Show Biz, New York BajiQuan, The Killington Spartan Beast!
I returned from Denali beat up, but victorious and relieved. I didn't have much time to bask in the glow of success however. My next challenge was on the horizon: The Spartan Beast! The Spartan Beast is an obstacle course race, THE obstacle course race. Apparently it's the original form of the Spartan Race, held in Killington Vermont. An almost 14 mile grueling run straight up a mountain while doing every manner of obstacle at high altitude. Entering wasn't really my decision; My buddy George runs these races all the time and had decided, for some reason, that I should do it. He signed us up after we were in Chicago. The first two times he ran the Killington Beast he cleared it in 5 hours 50 minutes, both times. He wanted us to shoot for 6-ish hours. I would be happy to finish without injury. I had never done something quite like it so I would need to thoroughly prepare... except there was one problem. The race was in 3 months and Denali had totally wiped me out. Aside from the month on the mountain leaving me deconditioned, I was so messed up I couldn't even get back to properly training right away. I couldn't even wear shoes because my feet were so mangled and my lungs were still messed up from the High Altitude Pulmonary Edema. All I could do the first couple weeks after I got back was chill out and heal. I saw the people I knew in town and caught up with them.
One of my old roommates who had moved out several months prior had come over. He had broken up with his live-in girlfriend but was still living in the apartment with her. He asked if he could stay at my place, in the room I was thinking of turning into an office if I was unlucky enough to land a gig that required such a thing. He was only looking to stay “for a month or two” until he found an apartment. I was clear that I didn't want to live with anyone ever again or for anyone to live with me. For me it seemed like a maximum cost with a minimal benefit, but I told him he could stay a couple months while he looked for a new place. It wasn't smooth. On top of our living styles being exactly opposite and incompatible, his terrible memory was a liability. He would forget the refrigerator door was open and just wander away leaving it open, sometimes for hours before I would find it. Each time I made a bigger deal out of it. There were notes taped everywhere to remind him of things but it didn't seem to help. The day I found the refrigerator open three times in the same day I told him if he couldn't even be trusted to shut the refrigerator he wasn't welcome to stay there. His “a month or two” would wind up lasting five months.
While I was finishing healing and restarting my regular training, I thought it might be good to start hunting for a legitimate job. Then a major television network contacted me. I got a message that they were casting some new reality adventure show and a casting director had come across my stuff online and thought I'd be perfect. I got an invitation to apply, so I did. Less than 12 hours later I had a call from the casting director. The show turned out to be “Deal or No Deal Island.” We chatted about my adventures and training. “I'll be honest, your life sounds awesome, and you seem wildly over qualified for this.” We wound up chatting for over an hour. His final question was kind of odd though: “Standard question, feel free not to answer ...” yes? “Well, we'll be out on an island for 30 days or so without technology or contact with the outside world...” OK. “ So, like, if you had a type, what would you say your type is?” What? “ Like are you into blonds? Brunets? …?” uhh... I guess I like all the shapes and colors, but people have told me I favor brunets. “Brunets. Got it.” Then he set me up with a zoom meeting with the head casting producer. I wondered what the relevance of the “type” question was. Were they importing whores for people to do between takes? Was I getting reverse Weinstein-ed, and I'd be forced to bang some chick? Where they just trying to generate chemistry for more views? No clue.
My zoom meeting went even better than the phone interview. The guy seemed genuinely impressed and confused by my life. “You're perfect for stuff like this. How have you never been on TV or movies? You're MADE for this stuff!” I explained I had so many “almosts” but they just kept falling through. “Wow, you do seem over qualified for this … but I'm working on another show that I think you'd like even more. It would be way more challenging and you'd get to adventure all over the world... would you be willing to do TWO shows?” Yes. You had me at paying me to adventure for television. We talked for 90 minutes. He said as far as he was concerned I was THE guy, but he had to put something together on me to pitch to the executives, as they have the final say-so. He sent me paperwork packets and specific media requests. Once a week for about a month we would exchange emails and such. I found out the working title for the second show was “Treasure Trails”, which sounds like it leads straight to someone's crotch. I'm thinking the tagline should be “The quest for fortune and glory … holes.” The producer was enthusiastic that I was “THE guy”, but I'd heard that before. All I could do was wait to hear back regarding the executive's decision. In the meantime I got contacted about a movie.
