’d finish when I woke up this morning. 

But I wanted to have one triumph. One big thing to take away from today besides a medal. 

And I won’t get it. 

I am tired. The burpees come in sets of five, with long rests between. My hands feel fine. My mind feels numb.

 

2008

The computer is scoring my test. The American College of Sports Medicine certified personal trainer exam. I’ve spent the last five months studying. Learning anatomy. Learning nutrition. Taking practice tests. Thanking the Lord that I have always been good at standardized tests. But it’s been years since the GRE. 

After my first half marathon, I realized I want to help other people find a love of fitness. Find that thing that they’re meant to do with themselves. To enjoy developing themselves and becoming better. So I decided to become a personal trainer. This test will tell me if I can.

My heart is pounding. The grading is supposed to take a couple minutes. It feels like hours. I take my pulse, out of curiosity. One hundred forty. Appropriate for a brisk walk, but I am sitting perfectly still in this computer testing room at a community college 100 miles from home. It was the only place that offered the test. 

Five fifty. Five fifty. I keep visualizing that number. That’s the number I need to pass, out of a possible 800. I need to pass. If I don’t pass, I’ve wasted $350 on the test itself and however much in gas to get here and back. 

Five fifty. 

The number appears. 

Six eighty-seven.

 

2018 

I take the short gravel road up the hill and around the corner. Back by the festival area. By the gawking spectators. I see them in the distance beyond the fence. Beyond the spear throw. Our last real obstacle. An obstacle that I have never, not once, been able to do. Throw a basketball into the hoop from the three-point line? I can maybe do that. Throw a javelin into a haybale from twenty-five feet away? 

Music plays over the sound system at the nearby finish line. “Informer,” by Snow. This song would have come up next on my Monsters of Rap CD if my car ride had taken any longer this morning. I laugh at how perfect it is. I will do my last set of burpees to the sounds of a Canadian rapper who tries to sound Jamaican. 

I approach the third of the ten spear stations, which is empty. The spear is lying on the ground, left behind from the previous racer who had failed. I pull it in with the narrow rope attached to the butt end. I pick it up with my right arm. I get the rope out of the way, over the fence between us and the hay bales. Twenty-five feet. And I must be accurate. Psht. 

I look at the hay bale. I take a deep breath. I take another. I will try my best. One last breath. Exhale as I throw, as straight as I can. 

It sticks. 

I stare, stunned. I hear a scream. I think it is coming from me. I hear cheering. That is definitely coming from somewhere else. I turn to my right and see a group of people smiling at me, offering congratulations. 

My race is basically over. I won’t have any more burpees. 

I nearly start crying. But I’m not quite done yet.

 

2017 

I cross the finish line of the Lambeau Field Spartan stadium race. I feel amazing. Not just mentally, but physically. I feel like my muscles have gotten a deep-tissue massage. 

I think back on all those obstacles. Some of them I was really good at, like the sandbag carry, the Atlas carry, the Hercules hoist. Some of them I sucked, like the rings rig and getting over the tall walls. 

But wow. What an experience. I want to do another one. Maybe another stadium race, because dirt and mud and rain sounds really intimidating. I don’t know if I could handle being miserable for three miles outside in the elements. And there are places in my area I could train. I could try doing monkey bars at the park, build up my grip. There’s gotta be a better technique for those walls. 

My mind reels. This is the start of something big for me. I know it.

 

2018 

I turn towards the finish line and run, smiling. Somehow I don’t feel any pain in my hamstring. I pass the burpee pit full of people. I pass the crowd lining the fence, cheering. I jump over the smoldering embers of the fire, which is trying hard to burn in the rain. I cross the finish line. 

I feel overwhelmed. Tears come to my eyes. A volunteer puts a medal around my neck and asks if I’m okay. “These are good tears!” I manage to half-yell. She laughs. So do I. 

A photographer takes my picture. I must look a mess. I don’t care. I did it. It took me over six hours but I finished. 

I am a Beast. 

I’m right where I belong. This is what I was meant to do. This was my big triumph. 

I bet I can do better next time. I have many notes.