Sparta

Today I got my butt well and truly kicked...and was not really prepared for, or expecting it. I was entered into the Spartan Hurricane WOD this morning which had very much crept up on me this week. I got home after a massive day at 10pm last night and had nothing at all ready to go for getting up at 5am on my Saturday morning to go for a 4 hour workout...off to a great start.

The Hurricane WOD was organised by the Spartan Obstacle Race race director as a preparation event leading into the tough 14km, 30+ obstacle race one month later. Not really sure what I was getting myself into, and having a friend who was an ambassador for the event, I signed up a good month ago. When my wrist was not looking so bad off and I thought I would be out of the splint and able to do push ups. I also though, yeah I'm fit...how hard could it be??

At 6.30am it was less then 2 degrees out on the oval we were huddling on. There was ice on the grass and 70 people standing around trying to decrease their exposed body surface area in anyway possible. It was beyond cold and my fingers were numb, I thought. We got started with a bit of a jog, and couple of dynamic movements and then split into our groups to start our first of six 30 minute workouts.

Round 1: 3 minutes of varying level isometric push up hold (which was a squat hold for me), 500m of 10 running strides/5 pushups and finally 500m bear crawl. If I thought my fingers were numb before, it was nothing on how they felt by the end of this round. They were fat, freezing, uncontrollable and painful!

Round 2: Fartlek Running. 30 seconds sprint followed by varying rest intervals to work on your speed endurance. It was nice not to put the hands on the icy grass in this round so by the end of this one, fingers had finally started to thaw.

Round 3: A 90 second circuit including ergo, plank taps, scorpion crawl, plank side stepping with push ups, commando crawls and roll ups. All body weight exercises that were tough with a capital T.

Round 4: Obstacle race prep. the idea was to fatigue the CV system first and then make your legs work. So it was a 20m shuttle run with increasing increments every minute. I was the last one in with one other lady and we managed to get out 11x20m runs in 1 minute. Stuffed by the end. Time to work on the legs - lunges, wall climbs, running crawling and partner band pulls....legs sufficiently gased!

Round 5: Power Bags. Clean and pressing, situp and passes, walking lunges, running with the bags...all stuff I've done before. Was very much in my world with this one and made it through no problems at all.

Round 6: ZUU. Finally made it to the last one! I have not had much experience with ZUU before, and after this not sure how quickly I will be rushing back. Not because I didn't like, it but because it was flipping hard!!! It uses movements that are based on primal movement patterns such as Froggers, Gorilla's, Chameleons and almost any other animal you can think of. By far the hardest of any of the previous rounds...yay for having it last!!! My quads have never been as much on fire as there were throughout that final thirty minutes.

By the end of the 4 hours, totally stuffed. Very dirty, sore and tired....all signs of a great day and a great arse kicking. Hardest thing I've done in a while!