A director making an independent film emailed me saying he'd stumbled on my stuff and wanted to know if I had an interest in being in his film. He sent me the pitch and it sounded really fun. “The Adults Are Talking” was about a group of 20 somethings who make a living stealing junk from Amazon and selling it back to Amazon at a profit. The team for the movie had worked on shows like “Loki”, “Stranger Things”, and “She-Hulk”, as well as many other things I wasn't familiar with. We had a zoom meeting and seemed to hit it off. I would be playing an Amazon Manager. He told me they were looking to shoot in September, but didn't have a schedule yet. I told him I was free any day but the 16th, since that's when the Spartan Beast was. A few weeks later we did wardrobe, remotely, to make sure I was good to go. Looked like things were going pretty well, so I was waiting for the other shoe to drop and the sword to fall. Until then I just needed to wait and focus on preparing for everything that could be coming.
Then I heard that a Baji Quan expert that I had been familiar with, Vincent Mei Sifu, was putting on a two day training camp/seminar in New York City. As soon as I heard about it I immediately set my sights on it. I figured I might be able to hang out with George since he had moved to Connecticut, and I wasn't about to pass up a chance to train with one of the only capable Baji practitioners on the continent.
BajiQuan, or “ 8 extremes fist”, is also known by it's nickname “the door kicker / bodyguard style” on account of both it's crashing-straight-line-explosiveness, and because it's literally still used by SWAT teams and body guards in China and Taiwan. Trying to maximize opportunity I hit up George hoping he might be able to hang out. I was not expecting a Herculean effort on his part to house me and schlep me around the East coast, but that's what he did. I flew into Connecticut in the middle of the night, and he drove over an our to pick me up, then an hour back to his place so we could rest. In the morning he showed me around the beautiful beach in his new neighborhood and his lovely new house. In the afternoon George, his fiancée, and myself got into his car and he proceeded to drive me 2 and a half hours to Manhattan for training. He would drop me off, and the two of them would play around the city until night when I would be finished.
The seminar was to be held over the course of two full days, Saturday and Sunday, and was put on by Vincent Mei Sifu of the Wutan Baji Shu, even though the location of the training was at Alex Richter Sifu's “City Wing Chun Kung Fu”. I heard Richter Sifu was out of town so that's why we were using his place. There was maybe 20 people in attendance from all over the place. There was a guy from Alberta Canada, a guy from France, Florida, Washington, Massachusetts, and a handful from New York City. The experience level and styles of the participants were just as varied with Japanese arts, MMA, Taekwondo, and an assortment of Chinese styles. Some of the participants were students of the Sifu that I recognized from his videos. Everyone was very pleasant, hard working, and open minded. The instructor even made a comment that it was nice to be in a group like that since the scene in Taiwan can be quite toxic. I have some experience with that nonsense myself. The itinerary for the camp was designed as a Baji foundations primer and review for those already in the know, which was not me. While I had informally studied BajiQuan and was familiar with it's thesis, this was my first formal fore into the art, and it's subtleties were a little different than what I was used to. Thankfully we all got plenty of practice, and also learned about Li Shu Wen, the founder of the lineage of Baji that we were practicing. We studied the warm ups, the slow-grinding basics which are both deceptively difficult to perform correctly AND extremely tiring, the foundational form :BajiJia, and worked partner applications and drills. I was paired with Doug, a 6'3” 318lb solid bulk of a man with 20 years of HunGar kung fu under his belt. He was the largest and strongest so I was grateful to have him as my partner. I told him that I was globally undefeated at the forearm bashing conditioning drill, but since there's some in Hun Gar and he was experienced and huge I thought he'd be the guy to finally beat me... so I told him on the last day I wanted to try it out. He said he would! After training the first night, we all went out to an incredible Korean BBQ … that was several orders of magnitude outside my budget. Thankfully I brought several hundred dollars in cash for an emergency... I guess the dinner was it. George and his fiancee met up with us at the restaurant and we were joined by Doug's wife. While we chatted over dinner I found out that Doug's occupation was film maker! I told him we should do a movie. He said he'd love to get back to doing his own thing but he's always busy with work that's not his own thing. His current project? A documentary on the underground kung fu scene in New York City! So, that explains all the giant cameras that were at the seminar … maybe I'll be in a scene! Everyone at the dinner asked about my old time navy bag and I told them it was my granddad's and I'd been taking it with me training for over 25 years. They said it made me look like every Japanese martial art practitioner stereotype from comics and games. I took it as a compliment. The group got a small taste of story time with Nash.
