This race was once again in the same location in Littlefield, AZ, 1 hour 24 mins from our house in Vegas. The location:
970 East Peppermill Palm Blvd
Littlefield, AZ 86432
Since the race is (perhaps unofficially now?) referred to as Spartan Las Vegas, they ran the event on Pacific time, though the location was technically in Mountain time.
Sean and I started the race with the 8:45am wave, shortly after the elite and age group runners and whatever other specialist groups they had running in the morning had all taken off. It wasn't terribly busy by Spartan race standards at the time but it picked up quite a bit a little later in the day, maybe around midday.
I had zero motivation for this race as we already did the Super here last year and I'm not a big arms person as is. I think Sean and I both did well though despite my laziness. :p In fact, I made it through the twister! It took a toll on my hands but was better than burpees by far! Sean and I both had to do burpees for the spear throw again though. Fortunately, that was the only obstacle we failed. The lake was painfully cold imo this time but it didn't bug Sean. As I approached the finish, I found Sean waiting for me and cheering me on. I was actually taking my time quite a bit at that point as I had no idea I was about a minute or two from the finish line and actually didn't know if I might have a couple more miles to do. (They don't necessarily make a habit of telling you course length before the start of a Spartan race - just that it's AT LEAST a certain number of miles.) Nice surprise to have it over so soon! As for Sean's and my results:
Sean:
Overall: 18/2,609
Gender: 17/1,532
Male 30-34y/o: 5/304
Me:
Overall: 266/2,609
Gender: 37/1,077
Female 25-29y/o: 8/204
Once done, we got showered to the best of our abilities using the icy water hoses Spartan always has set up for us. Then we raided the freebies in the festival area as much as possible before our volunteer shift.
As avid money-savers, we never pay for Spartan races. In fact, Spartan's paid us the last couple of times! To clarify, Spartan offers volunteer shifts which can be completed in exchange for free race entry as well as other free goodies (t-shirts/tech tops, lunch, snacks). A few of these shifts are ALSO paid! When we can, we opt for the paid ones. These past couple of times, that translated to 5 hours of trash clean-up in exchange for $55 each, a free race entry each, lunch and snacks, volunteer shirts, and TONNNNS of freebies we collected during our shift. As for the freebies, no we didn't steal anything; we just rescued buttloads of shoes, clothing, beverages, samples, recyclables, and whatever else was going and took it home! A lot of the stuff was muddy as hell but nothing a water hose and a washing machine couldn't fix. Also, lots of booths simply didn't want to take home all the samples and products they were giving away and selling at the end of the day so they just handed it all over to us, trashed it, or left it behind. Most people were super psyched to have us relieve their burdens. Lol By the end of our shift, our car literally couldn't fit anything else in it. It was full to the brim. Sure, we'd had to do some mini trash-digging but, in addition to all of our standard profits for volunteering, we managed to find clothes, shoes, food, snacks, and much more for ourselves, family members, charity, recycling, online selling, and maybe even yard sale-ing! I'm sure we'd find ourselves a couple hundred dollars richer by the end of it all and feel better for saving the environment a bit as well. :)
To make matters even better, we'd receive another of those awesome Virgin River & Casablanca flyers through the mail LITERALLY the day before the race. What that meant was that we had at least $10 in free play, a free hotel room, free food vouchers, and other freebies up for grabs in Mesquite, NV, minutes away from where we were at the race and on the way towards home. Obviously, we cashed in! We got a free room at Casablanca, got showered there, used all the deals we could manage in both casinos, soaked our legs in the hot tub with quite a few other Spartan runners who were staying at the hotel, used our food vouchers to get a discount on a couple of Chinese meals in the cafe at Casablanca, rewarded our hard day with lots of drinking and movie-watching in our room, and actually wound up breaking about even as far as Mesquite hotel expenses (getting meals, hot tub, room, and all for free) when we gambled our freeplay (literally gambling $0 of our own money)! Not bad, huh? Only hard part was waking up the next morning to drive home and sort all the free stuff we'd acquired!
No comments:
Post a Comment