If you had asked me ten years ago if I thought I’d be running through waist-high mud or carrying 75-pound sandbags up and down hills, I would have called you both crazy and delusional. Ten years ago, however, I approached a line of rocks and fire, leapt to the other side, threw my hands into the air, and stood there with tears streaming down my face.
At age fifty, I had conquered a goal I never imagined I’d even consider, let alone accomplish. Running a Spartan Race was certainly not on my bingo card.
Even after nine months of training, I had no real idea what I was getting myself into. The moment I entered the start corral—which, by the way, requires climbing over a six-foot wall just to get inside—I knew I was in for a battle. An uphill battle. Literally.
I climbed the first hill and immediately saw stars. My lungs looked around and collectively asked, “What in the world is happening here?”
Somewhere ahead of me I heard one of my trainers yell, “Where the F is Karen? Keep breathing, Karen! Keep breathing!”
And so I did.
For the next four hours and fifty-one minutes, I just kept breathing.
I rolled under barbed wire and sliced open my forehead. I commando crawled across rocks and left pieces of skin behind on my elbows and forearms. I swung from monkey bars, missed a grip midway through, and came dangerously close to donating a tooth to the course. Every obstacle seemed designed to convince me to quit.
I didn’t.
I kept moving forward until I eventually reached that finish line and jumped over the fire.
The following year, I cut my time in half.
Three years later, I completed that same course in just over an hour.
Progress.
Forward.
Proof that we are capable of far more than we give ourselves credit for.
Eventually, I upgraded to races that stretched close to twenty miles. I pushed my body far beyond limits I once thought were fixed. Along the way, I learned something important: life doesn’t stop when things get hard. It keeps moving. And because it keeps moving, so must we.
My Spartan adventures are well documented throughout the pages of this blog, so there’s no need to relive every mud pit, bruise, rope climb, or bucket carry. The real message after ten years isn’t about obstacle racing at all.
It’s about refusing to stop.
When an obstacle blocks your path, find another way around it. If you aren’t strong enough yet, train harder. If the answer is no, keep searching for a yes. Don’t settle for average simply because the first attempt didn’t work. Explore every avenue. Push every door. Exhaust every possibility before you ever consider giving up.
More than anything, I wanted my children to see that resilience isn’t something you talk about—it’s something you demonstrate. Life will knock you down. It will throw mud in your face, steal your breath, and occasionally leave you bleeding. But quitting can never be the automatic response.
Lately, I’ve scaled down from course racing to station racing, and that’s okay. As one of my closest peeps recently reminded me, “You’ve done it already. Let’s concentrate on new contests for you to win.”
And maybe that’s the lesson this decade of Spartan racing was really trying to teach me. The goal was never the mud, the medals, or even the fire jump. The goal was becoming the kind of person who believes she can tackle hard things. The contests may look different now, but the mindset remains the same. Keep breathing. Keep moving. Keep finding a way forward. Because whether you’re climbing a mountain, carrying a sandbag, or facing whatever life places in your path, the finish line isn’t where the victory happens. The victory happens the moment you decide not to quit. ❤️💙💚💜
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