Around 10pm we all shuffled off to rest up for the early morning training. George, his lady, and myself went to the parking garage, got the car, and drove a couple hours back to Connecticut. George and I took a nap, I got up at 6 to do my morning exercises and we drove a couple hours back to Manhattan so we would arrive at 9am for my training. It was just the two of us this time so George would be going to a climbing gym the whole day while I was sitting in horse stance slamming my bones into other people's bones.
Arriving back in town we got into it with the Indian guy working as the parking attendant. We were at the exact same garage as we had been 8 hours prior, but this guy insisted George's tiny car wouldn't fit in the place for regular sized cars, where we had physically seen it and retrieved it the previous night. As a result the attendant told us it would be 10 extra dollars since it would have to go with the vans and SUVs. George had prepaid on an app on his phone, but the guy wouldn't even look at it. “I'll scan it when you get back.” The guy scanned it when we dropped if of yesterday. “I'll scan it when you get back.”. We explained we were here just a few hours ago, the car fits because we saw it, and we prepaid … but the guy was having none of it. We begrudgingly left the car with him. We walked around for a bit before getting some Chai lattes and then we split up for our respective activities.
The second day of training was a continuation of the first, finishing up our form and drills. Some of the techniques were Qin Na, or joint locks. Sifu went to demonstrate on me and to his dismay they didn't work. “How are you doing that!?” Oh, I'm not even doing anything yet. Decades of esoteric training have made those movies extremely difficult to do on me. Ask the Brazilian Jujitsu guys I've rolled with. There was another technique he said “Don't do it on someone like Nash, he's got an 8 pack, it won't work.” He told me “You know, with all you know and can do, YOU should teach a seminar … I wouldn't go though, seems painful!” We laughed, but Mei Sifu seemed thoroughly impressed. The finale of the day was a question and answer session ending in our group photos. After we wrapped up I challenged Doug to the forearm bashing. He was finally going to be the guy to take me down! … I beat him handily. “I'm 39 and married. I haven't done this in a long time. I'm out.” What!? He did at lease leave a little redness on my arm, but that's nothing the sun or a hard sneeze can't do! I also challenged a guy from Florida who was a Goju-ryu black belt. Smashed him good, but at least he knew what was coming. I remain globally undefeated. Sifu and the gang invite me back to train the next time I was in the area. In fact, after meeting me, watching some videos, and looking at my blog, Sifu said he thought I could be very successful as an entertainer personality in movies, or TV, or something, and was surprised I wasn't already successful in that area. I told him stuff keeps falling through, but to mention me to anyone he knows with connections. I was honored by his compliments and invitation to come back. Doug said the next time we met he would be ready for my forearm challenge and we'd have a rematch. The loser would buy drinks! You are going to challenge a Kyokushin-Kudo man to bashing body parts and put drinks on the line? Big mistake! I may be a comical lightweight when it comes to drinking but I'll be doing my best to get his money's worth! We all exchanged contact info, the group looked at me like I was radioactive when it sank in that I didn't' have a phone, and we parted ways.
George and I met up and we kicked around a rad street fair that was going on. My two days in Manhattan I was really surprised by something. I only saw ONE guy sleeping on the ground, and ONE guy with a card board sign asking for money … “$20s and up”! Buddy, that's a whole day's work sometimes where I just came from! That was the thing though, Manhattan now seemed so clean and safe! I resented the Midwest that much more. After we had our fill I got a New York slice, and we went back to the garage to retrieve the car.
Lo and behold, the Indian guy wasn't even there. It was some other guy. When he scanned the code he told us it was for a different garage … which we would have known if the Indian guy had scanned it! “30$”. What!? I thought it was $15!? “That was for the other garage.” I just gave the guy 30$ to get out of there. I had worked in parking, I knew it was all crimes from top to bottom and just wanted to get out. While we were waiting in the street for the car to be retrieved I saw a sign at the entrance : “weekend rate, 15.97$, if arriving after 7am and leaving before 7pm”. We fit the bill, so why was our rate double!? We confronted the guy when he came out. “We had to add 10$ because it was up with the SUVs.” WHY!? “That's just where I found it. If you guys have a problem with the money you can talk to the manager tomorrow morning.” George wasn't going to drive hours to get back 15 or so dollars … but I would have! Also 15.97 plus 10 is not 30 … Whatever. The check engine light came on and George decided it was somehow the Indian guy's fault. I was inclined to agree.
