Death Race 2014 Updates Stream: http://www.peak.com/death-races/death-race-stream/
Death Race 2015 Registration: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/2015-death-race-tickets-12088173051
Spartan Races – The Death Race
60+ Hours & Too Many Miles
June 15th – June 18th 2012
Pittsfield, VT
The Event: The Death Race is as much a mental challenge as it is a physical beating. Hard, grueling terrain mixed with strenuous challenges and combined with a healthy dose of mind games make this event unique in the newly evolving world of obstacle races, and as far as I know it, it is unique in the more established adventure race world as well. Competitors don’t have any realistic idea about course length in miles or hours, and the only given is that they’ll have to chop wood somewhere along the line.
A lot of us are training wrong… all wrong. Not only are we not reaching our potential due to this improper training, but we can even be hampering any meaningful progress at all. This is because we train too hard. Does any of this sound like you?
- Typically you chose to run a distance for training and then run that distance as fast as you can.
- You rely more heavily on high intensity intervals than on low intensity, long sustained efforts.
- Very little if any of your training is done at such a casual pace that you could easily hold a conversation while training. This would be minutes per mile slower than your race pace.
- You do not use any effort measuring device or scale to guide your training.
If any of that describes you, then you are training wrong. Read More
I come from a traditional team athletics background, and I always picked up skill sports pretty quickly. I’m no Bo Jackson (you younger folks can Google him), but it usually doesn’t take me too long to become respectably proficient in my sport du jour, and I’ve had a lot of them since leaving school.
With endurance sports or strength sports, that’s just not the case. Athletic ability helps, but there are no shortcuts to proficiency. You’ve either put in the time training or you haven’t. Read More
Ironman Syracuse 70.3
70.3 Miles (1.2 mile swim – 56 mile bike – 13.1 mile run)
June 22nd 2014
Jamesville, NY (Syracuse)
I have angered the race gods. I’m not sure what I could have done, but they are upset, and I have felt their wrath. This was a fun race despite the universe conspiring to make it miserable for me. Read More
I only got into road cycling last June when I decided to train for a triathlon, and there were a number of things that caught me by surprise. I realized that I had been an utter asshole at times to cyclists, and I want to share how you may be an unintentional asshole too. Obviously there are some entitled cyclists that are assholes themselves, but they are in the minority. Give a cyclist the benefit of the doubt. You’ll usually be right.
1) Road cycling is scary
Listen. I’m not a wuss. I’ve jumped out of an airplane. I’ve bungeed off a 20-story bridge. I’ve stepped into boxing rings and wrestling mats to train and compete in things like boxing, MMA/Ultimate Fighting, Judo, and submission grappling. I’ve hung off cliffs climbing tall peaks at altitude with a thousand feet of air underneath me, and much more. I’m a lot more risk tolerant than most people. I feel more in danger road cycling than I have in most other situations I’ve gotten myself into. I try to forget that a distracted driver texting a smiley to a friend could kill me at any minute. It’s hard to feel safe most of the time with how most cars drive around cyclists nevermind the random rager that seems to come around every month or so. Read More
In a real world experiment, marathoners with specific fueling plan ran 11-minutes faster.
The annals of fluid- and carb-taking research are overflowing with laboratory studies, i.e., runners on a treadmill. These studies almost always show that endurance athletes perform better when they drink something and consume some carbs. In the lab. On the treadmill. Read More
I think this point strikes home a valuable lesson. We spend so much time planning for the future, but we never know what tomorrow will really bring. If there’s something you want to do, then do it now or at least start working towards it. Don’t wait until you’re “ready” or until it’s a “better time”.
Human lung and star ultrarunner Kilian Jornet has nabbed the fastest known time (FKT) for ascending and descending Alaska’s 20,237-foot Mount McKinley, completing the West Buttress route in June 2014 in a thigh-frying 11 hours, 40 minutes. Though records on McKinley are only loosely tracked, the previous FKT was 16 hours, 46 minutes, set by Ed Warren in 2013.
Peak Races 30 Mile Ultra Marathon
33+ miles in the hills of Vermont
May 31st 2014
Pittsfield, VT
This year’s Peak Ultra was to be my first “ultra distance” event where I wasn’t rucking a heavy load, doing manual labor tasks and calisthenics, and/or running through obstacles. It’s just running or as close to running as you can get while scaling steep trails and traversing through deep mud. For those that don’t know, Peak Races is the sister company to their more well-known and popular Spartan Race series. I feel the events Peak puts on are a little closer to the founders hearts, and you feel their love for these events while on course. They put on a 500, 200, 100, 50, 30, and 15 mile race all at the same time. The 30 and 50 milers share a large portion of their courses. The larger distances did 10 mile loops on the mountain by Riverside Farm. Read More
Tire Guys Death Race Training
12 Hours
February 4th 2012
Lincoln, RI
I was a little confused as to where this put this review. Is it an event? Is it just a training camp? My confusion stemmed from the fact that this little “training camp” blew away all the full blown events that I’ve done. It’s run by the infamous Tire Guys. They got this name by attempting the Spartan Beast last year while carrying a giant tractor tire. They are brothers, Death Race finishers, and they own their fitness training company called Outer Limits Fitness. (for those not familiar with the Spartan Death Race visit: http://www.youmaydie.com)They’ve put together a series of training camps to train prospective Death Racers and prepare them for the rigors of the race. This was their 12-hour version. While other camps focussed on trying to get people to finish, this camp was to be 12 hours long with only a few breaks, and if you wanted to quit, they won’t stop you. It sounded like it’d be a pretty miserable time. I’m in. This is how it went down.
Will Work For Adventure 