Spartan

A friend, Ed Gendreau, did the 3.7 mile version of the Spartan race yesterday. The official video makes it look like a lot of fun.

After watching the video, and also a couple videos of specific races, I really wanted to try this. Luckily, the feeling passed after about four hours.

This kind of thing is always more fun to contemplate than to actually participate in. When you actually get onto the course, the reality of the mud, cold water, barbed wire, mosquitoes, and so on set in and tend to dampen your initial enthusiasm.

Ed said it wasn't that much fun, and he sustained a bad cut and possible shoulder injury. But, he's planning to do it again next year. (Pump a guy full of testosterone and he has a hard time resisting a challenge.)

Spartan seems to be a ripoff of the Tough Mudder. They are very similar in concept and in terms of the obstacles that have to be overcome.

Evidently it's a very profitable enterprise. The entry fee was over $119, the unavoidable parking fee was $10, and you had to pay $5 to check your bag. They ran heats of up to 300 people from 8AM to 5:30 PM all weekend, and a total of 8418 people participated. So even assuming an average of two people per car, the organizers took in over a million dollars for the weekend.

That's a lot of people paying a lot of money merely to be put through some unpleasantness.

So instead of doing it, I'll probably just sit at home and think about how good I would have been at it had I actually done it.