We drove back to George's place, bathed, got gigantic vegetarian burritos and ate them while watching a documentary, and then set off again for the airport. He dropped me off at midnight. I owed him big time for all the transporting he'd been doing. Maybe I could pay him back somehow when I was back in town in less than a month for the Spartan Beast?
I arrived back at my place to focus on getting ready for the Spartan Beast, but at only a couple weeks left there wasn't much more I could do. The day after I got back the fire hydrant at the end of my street exploded, flooding the neighborhood and taking my water away. Not conducive to training, but I was just thankful there was no property damage this time. Denali had deconditioned me, and healing enough to safely train left me with not quite 2 months to get ready. I had been running, doing martial arts, and popping into the ninja obstacle course gym, but all any of it did was let me know I wasn't ready. Ready or not, here it comes.
While I was doing all that I had also done much paperwork for the TV network, sending information out as requested every week for about a month, but now it had been several weeks and I hadn't heard anything. I was assuming they weren't going to use me, and that's fine, but don't talk about me doing TWO show, tell me I'm THE guy, have me do stuff for a month, and then ghost me. Just shoot me an email saying you're not going to use me. Another “almost” had fallen through I figured. The producers themselves said “How have you not been on shows or movies before?” This. This is how. Oh well, at least I still had my small part in the movie to look forward to. They were still waiting to find out when they could get access to their locations so they could make their shooting schedule. The only day I wouldn't be available was the day of the race, which we had known for months, so no worries.
George and I coordinated and found a place that would work for both of us for me to fly into. Good price, time, location, airline, etc. I bought the ticket, then spent the rest of the day hunting for supplies. Clothes and shoes to wear that I didn't mind getting destroyed. Since I had been pressed into the race and likely wouldn't have a very good showing, I wanted to look as ridiculous as possible. Unfortunately, I discovered that to look as stupid as I wanted to costs a fortune, so I had to order garbage online and hope that it showed up on time. That same night I bought the plane ticket I checked my emails to see if the orders had gone through and was greeted by this:
“Nash, my guy, I'm so sorry to have to deliver this news, but as luck would have it the only day we're able to get into the location we're using as our Amazon dispatcher's office is September 16th. I'd really love to keep you in mind for any other roles that might not conflict with your schedule, if you'd be open to that.
Sorry again, but hoping we can work something out.
Best,
Ryan “
Of course. Now the movie had fallen through. Back to square one. It would have been nice and the director seemed great, but if it can't be helped it can't be helped.
It was only 10 months prior, while driving George around Chicago for a couple of his obstacle course races that he got it in his head that we should do one together. I thought he meant one of the short ones for people that have no idea what they're doing, e.g. ME. That's not what he meant at all. He wanted me to do the Spartan Beast, a 14 mile gauntlet with 30 obstacles along the way, and more than that he wanted it to be the Killington Vermont Spartan Beast, “The Beast of Beasts!”, notorious as the most difficult due to it's terrain and altitude. I told George “Not only have I never done an obstacle course race before, I've never even ran a regular race before!” He said “you'll be fine.” Based on what!? “Based on I know you.” So it was that he signed us up for the Killington Spartan Beast.
The shadow of this beast loomed large. It needed to be prepared for both mentally and physically. I was neither. George had done several of these OCRs in the same weekend and at one point seemed to average 2 a month. He could just stumble into any of these that he wanted. I could not. I only had 3 months to get ready for it after returning from Denali, but with my feet and lungs so messed up I couldn't do anything for the first month. The second month was spent training an average of 4 hours a day just to get me back to my pre-Denali baseline. That left 1 month to train up to condition and taper down, which wasn't realistic, plus I needed to travel for the Baji camp. Physically I did what I could, and hoped my NASHness could make up the difference. I started to run recon on obstacles but then I decided to wing it. George was a seasoned veteran with a silly number of obstacle course races under his belt, and had even run this Killington Beast specifically 2 or 3 times prior. I'd just grab advice from him on-site. What could go wrong? A few weeks after heading to the East coast for Baji, I was heading back for the Beast.
