Yelp 365 Challenge #237/365 Since 2011, I've been on a quest to be healthy. From joining up with SOHI Fitness and then reluctantly training on my own, I've actually done 4 runs since then. The Great Aloha. Ford Island Bridge Run. The Color Run. And now I can say...The Spartan Sprint! Aroo! Aroo! What an experience. I knew there would be obstacles. I knew there would be mud. I knew I had to hydrate myself from reading their website blogs especially because from most of their reviews, it's uphills, downhills, over and under the obstacles or shimmy up the obstacles. My experience: Parked my truck. The walk to the site was about a mile and a half. Got my bib and racing chip. Bag check-in: $5.00 with your name and bib number attached (thank goodness). Note: Very organized-thank you! Start line. Stretch. Jump. Leg lunges 1st obstacle: climb 4 foot wall 2nd obstacle: under the wall. Go through water...it's ok 3rd obstacle: climb over 5 foot wall Going through creek/stream. I'm thinking bacteria. I'm thinking of that survival show, Naked and Afraid. Note: I chose not to run and decided to just pace myself because I knew majority of the race was uphill. 4th obstacle: Climb up a netting to get to the path. Run (or walk) 5th obstacle: Slide down into the mud. Climb over and crawl under the barb wire. Note: If you have a hydration pack-I would recommend you leave it with the volunteers as you finish this obstacle 6th obstacle: (around the bend) 6 foot wall. Tried-didn't make it because I cramped. My first set of 30 burpees Tried running up the hill but got seized in cramps...BOTH LEGS and I'm thinking "Oh hell no...I ate all those bananas, wheat bread and Gatorade to be brought down by cramps?!" One girl stopped and massaged my right calf (thank goodness I shaved my legs that morning!) While I'm resting, the group asked if I wanted them to call anyone? NO. I wanted that medal. I shared with the girl to go because I didn't want to hold her up. She reluctantly went but I told her I'd be fine and will just rest for a bit. I drank from my hydration pack that had 4 tabs of the Nuun electrolytes. I got up and walked up. And up. And up. Around the bend for a water station. 7th obstacle: Climb over a seven foot wall. There were young adults so willing to help me over. Yay! No burpees. Run (or walk like me) 8th obstacle: 8 foot wall. Again, young adult and participants going their SECOND time around helped me. YAY! No burpees! Walk down and up. 9th obstacle. Tire pull. (Easiest one) 10th obstacle: Cinder block pull (One block for girls, two for the guys) *easy* 11th obstacle: Monkey bars. Tried it once and fell. 30 burpees. Boooo 12th obstacle: Sandbags. Huff. Huff. Pant. Rest. Huff. Huff. 13th obstacle: Atlantis lift? Carrying a block from one end to the other with 5 burpees. 14th obstacle: Climbing across a wall without falling off. 15th obstacle: Crawl under barb wire in a mud pit (BLECH) 16th Obstacle: Rope Climb. Yeah-I have no upper body strength. 30 burpees. Slide down and run around the bend. 17th obstacle. Slide into mud. Climb a slanted wall with a rope and climb down. Let's just say that I didn't make it and fell onto my back on the side with a cut on my arm. The volunteer told me as I climbed out of the water, "You tried-run on!" I didn't hesitate-I ran. That's right, I wasn't going to say, No, I'll do the 30 burpees" Jump over the fire. Go through the great and wonderful gladiators. Seeing my husband cheering me on was one of the best things to see with the guy holding my medal. Grabbed my finishers shirt (they ran out of headbands) and washed off. Trekked back a mile and half to my truck and knocked out when I got home. Tips for Spartan Races: 1) Train for it especially if you're going for timing. Check out Spartan website for their WOD 2) Hydrate well-don't be stupid and think its ok, it won't be when you cramp up. Read the Spartan blogs-great tips 3) Use shoes that are good for hiking or trail running. I used my Vibrams Sprydion and I love them! 4) Use clothes that have dry-wick NOT cotton. 5) Expect the unexpected and have fun!!! Boom-I did it. If I can, you can too. read more

