This whole blog was intended to be about the Spartan Race that Tom, his cousin Paul, and his friend Dave completed last weekend. And, for the most part, it will be.
However, I also have another thing to bring up that is close to my heart. I'm not sure if any of you know that during medical school my class lost someone. Our classmate, Xavier Engle, died a few weeks before Thanksgiving in 2014, while I was in Missoula for my surgery rotation. He was a student from Alaska that died in a tragic accident while he was doing what he loved, kayaking.
It didn't take knowing Xavier well to know that he was something special. His long time girlfriend, his life partner, Kaitlyn was most affected by this loss as she had to press on without him. As we approach graduation, the date he was supposed to be receiving his MD, it feels particularly salient that he was lost.
The UW School of Medicine Class of 2016 is trying to remember and pay respects to him long after he is gone. We are starting a scholarship fund. I hate fundraising, I hate trying to get people to dig into their pocket books. You didn't know him, you will never know him. But, if you feel inspired by his story or the love that my classmates, my family essentially, has for him, then feel free to give back to a fund that will be matched up to $10,000 by our med school dean. The goal is to set up a scholarship in his honor that will help fund future Alaska students.
As you know the debt students incur in medical school is astronomical (Tom and I totaled ours the other day--$460,000 together...). Check out his story, and the fund here:
supportuwmedicine.org/Xavier
Okay, now on to the originally intended content of this post. These boys conquered quite a feat last weekend. An 8.5 mile course with 29 obstacles. Here they are pre-race, looking quite similar to the looks that Dave and Tom had on their faces prior to the Tough Mudder race a few years ago.
While they were racing I got a chance to look at the obstacles. Here is the rope climb, an obstacle that most competitors (including the most elite) had difficulty completing. Now, the rules for the competition were that if you couldn't physically complete the obstacle you had to do burpees in exchange. That means A LOT of burpees to be done by the end of the race :)
Here's the course map. If it's intimidating...it's because it is! I had the chance to speak with some of the elite competitors who said that this was the TOUGHEST Spartan race they have ever been in. It was no joke, that's for sure.
But, I was in a BEAUTIFUL setting. Look at this view from the parking area!
Here's another obstacle where you had to lift a 115 pound bag by a rope. You couldn't back up and "walk the bag up", you had to stand in one place. Talk about killing your arms!
I wandered all around the race trying to catch a glimpse of what the guys were going through (I couldn't know where they were on the course, just when they finished...). Here's a view looking back down toward the finish line festivities.
There were a ton of kids around and they took advantage of the fact that a whole slew of adults were all in the mud, so that meant that they were allowed to get in the mud too!
Dave had to get to a wedding near Tacoma by 5 pm. The boys had a start time of 12 noon so he had to peel off and beat the clock on top of beating the course. I was able to track his progress by seeing his finish time. 4 hours flat.
The clouds rolled by, and I waited anxiously at the finish, hoping to see Tom and Paul come across the final obstacles that took up the last mile or so of the race it looked ominous and eerie at times but it was so beautiful too.
I started to get nervous around 6 PM when I still had no sign of them. I checked out the medic tent to make sure I didn't miss them getting carted off the course or something....
By 6:45 PM I could see just exactly how many participants were left by the number of bags left at the bag check. All those bags in the front? Volunteer bags. The lone bag in the background--that's Tom's.
Then, finally at 6:53 PM I caught the first glimpse of them! Exhausted, muddy (but not nearly as muddy as the were about to become), and ready to hear the final countdown and cross the finish line.
Quite a few obstacles were still in their path including these rolling hills with giant puddles between them.
The benefit of being the last competitors? The hills were much more dry than when there were hundreds of people crawling over them.
The downside? You couldn't easily slide into the puddles, and the puddles were full of who knows what after who knows how many people had waded through them (trust me, I watched them all for 3 hours...there was a lot of sweaty mess wading through them). They are clearly tougher than I am!
Action shots are the best!
Here the guys had to brace themselves for dipping their whole bodies under the barricade.
It was cold, and to be quite frank it looked miserable. But they powered through.
Tom climbed this wall like a beast. What you cant see is the front of the wall that he already scaled. it didn't have stepping ladders, it was a flat, slick wall with a rope to help you pull yourself up. This is the back of it that he is climbing down.
Then they had to go over 500 feet underneath barbed wire
Army crawling for some, rolling for some, and just flat out getting through however you could was the tactic most successful :)
As if dry crawling under the barbed wire wasn't enough, then they had to do the same but through a mud puddle!
How Tom still managed to have a smile on his face, I'll never know.
By the end, it was like to kids in a mess...a cold, slow, miserable mess (sorry, I'm biased, because it looked miserable to me!)
The agony of a true finisher is evident on Paul's face.
Like true cousins they helped hold each other up as they walked to the final challenge, picking up a 50 pound cement sphere and walking it 20 yards
It looks like Tom is just cradling this ball with love, but it turns out he's just trying to get every dry inch of his arm and sphere in contact with each other so that he had enough leverage to pick it up. He had no trouble with the weight, just with the shape and slipperiness of the darn thing!
Paul looked like he felt right at home with this one. It was like shotput on steroids.
It was a beautiful finish. All remaining volunteers gathered around the finish line and cheered them to the finish. It wasn't a technical marathon, but it was a marathon. I am so proud of them both. For Paul for continuing to step when every piece of his body was screaming at him to stop, and for Tom to have the love, courage, and patience to suggest the race, train hard for the race, and finish every single step of it with Paul.
Look at those smiling faces! Bringing it home at 7 hours 49 minutes. Whew!
Just like the tough mudder, the pile of ruined shoes was absolutely incredible. It was amazing.
We are so blessed to have bodies that move and mental will power to finish such an incredibly challenging event! Congrats to Tom, Paul, and Dave for becoming Spartan finishers!
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