Of course, there were a couple complications. George emailed me that he thought he cracked a rib in a race the week prior. I told him now I might be able to keep up with him! Also, there was the matter of a hurricane traveling towards the East coast, nobody sure if it would make landfall, but if it did it's projected day was the same as the race. I wondered if I'd get there and it would be canceled. I also wondered if I would even get there. Boarding the plane on the way there, the passengers, myself included, got stuck in the sky bridge boarding tube for 30 minutes. An attendant said it was because an FAA inspector refused to clear the plane... he also said he'd never seen that happen before. They booted us back into the airport to mill about until whatever needed done was done, but we did eventually fly out.
Arriving in New York on this suspicious plane, George scooped me up at the airport and we drove a couple hours back to his area in Connecticut. We went to his favorite Indian spot for dinner and brainstormed future adventures.
The next morning George went out and got a haircut, some race supplies, and then we began the 4 hour drive to Vermont. The drive was good, the car kept putting me to sleep, despite my best efforts to stay awake. We took a break about half way through to stretch our legs at a “rest stop” and there was truly nothing there except some grass, trees, and abandoned underwear. Back on the road we were nearly killed when a grass mower struck a metal light pole, knocking it down and falling into the highway, narrowly missing us. We arrived in Killington Vermont in one piece and made our way to where we would be camping.
George and I would be camping in a tent the night before the race at an official campground with raised tent platforms and a parking lot for cars … and it was free! We immediately got to setting up our tent, getting a fire ring started, and wandering into the forest to gather wood. Everything was drenched and moldy. We gathered the best of the worst and brought it back to camp to maybe dry out. While we were doing this we met another guy in the camp. He had come from Maine, and was also running the race in the morning. We chatted and then George and I went off to a pub for dinner.
We had a couple beers, which was maybe not the best choice since we had a hellish gauntlet to run in the morning and we would wind up without water, but hindsight is 20/20. We left the pub and went back to camp, made a campfire and hung out with Maine guy and his buddy for a while. Since they couldn't get a good enough fire they joined ours, and we drank another beer. We wound up drinking 3 beers that night. It got so late and the fire was still hot so we decided to use our water to put out the fire so we could safely go to bed. We figured we could easily find some more water in the morning. We went to bed at 10 and were battered by furious winds. Good thing we stomped the fire! The wind wasn't the only thing that surprised us; it was shockingly cold. We had checked the weather before hand but now it was in the high 40*sF with whipping wind and we weren't' exactly dressed for it. Likely the hurricane's work. Thankfully George had a couple of extra hoodies on him! In spite of, or maybe because of, the accommodations I slept fantastically! The best sleep I'd had since Denali by far.
Waking up at 7 in the morning for race day I did my morning exercises, thinking about how thirsty I was the whole time. We couldn't find any water at the campsite so decided to go out questing for breakfast. Surely someplace with food also has water? Everywhere we went there were racers for the event clogging up the place, lines out the door. We didn't have the time or desire to put up with it, so we continued our search. Eventually we found a little bakery we could squeeze into, though it had neither bathroom nor water. We got some breakfast sandwiches and Chai lattes. This place was also packed with racers, to the point that as we were leaving some girl opened the door to come in and hit some guy sitting right behind the door. The guy assumed it was George and said “Hey, watch when you open the door, just so you know, you almost spilled my coffee!” George responded “Just so YOU know, I haven't touched the door, it was the girl, and watch your attitude.” I thought we were going to have an 8:30am breakfast brawl, or at least see this chump later, but he never presented himself to us during the race. I was ready for it though.
Leaving the bakery we went to go get ready for the race. The weather was shaping up to be cloudy all day with biting gale force winds. We changed into our race clothes and hiked to the shuttle that would take us to the race. The location of the shuttle was not where the email told us to go, but thankfully we found the place without too much trouble. Our relief faded when we saw the line for the shuttle was hundreds of people long, and the buses couldn't keep up. We wound up getting our start time pushed back from 10 to 10:30 because we were stuck in line. While we were in line we got the first of what turned out to be a full day of compliments on our outfits.
I had decided that if I was going to be press ganged into the race I may as well look as ridiculous as possible. I was rocking some bright bubblegum neon pink and blue shoes, shirt, and tank top with my name plastered all over them, along with wrist sweatbands, and 80's glacier sunglasses to match. George would not be outdone however. He was wearing a pink top, a pink tutu, and a pink feather boa, with red heart shaped glasses. We had accidentally coordinated and looked like Malibu Ken and Barbie. Our clothes were so bright it seemed like you could see us from space. Everyone liked it, we got cheers and compliments the whole race, especially George who became like the mascot of the day. He was shedding bright pink feathers the whole race and people were talking about how cool it was to find them along the way. People even asked to take pictures with him! Our actual race performance wasn't bad either.