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My wife and I did the Hawaii Spartan Sprint at Kualoa Ranch along with almost 5000 other people. We arrived at the ranch around 8 a.m. and walked 1.5 miles to get to the staging area and starting line. The surrounding was lush and green with the awsome mountain range as our backdrop. If you've seen Jurassic Park, Kualoa Ranch is where they shot the scene with Dr. Grant and the two kids running from the pack of ostrich like dinosaurs then hiding behind a big fallen tree. Registration tents, packet pick up tents, bag drop, etc. were well organized. Our wave was at 9:45 a.m. so we watched a few waves start there sprint to get a feel for our start. We coudn't wait. There were 15 obstacles and the course is about 3.5 - 4 miles in distance. There were walls of different heights, a river we had to walk through, up and down the side of the mountain, two mud crawl while avoiding barb wires, mud walk, forested trail (single file only), monkey bars, semi truck tire carry and pull back, cement cylinder carry walk and back, pulling cement blocks tied to heavy chain up an around a hill, sandbag carry up and around a hill, dry river bed run, a wooden wall with little wood blocks for grip so you can get across, a ramp with ropes you can use to get up and over, climbing over a stone wall and then a wooden fence over a barbed wire fence, the rope climb starting with your body half submerged in mud and muck, jumping over fire and then the gladiators before the finish line. I probably forgot a couple of obstacles. The terrain and the difficulty of the obstacles made this the most fun race my wife and I have done up to date. We did the Tahoe Mudder back on July '13 with friends and even though the Mudder is 10+ miles up and down Northstar Ski resort, the Spartan Sprint at Kualoa Ranch is a lot more fun. (helpful hint: We run marathons so it came in handy as a lot of people started to loose stamina as soon as they had to run up hills. We just jogged past them as they were winded). Also Spartan has a course for children that is safe and looks fun. We've already signed up for the Super Spartan in Las Vegas, April 2014. Looking forward to more fun with our friends Adam, Peter, Yoshi, Chris, Joe T. read more

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After graduating from college i decided to sign up and challenged myself. This is not any ordinary 3+mile or 5km race but an obstacle race where the focus is on Upper body during the obstacles and lower body when you are racing. I would say that dont be scared of this race and try it out. Its a great workout with your friends Sprint = 3mile or could it be 3.5mile or 4miles i mean 4.5miles [my gps told me 4.3miles] The obstacles are super awesome if you like mud, dirt and getting dirty do it. Dont let your dreams be dreams. A lot of the terrians are up and down hills so pace yourself. Some of the obstacles i remembered 1. O.U.T (OVER UNDER THROUGH WALL) Pass 2.Gorilla Net Climb Pass 3. Up/Down Mud wall/puddle Pass 4. 8ft Wall (with a little push from fellow spartans) Pass 5. Tire Push Pass 6.Tree Crawl Pass 7. TRAVERSE WALL (cannot touch the top of the wall) Failed 30 pushup-burpees 8.Sand bag carry Pass 9. Barp wire crawl (Omg stones everywhereeee) Pass 10. Rope Climb (after watching people with 6 packs failed) i just start doing burpees X 30 11. Spear Throwing (gahhh missed) 30 burpees 12.Monkey bar FAILED 30 Burpees 13.Slip Wall [photo shoot so look badass] Pass Lastly Fire Jump Pass Get your awesome medals you earn your bragging rights !! It was so much fun that the next day i participate for the Super = 7-9miles? add on to this was 6ft walls 7ft walls Bear crawl uphill Bucket Carry Atlas Carry I mean it everyone give it a try. + they have photographers and the pictures are freeee ! read more

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It was a long 5k with 15 obstacles that were not as hard as I thought it would be but still were we ever excited to see the end! Right off the bat we were up to our necks deep on dirty water...well for some of us short folks but not for the taller folks. Then the 2nd obstacle set us for the remaining ones filled with mud mud mud! I must say tho I'm sure we would have been way hotter had we not been set up why the mud to provide sum protection because it was scorching heat that day at Kualoa Ranch. My fiancé and I did not train at all other than working our part time job pulling heavy Dolly's. Luckily that actually came into play when we had to do the tire pull! That made it a cinch to so! I do wonder what it would have been like had we trained somewhat for it how much better we would have done. But 84 out of 100 for out of shape couch potatoes we weren't too shabby I would say! Fun times, great to be reminded of being a kid again playing in the dirt! Definitely recommend trying it at least once! Or maybe next year and train a little more! read more

