Spartan Strong

When I wrote my original post about the Spartan Race, I knew I would write about it again. I held back because I felt like I had two different stories to tell. The Spartan ideology is dynamic, multi-faceted. The physical aspect is obvious. So, my first post focused on the toll the race took on my body. I talked about the obstacles, and the aches and bruises. There's a mental aspect, as well. I touched on that; the memory obstacle, the logistics. I also wrote about the social aspect, the idea that helping one another and encouraging fellow racers is almost a part of the race. What I didn't, couldn't, share in that first post, is how emotionally taxing it was for me.

I figured I would write about it someday, late at night, after a few glasses of wine. I'm a member of a writing group on Facebook, though, and when our moderator announced a five day writing challenge, I knew I wanted to write about the Spartan Race from an emotional perspective. Some stories just have to be told. It is the only story I had in me at that moment. So, I dug deep, much deeper than this little blog typically delves, to talk about what went on in my head while I trudged my way to becoming a Spartan. The goal was to keep it at less than seven hundred words. It was hard to pack what I really wanted to say into such a small box, but I feel like I did it justice enough that I don't need to write about it again. While I feel insanely vulnerable sharing this, I'm hoping I'll find it cathartic, once all is said and done. That being said, here's the piece I worked on for the challenge.

Sometimes, I forget I’m fat. As strange as that sounds, it’s true. I don’t feel like a fat person. I don’t think of myself that way. Occasionally, someone points it out. They may cleverly disguise their criticism as a joke about how my breasts sag, or how short my shorts are, but I rarely entertain those thoughts, or those people. Other times, I do feel fat. I feel people looking at me, judging me. The self-consciousness can be crippling.

When I registered for the Spartan Race, the thrill of a new adventure and the excitement of doing something extreme, distracted me from the logistics involved in swinging my two-hundred-forty-pound ass across fifteen feet of rope, hoops, and pipe. This is just one of the twenty-three obstacles we encountered on the four-and-a-half-mile course. I fell twice, then my friends dropped me. The lines backed up. Dozens of people stood there, watching me fail. In my head, they scoffed at me, the fat girl with the audacity to show up to an athletic event.

The pain I felt didn’t have anything to do with the previous obstacles, or the fibromyalgia, or the cramp shooting through my calf. This hurt like being six-years old and my dad telling me my birthday is just another day. It hurt like eating a raw onion because it’s the only thing in the kitchen, apart from the beer and cat food. It’s the kind of pain you feel once, and then for the rest of your life; the pain of inadequacy, and humiliation. This pain digs chunks out of your soul and no matter how many tacos I shovel in my mouth, no matter how many cartons of ice cream I pack down my throat, I never fill that emptiness. Standing there, fat and incapable, hurt like every time I wasn’t good enough.

As I walked off the cramp, two able-bodied Spartans approached and offered to help me across the obstacle. These were real Spartans, tall and toned; not like me, a fat pretender making a mockery of their sport. I wanted to run away, hide in the brush until everyone left, then walk back to the car so I could ugly cry in relative privacy. No one believed I could do this, anyway. Everyone knows I’m fat. Everyone knew I would fail.

There are different kinds of strength, though. I’m the kind of strong that keeps going even when I’m hurt. I’m the kind of strong that gets up and tries again after failing a dozen times. I’m the kind of strong that attempts the impossible, not because I believe I can do impossible things, but because it’s fun to try. I walked back to the start of the line. The Spartan women carried me, I carried all that hurt, and together we completed the obstacle.

I struggled many times that day. When I couldn’t carry the bucket of rocks, I nearly gave up. When I fell off the wall because I couldn’t support my weight on the little wooden blocks, I hated myself. When it took four Spartans to push and pull me over an inverted wall, the embarrassment almost crushed me. I picked the pain up when I had to, I put it down when I could, over and over that day. That’s how I made it to the finish line. That’s how a fat girl, with the audacity to show up, became a Spartan.

This race taught me so much. It showed me I’m strong, Spartan strong, in ways that matter more than how many pull-ups I can do.  I learned to focus on the process, not the problem. The biggest lesson, the most important one, is that we’re all just trying to get through the obstacles life puts in our way. If we work together, help each other, lend our unique strengths to one another, we’ll all make it. Maybe people did judge me that day, maybe it was all in my head. In the end, it didn’t matter. I jumped over the fire pit and crossed that finish line, fat and happy. Now, when I doubt myself, I look at my medal and I feel like I can do anything.