Lasting about 14 miles and with over 30 obstacles, this was nothing to scoff at. George knowing that this wasn't just my first Spartan Beast, or Spartan Race, or Obstacle Course Race … it was my first race of any kind, asked me what my goal for this event was. I figured since the first couple of times George did it, he finished in around 6 hours, my goals was to finish in 7 hours and to successfully complete every obstacle. He said that was a good goal, and for some reason he thought I would not have a problem doing it. For awhile it seemed like he might be right. Outside of getting my shoulder slightly cut on the first round of barbed wire crawls, nothing seemed all that difficult. George and I were jogging the straights and descents, and hiking the uphills, blasting past the obstacles without much effort. Scaling walls, swinging from ropes and bars, plunging under cold muddy water to swim under a wall, everything was within my normal range. Nothing was bothering me. Even the “Death March”, which is something like 1 mile straight up the side of the mountain where the Gondola goes with a grade so steep a lot of people took it on all fours like a bear crawl, didn't bother me. I'm built for slogging. I'm not necessarily fast, but I never stop.
The only real effort I had put in was on the “Ape Hang”, which was a new obstacle that seemed to have at least a 75% fail rate. There were people that weren't even attempting some or all of the obstacles and just walking on past taking a time penalty. That seems to defeat the intent of the race, at least for me. I was surprised at how well I was doing, given my lack of experience and preparation. The tide turned around mile 10 though. Descending down a long stretch of steep wet muddy mountain side I felt my old knee injuries becoming aggravated. I needed to play it safe, but there wasn't much that could be done. Plodding along carefully, my knees swelling and now aching, it was painful to go downhill. I pressed on. George and I saw someone getting med-evaced by a lady that said she only drives the extraction vehicle once a year … I did not want to end up in her care!
I did everything I could to not slip down those slick steep muddy mountain trails, but slip I did. I twisted my knee hard. It swelled and seized, functionally transforming my leg from my hip to my ankle into one painful unwieldy piece. I didn't stop, but there was no more jogging. I hobbled from one obstacle to the next. Finally arriving at the “Sandbag Carry”. I cleared my mind of the anticipation of pain that was about to come. Normally a 60 pound sandbag wouldn't faze me, but I was at the tail end of a crucible. I put the sandbag on the back of my neck and began a long uphill trudge, then a downhill trudge. I focused on my breathing, used mountain climbing rest-steps, and never stopped moving. I even started passing people who just couldn't bear the strain and had to stop. From the quitter's weakness I drew strength, intent on not becoming one of them. From the well conditioned competitors I drew strength, thinking that if they could do it, I must have it in me as well. Pressing on I felt something move around my knee, like a tendon. It was incredibly painful and worrying. I altered my gait and pushed forward. Soon I was crossing the finish line with George. I never stopped or sat down the entire race. No breaks … except to pee, which I had to do once per mile. Crossing that line I had successfully completed all obstacles and finished in 7 hours, 8 minutes, which I'm calling a win! I was happy I reached my goal, but disappointed my knee had held me back. I thoroughly believe I could have finished in 6 hours if not for the knee. Still, not bad for a guy with no experience trying his hand at the “Beast of Beasts”! I really didn't think it was particularly difficult, and thanks to the cold I never broke a sweat. The difficult part was having a crusty old man's knee in wet steep mountain terrain.
Immediately following our finish, George and I collected our swag and took a victory picture with our medals and me doing the splits. My knee may have been swollen, but the rest of me was just fine, no soreness or fatigue. People came up to talk to us and tell us how much they liked our outfits, and trying to guess what we were dressed as. “Costumes? These are our normal clothes!” Some people thought I might have been vintage Steve Nash, but a group of guys at the end cheered us on yelling “Yeah! Let's go Barbie and Ken!” People asked how long we'd been doing the Beasts. They were impressed with George's long pedigree and totally in disbelieve that this was my first run. “You chose the Killington Beast as your first run!? Are you Crazy!?” Maybe, but I nailed it, so maybe not?