Spartan Sprint Hawaii - Mud is fun! - Active Life Near Me - Kaaawa, Hawaii

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I've never really liked running. I played sports for 3 seasons throughout highschool but I always hated running to train.... Since I moved to Hawaii I've ran the Warrior Dash x2 and the Color Run once, both 5 k races. I still hate running but I enjoy testing the inner beast in me to see how well I can conquer the obstacle courses and of course....the free t-shirt. The prices of the Spartan Race increased at an astounding speed. $70, with still a month + to go till the race ....So we decided to forgo it....till we saw the groupon. $40/person for a 4 person team. HELL YAH! Our heat was at 1:45 so we left town around 10:30 to pick up snacks on the way, which turned out to be a good idea cause it took us about 45 minutes to get from the Foodland at Kaneohe to Kualoa Ranch.... After getting there. we walked literally 1.5 mile just to get the race...Talk about a pre-warmup. Since we were one of the last heats, registration was a breeze and we didn't have to do much waiting. We did miss our heat though due to traffic and the long walk and ended up going at 2. Now on to the RACE. If you go on the website, you won't read anything about the obstacles that are on the course, so you can't really mentally prepare yourself for what you can do, can't do, have to do on the course. Yes, its a little scary but you can do itt! For starters there are 21 obstacles....I won't go into each one but I'll highlight what they were. You'll have to do about 4-5 wall climbs...Its a good idea to have a teammate help you on this one....Especially the 8ft wall. Luckily there were foot holds on the left side to help you. Height and upper arm strength will help you on this. One of our teammates was about 6ft and literally jumped over the wall like it was nothing. You'll have to pull some tires/cement blocks, up and around a circle and carry a sand bag up a hill.... You'll face some net climbing. Just be careful you go slow on these parts, easy place to roll/sprain your ankle. The most challenging obstacles not only for myself and my team but for I'm pretty sure everyone who competed the race were the barbed wire obstacle and the rope climb at the end Just imagine crawling through stinky, warm, gross mud under barbed wire getting screamed at by one of the volunteers. NOT FUN. Oh and don't forget your knees getting scratched up by little rocks in the mud. The rope climb was close to impossible. All of the guys on my team are fit and active either playing sports, doing Cross Fit, gym rats, one is a Navy Diver - working out at work...and still none of them got close to completing this obstacle. You are waist high in mud and then forced to climb up a rope (some w/ notches, some w/out) and then you must ring a bell at the top. If you fail you have to do 30 burpess and literally EVERYONE was doing them. I saw maybe one person get to the top of the rope. All in all, it was a fun race. Definitely harder the Warrior Dash not only because of the obstacles but because the running part of the course is on an incline. So yes, you will probably walk. We did. Honestly I saw more people walking then running. I started running 2 weeks before the race, one of our teammates was still drunk w/ 1 hr of sleep and none of us had really trained but we did alright. We finished in around 1hr 35 minutes, the fastest team being 45 minutes and the slowest being 4 hrs +. I didn't mind walking because it gave me more time to take in the absolutely breath taking scenery that is Kualoa Ranch. Doesn't get better than running in that beauty. For those who thought Warrior Dash was easy, challenge yourself and sign up for the Spartan Race I assure you you'll give out a sigh of relief after crossing that finish line. :) read more

Ive got to say, any run at Kualoa Ranch is always an awesome experience. Kualoa also hosts the Xterra Trail runs too! Ive got to say that the Spartan Family does a great job in putting up an awesome obstacle course, especially since its their first time in Hawaii. Obviously, people will compare the Spartan Sprint with Warrior Dash. I have to tell you that even though they are the same lengths, the difficulty in Spartan obstacles are much more difficult than Warrior Dash. The run itself is a challenge because it is A LOT of uphill running. Previous reviews did sum up the obstacles really well. There were walls that increased in height. Youve got 4ft, 5ft, 6ft, 7ft, and even 8ft walls as the first obstacles fairly close to the start of the race. In no particular order, these are the other obstacles, climbing up a cargo net attached to the side of the mountain, dragging a chain link with bricks attached to the end of it, dragging a tire to one end and pulling it back with a rope attached to it, monkey bars, carrying a sandbag uphill and back down, running through a hilly mudpit which is so thick that people lost their shoes in it!, crawling under a lengthy mudpit with barbed wire, scaling a wall like spiderman, the muddy slanted wall which you need to pull yourself up with a rope, the dreaded rope climb that id estimate at 15-20 feet high, and of course the famous firepit jump before you cross the finish line with gladiators guarding it with jousting sticks! It was an awesome run! Fun for many, and doing it with a team will benefit you greatly! The quality of the pictures they took are awesome! I'll see you guys next year at the Spartan Super! read more

