The first race of the season. I was pretty excited to start the season. Chino is in southern California, a place I had never heard of. The most noteworthy thing about Chino is that someone from the show the OC was from there.

Venue: This was my least favorite venue. Though it is not the fault of Spartan Race, the venue was dry, flat, and with the wind that picked up, ended up giving miserable conditions for volunteering.

I woke up at 5:30am on Saturday, and drove the 5.5 hours to Chino. I volunteered from 1-6pm for the “Green Team,” Spartans name for picking up trash at the venue. My day started rough when I went to park and volunteers told me the parking lot was likely to get full and they directed me to the general parking. The other parking lot was only a mile or two away, but with traffic it took about 20 minutes heading back in the direction I came. 45 minutes later I ended up back at the venue. I chatted up another volunteer in line behind me, he had just come in and they let him park. Not my favorite start to a race weekend.

The day started with a slight breeze, and the wind seem to get worse with each hour, and kicking up dust as it did. I had my buff in my car, which because I couldn’t park close by; I was not able to retrieve it. By the end of my shift I had what I deem the “Chino” Cough.

The course itself was the flattest I have seen. The picture above shows what much of the course looked like. It was dry, dusty, and a pure runners dream; with flat ground for most of the race. The rig for the sprint was all rings, and they didn’t have many of the grip intensive obstacles for the sprint (e.g. monkey bars, z wall, twister, etc.). So besides having no hills, the obstacles were so easy that runners were going to do well on this course.

I ran the elite wave that started at 7:30am on Sunday. It was chilly the night before; but by 6 am the following morning it was actually warmer than the day before. At the start of the race, I quickly fell behind many competitors. I would never describe myself as a pure runner. My first race I ever ran was the 2017 Tahoe beast. I started Tahoe similar to this race falling behind in the standings early on. You can see in the screenshot that 30 minutes in, I was only 42 out of 94. Through the 17 miles of hills and tough obstacles, I was able to start passing people until I finished in 26th place.

At Chino, my pace was too slow. At each obstacle I was able to pass the 5-10 runners that were in front of me only to have them pass me again while running. My training plan is the culprit for this because I have spent the majority of my time working on hills and stairs; leaving little time to improve on straight aways.

My Sprint results were the following:

Takeaways:

I am proud to say I had my first clean race with zero burpees. My spear throw hit dead center, I think my routine I developed for this obstacle was just what I needed. In addition, even though I injured my wrist in the middle of December, I had no issues with any of the obstacles. Overall I am pleased with my how I did.

Though I didn’t place as high as I would like, I learned a few things I can do to improve my performance my next go around. My training needs more running, and my next event is a 4 hour trail race. I have decided that on Tuesdays and Thursdays I will continue to run hill or stair repeats. However, afterwards, I will run a slow jog for another 30-40 minutes to increase my mileage and hopefully my running ability. I am also adding another easy mileage run on Sundays. Making these changes should help to improve my results as the season progresses.