Spartan 21k Beast in Scotland Review

Last weekend, I completed my first Spartan Race, a 21k obstacle course in Edinburgh. After months training on monkey bars and pull ups, along with building up my own running, here’s how I got on!

I’m not the most descriptive person in the world. It was pretty challenging trying to accurately describe these obstacles, so I have a full video break down HERE.

Unlike most events, where I do get a sense of nervousness (a deep breath away from excitement, of course), I was just flat out excited for this one. Zero time expectation, I was happy with the work I had put in on pull ups and grip strength… I would’ve liked to be a bit fitter for running, but I knew I could run a 21k. As long as there was no rain, I was going to be happy out. Actually, I don’t even think the rain could have deterred me from this one!

Wasn’t going to stay clean and dry for long…

Arriving on Sunday morning with Niamh, I found this event had a proper festival feel. Food vendors everywhere, I already had my post-race meal picked out in “Holy Duck!”. That alone distracted me from the hill climb to start the 21k.

And that’s definitely something that I didn’t take into account enough in my training, the terrain. There were so many river crossings, changes of elevation, through forest trails, fields and even sand!

With my fitness not at 100%, I was taking my time with running. I would slow down, even walk, when I got near a challenging obstacle. My goal was to have as few fails on the obstacles as possible, rather than a faster overall time.

I wanted to enjoy this one.

A hill start to start a 21k?! And a bit of a Where’s Waldo for where I am in this pic, definitely not at the front!

The first few events were your typical obstacles, up and under walls, hurdles and balance beams. Then came the dunk wall. Not hard, physically. But when you’re not great with water, like I am, it’s no fun being fully submerged in mucky water to get under an obstacle before progressing for a few kms through forest trails. If someone was not behind me, I’d still be at that station, psyching myself out to get under.

Cargo nets and more trails followed, before the first real tough obstacle of the event: Twister

After the dunk wall, I felt like I had no grip in my hands, and poor technique at the halfway point of this one caused me to drop and suffer with a penalty lap before a few more kms of running… and a lot of time to think about where I went wrong.

I was annoyed with myself for failing so much that I wanted to go back and try again. But on we went.

’Bender’ was my chance to redeem myself. Imagine a row of pull up bars with each one higher, and instead of going straight up, it’s angled back so you’re working harder against gravity. The first bar was roughly 7 feet up. I jumped, pulled up, leaned back to grab the next bar and repeat. Another 2 bars followed before I realised that I could use my legs to step on the first pole! It was awkward swinging back over the last pole, but a handy descent down and back running

After the parallel bars, I would meet another water obstacle in ‘Ape Hanger"‘

With a 5-foot drop into 5 feet of water, I was genuinely worried about having a panic attack (it had happened only once before, when I was submerged).

Seeing the person in front disappear in the water as he dropped after the first few rungs exacerbated that fear.

I stepped out of the queue

Knowing a full podcast was due on this event, I couldn’t not try…

Eventually, I got to the start of the obstacle again, two looping ladders of 5-65 rungs each, moving as soon as you grabbed them due to your weight. This was not going to be easy. And just like the ‘Bender’ obstacle, I knew I was going to heavily rely on my arms rather than technique. With arms flexed, I moved as fast as I could, the rungs getting lower then elevating up. There was a bit of a gap between the first and second ladder, and I couldn’t quite pull up as high to catch the last rung of the first ladder. I swung across to the other ladder, barely holding on.

Arms still flexed, I made my way to safety. The absolute wave of relief that came over me.

Shamelessly, I let out a roar.

From there on, the obstacles didn’t seem as spaced out. A lot of great, challenging ones, involving a lot of hanging like the ‘Tyrolean Traverse’, ‘Olympus’, ‘Beater’, and jumping over 8 foot walls, resulted in a lot of people having to do penalty laps and gave me more gratification when I was able to ring the bell on the other side and advance.

The running had slowed, and walking was longer before and after each station, but I was really enjoying it. I was a little surprised at how much the obstacles took it out of me and made it harder to run, even if they were mostly arms.

The last 2k or so had a lot of obstacles bunched together along with carries. Different types of cargo netting to climb, inverted walls etc. Niamh was at this spectator section to video a lot of it… including a massive fail at the spear station HERE.

“Come out to the coast, we get together, have a few laughs”

The last 500m involved climbing under a barb wire, walking up a slip wall like Batman & Robin from the 60s and a multi-rig of rings, bars and a battle rope to swing across.

Just hanging out

With only two obstacles failed (‘Twister’ and ‘Spear Throw’), I reached the last obstacle of the day… apart from the fire jump at the end… ‘Monkey Bars"‘, Bars of different heights to swing across. The one I had trained for the most!

And yet…

With the rain coming down, tiredness creeping in and 99 other excuses, I managed to get over half way, with one big swing up to grab a bar… but on the last challenging bar to reach I felt my hand slip of the bar as I came crashing down to failure and a miserable penalty lap

The penalty laps were only 200m or so, but that one, in the pouring rain, felt like a lap of shame!

A fire jump finished the event in a little over 3 hours and 10 mins… and, for the most part, a really enjoyable 3 plus hours that I would definitely do again.

Fire guy…

How I would train differently:
1. More hills and terrain with my running

2. More running between obstacles, hangs, lunges, pull ups etc

3. The Monkey Bars that I trained on were great, but they were too close to each other. I could rely on grip strength and stubbornness to get across. But some of the obstacles require more technique as they are not as close.

4. Longer running. 21k trail and 21k road run are not the same thing.

I’m sure I could add a lot more to this!

But overall, I would definitely recommend it, and I am looking forward to the 5k version, with 20 obstacles, in Limerick in August