Jacksonville Spartan Sprint

Our top elite male and female racers, John Burkle and Sarah Rich, are en route to conquer the Spartan National Series. Their first stop was the Jacksonville, Florida Sprint where JB and Sarah won gold on saturday and Sarah podiumed again sunday taking silver in her age group. Since I was not there to witness their greatness, I figured It would be better for you to hear right from the source. So without further ado, here are some reflections from JB: 

At first look, the Jacksonville Sprint course leads one to believe it's going to be incredibly flat and wildly fast. But the massive amounts of ankle deep mud and waist deep water crossing made for quite the plot twist.

The course started out at a breakneck speed of sub 4 min/mile, then slowed to a more comfortable 6 min/mile after the first hay bail. Almost immediately after the first 2 obstacles the terrain changed. Mud and a good quarter mile in waist deep water, made for a challenging forward progression. Once out of the water, we jumped into the Z-Wall which became a far more treacherous obstacle than usual due to our mud caked wet shoots. Up next, wet Monkey Bars and then the big kicker, the sandbag. This obstacle was rather tough for although the bags weren’t terribly heavy, the carry consisted of 100% ankle deep mud. It was at this point that the lead positions started to change. I went into the sandbag 3rd and came out in 2nd but along the way dropped to 6th. 

After exiting the mud and dropping the bags, we raced off towards the halfway point, the  muddy ground making it hard to get good speed. Eventually, that mud dissipated and we got over the inverted wall, A-Frame, and the Spear. New this race was a penalty loop rather than burpees at the spear throw. I went into the spear pretty much neck to neck with the top 5 and was 1st to exit.  From that point on, it was an all out sprint. The Bucket carry was flat and as curvy as a race track, not to mention narrow. At the multi-rig, I took a conservative effort to save energy and swung through, yet was passed here by Jeremy as he took a faster approach. But because of my conservative effort, I was able to sprint by him immediately after and take back the AG 35-39 lead. All that was left was a long uphill barbed wire crawl, rope climb, vertical cargo, then rolling mud and then the dunk wall.  Coming out of the dunk wall, I was blinded by the thick dark mud that was sticking to my eyes which made spotting the next obstacle a real challenge. The short run from Dunk Wall to Slip Wall was all mud making a run up the wall nearly impossible. Grabbing the ropes and getting over, we only had the Herc Hoist and fire jump. As I began to lower my Hoist, I noticed racers were right on my tail so a sprint for the finish solidified a first place finish by mere second.  

All in all, Spartan did a great job of breaking up the speed by throwing an insane amount of mud and water at us.  Jacksonville was a great experience, not only because of the win but because the competition was so fierce.  

The HKP team

#WEAREHARDKOUR

Written by Annaliese Allen and John Burkle