This past Saturday, June 17th of 2017, I completed my first Spartan Race. I did the Spartan Sprint with several family members and friends and it was just an amazing experience.
And it wasn’t amazing to me because everything went smoothly and as planned. It was amazing because it was really, really hard and I did it. The community, the comraderie and the overall energy of the event was something that really needs to be experienced.
As I was heading into the last week of training and through the day after I completed the race I was reflecting back and thinking about what I learned through the whole experience and how this goal changed me.
Why Would I Sign Up for a Spartan Race?
First I have to thank my sister Kerri who on Thanksgiving Day in 2016 came up to talk to me as she and her family were getting ready to leave. She announced to me that she had read my book Accomplished and had made a commitment.
I was overjoyed because one thing I’ve learned for my own happiness is not to expect family members to be as into my career and business as I am. Any support I get from them is great.
So when my sister made this announcement I was touched and I asked what she committed to. During the day her husband had been talking about his recent experience doing the Spartan Stadium Sprint at Fenway Park so I should not have been surprised when Kerri declared that she was going to do her first Spartan Race in June.
Caught up in the moment I blurted out, “I’ll run it with you!”
Being a woman of integrity, even after the reality of what I had just done had started to settle in over the next few days I got online and registered myself for the race.
And knowing what I know about big scary goals, and my own need for external accountability, in the next month I told anyone who would listen that I was running my first Spartan Race in June.
The other reality was I was getting out of shape. I ran a marathon in 2006 and managed to continue to work out with my personal trainer, run and do boot camp classes and yoga even after starting my business in 2010.
However, my time and resources were seriously depleted when I was preparing to launch this podcast. In 2015 I was no longer working out with my personal trainer and getting to the boot camp classes and yoga felt like too much of a time commitment.
Pair that with eating on the go and resorting to a cheese and cracker dinner each night because I didn’t have the desire or energy to prepare and clean up a home cooked meal.
Training for this race forced me to take my health and fitness more seriously, to get in the workout even when I felt there wasn’t enough time and to say no to things that are not serving me, my health, my money or my peace of mind.
That’s still a work in progress. That means I need to set another really big goal to support me in this.
How I've Used Spartan Racing to Conquer Fear and More
Making the time, doing the workouts, and feeling intimidated have not been easy. But it has been good.
My life is more balanced and I am healthier and more confident as a result.
In my “reflecting back” process the word “fear” kept coming to me. I learned a lot about fear and had many intimate up-close and personal moments with my own fears since beginning this.
There were fears of sacrificing time in my business to make time for training – the very fear that caused me to be out of shape in the first place.
There were mortal fears of getting injured by falling, pulling a muscle, twisting an ankle, etc.
Then there were fears of looking stupid, out of shape, intimidated, and weak.
And get this one: the fear of feeling afraid. I’m afraid to be afraid.
Oh my God, that one landed like a boulder on my chest and the consequences of this fear are still revealing themselves.
I don’t want to be afraid to feel fear anymore so I captured for you here a few things I have learned about fear while I was training for and competing in this Spartan Race.
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