I’m back to Spartan training…this time in preparation for the Midwest Spartan Sprint outside Chicago. Oh yeah, there’s also the warm-up Warrior Dash next month in Tennessee. With these both being short events, my non-strength training days are all about increasing my speed. I’m still using Insanity Asylum to increase my VO2 max (and for the sheer brutality of it), but I’ll still run 1 day a week. If you’re a new reader of this blog, you’ll quickly learn that I don’t like to run just for the sake of it. I can’t stand the tediousness of it and boredom sets in really quickly. I do love obstacle racing though, therefore I have to run some just for training purposes. Now that I’ve digressed, back to the story.

I embarked on another 4:30 a.m. hill sprint routine earlier this week. It was quite dark out as I made the initial run down to the Kentucky River where the hill sprints would begin. My eyes had adjusted pretty well and I could make out most shapes that I saw along the way. That was until I met a car coming in my direction. The headlights (on high beam) temporarily blinded me and after he passed I could barely see the highway. As my eyes slowly started to adjust I saw a large, lumpy shape ahead and to my right. At first I couldn’t tell if it was moving or if it was still. What could it be? My first guess was “a bear”. Don’t ask me why this came into my head, but it did. It was the size of a bear and the shape did somewhat resemble one. As it turned out, it was just a small boulder that had come off the hill during a past mud slide, but that didn’t stop my thought process. What if that had really been a bear? What would I have done if it came after me? Can I outrun a bear? I’m not sure because I think bears can run pretty quickly. I might have extra incentive to outrun him and that would definitely help with my speed training. How far would I have to run until I was safe? Tree climbing is out because I’ve seen tv shows of bears climbing trees. What about hand to paw combat? That just didn’t seem like a very good idea at all. Too bad I don’t have a Spartan spear to carry with me. I exhibited pretty good spear-tossing ability at the Beast and I think I could hit a bear if it was going to attack me. If I did that though, would I get in trouble with the game warden? I don’t have a bear hunting license and I’m pretty sure they don’t even exist in Kentucky. Are there any state laws requiring a license for spear-carrying? So, that brought me right back to the first option of trying to outrun it. Another good reason to continue speed training and that was exactly what I did for the next 45 minutes.