LOVE this run! REALLY tough for the Beast. No Bus makes it a 3 star at that point in the day but I love Spartan so much and this race so much I still gave it 5. They WILL get the bus thing figure out for next year I hear.... read more

I don't know how I talked myself into signing up for another mud run, but I'm glad I did it. I don't think I would've gotten through some of these obstacles (i.e. 8 ft. walls) without the help of my comrades. 21 obstacles covering 3 miles inside Kualoa Ranch. Pretty crazy stuff. Still think Swamp Romp was a bit more challenging but it was still an amazing experience indeed. read more

Beautiful Race, Poorly Managed, Worst Customer Service Ever I've run the full trifecta both years they brought it to Hawaii. The course is beautiful (it's Hawaii, duh), but that's about the extent of the positives. The course set up and management is poor - no variety in obstacles, too few water stations, and really barely enough obstacles to meet the minimum Spartan race requirements for each distance. The "festival" grounds are poorly supported and set up. The first year they had maybe one food truck and ran out of water both on the course and at the finish, and couldn't even be bothered to get a liquor license for beer trucks. The second year, maybe 3 food trucks, still no beer, and the beast course was so poorly managed that racers waited on the trail up the ridge for 45 min+ to go about a mile. This is the third year they are holding it, they doubled the prices (which is unlikely to result in any improvements) and made the registration 100X more complicated. When I made an honest mistake and registered for the 2 longest distance races on the same day, I immediately (within 10 minutes) reached out to their customer support team, asking that they please shift my registration for one race to the next day (since I obviously can't complete both of those races in one day). Instead of actually making any sort of attempt to help me, I was brushed off and told that I would have to pay an extra fee to have my registration moved to a different day. While I understand that Spartan Race Hawaii can't move people between races on a whim if people change their minds about what day to race, the fact that they absolutely REFUSED to help me with my registration mistake when I had already paid over $200 to race with them, is just criminal. If I wasn't already registered, I absolutely would not be racing with them this year. I will never again recommend that any of my friends support Spartan Race Hawaii. read more

Spartan races take place all over the world. Figured coming out to the Spartan Beast would be a great challenge & awesome since it was being held in Hawaii. The location it is held at is the sight of where Jurassic World was filmed, ATVs take tours, along w/ hikes taking place. I was pretty disappointed by this course as it was about 75-80% was not runnable. There were areas where only 1 person could take the route at a time & due to the terrain being muddy you couldn't run down as you would fall. This created a bottleneck.There was a point as to where there was a rope to help you get down & it broke during competitors going down. On the Spartan website it said the fastest time for this 14 mile race was 3 hours. There was another area where the course was through a stream which you couldn't run in, I know since I rolled my ankle. I would like to know how many other people were on the course at that time & if the terrain was the same as I experienced. Generally there are supposed to be about 30 obstacles & I believe barely half of that was covered on the course & most of them were the same as earlier ones. I've done several other Spartan races & by far this one was the worse. Volunteers & medics didn't know what mile we were on, how far a station was, no staff at obstacles to explain penalities, etc. I finished the race, but not in the time I expected due to the terrain being unable to run on it 100% of the time. read more

Longest 5K of my life... And I snuck in a second time around! Loved it and will run it any chance I get.

Completed Spartan Sprint today at Aloha Stadium, it was a blast. This year it was a completely different venue without all the mud ;) alot of cardio running up and down stairs around the entire stadium. Fun obstacles and the chance for spectators to see all the action was really great. My only complaint was that I wish the music would have been consistent and louder. Favorite obstacle: too many to choose.. Worst obstacle: rope climb! My group and I will definitely be back for more! read more

Spartan Sprint Hawaii - You'll know at the finish line! - Active Life Near Me - Kaaawa, Hawaii

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