To celebrate, George and I grabbed a fruity beer and went to a food truck in the racer's village that had great looking waffle fries... they ran out the second I got up to the window. I bartered them down on price and got a terrible sandwich, meanwhile the poor cook kept yelling food orders out for people that weren't picking them up. “I'm not making this stuff for no reason!” He yelled out the window hoping someone would come get their order. One guy did eventually show up, “Mattress”, who I was surprised was a real guy and not a prank.
Looking silly George and I washed off in the men's room and took the shuttle back to the drop point to hike back to our campsite, where we were both surprised to find the tent had been blown some distance, stopped only by the car. This despite the fact we had filled it with stuff and rocks, and moored it down. We re-established camp and then went back to the same pub from the previous night since it was after 8 and everything closed at 9. We got some victory drinks and food. I ordered a “flat bread” that turned out to be a whole pizza, and George got a tomato salad... with one of the tomatoes still having the sticker on it from the store.. this town...
We were in bed in our tent at 10pm and I slept decently despite all the mountain bikers arriving in giant trucks all through the night. Also there was a literal explosion very close to us. It sounded like maybe someone in camp exploded a propane tank or there was an automotive petrol bomb. It was loud and close, but George and I just went back to sleep. Then the wind picked up big time, and it felt like the tent scooted a couple of feet, while we were in it! Also for some reason it had really warmed up making sleeping more difficult. Still, we were up at 7am for morning exercises and breaking camp. We were on the road by 8. Again we were hunting for breakfast, and still everywhere we went was infested with Spartan racers. We were heading out anyway, so we figured we'd just stop along the way somewhere. We drove to another town, and it was full of racers! We drove to an even further town and we still kept finding them clogging up the works! We eventually drove 2 hours to get out of Vermont and ate breakfast at a highway Denny's.
We got back to George's place around noon and did a gear explosion, showered up, and started packing to go sea kayaking. We futzed around with strapping them to the top of the car for way too long, before getting out to the beach and launching. I thought something was off about 30 minutes in until we both realized something was going on with my kayak. It was absolutely balanced weird and eventually I was fighting against the kayak with all my might just to try and not turn. It felt like I was dragging an off-center tarp or something. I was grinding out there for about an hour before I decided the juice was definitely not worth the squeeze. The whole excursion was pomegranate juice. We went back to his house and watched a movie before we went to bed.
The next day we just chilled out and watched a movie and played video games, getting ready for the evening when George was taking me to his indoor climbing gym. I had never been to an indoor climbing gym, and knew functionally nothing about how it worked or it's techniques. I learned that some climbs are graded “5.x” with the larger the x the greater the difficulty, though it seemed arbitrarily assigned. George introduced me to his climbing gym buddies and I went through an orientation with the gym owner, then rented a harness and very uncomfortable shoes. George had told someone that I could probably do a “5.9” or “5.10” on my first day. It was explained to me that those are difficult for people who have never climbed before, I reminded George that I had no idea what I was doing, so we started smaller. I finished a “5.6”, then a “5.7, and jumped right into a successful “5.8”. No trouble. I figured it was time to test George's prediction, and hopped on a “5.9”. Success my first try! George was blowing through much higher numbers with ease, and showed me a “5.10”. I figured I would give it a go. I got about 90% of the way up, but my grip was fried from the 4 previous climbs in rapid succession.
I had never done this, and my lack of conditioning was obvious. Thankfully George had me on a belay when my grip failed out. I tried again as soon as I could, but my grip failed out at the same spot. My forearms were pumped and useless. George told me to take a rest since I'd been going basically nonstop up to then. I stretched, and tried to get my grip back. Attempt number 3! 90% up... same thing. I felt so confident that if I hadn't worn myself out on those previous climbs I could have done it no problem. Frustrating. Though I was right where George thought I would be, which was cool. We went to go recover on some easier climbs. I got roped up... and the fire alarm went off! Since my hands were still floppy I needed help getting out. It turned out this was not a drill. With flashing lights and a loud siren we were all forced outside... Into the hurricane! The doors locked behind us. It was a dark and stormy night, rain was flying sideways while lightning lit up the sky. Everyone sprinted to their cars, hoping the place would get the all-clear and open back up. It didn't happen. That was it for climbing that night, and I was still wearing the rented shoes and harness. I took them off in the car and George ran back to the building to try and return them, couldn't get in or get anyone's attention, so just left them in front of the door to get battered by the storm.
We decided to head back and grab some food at his favorite Chinese spot … which turned out to be closed only on that specific day. After a harrowing no-visibility highway drive back to his area we found a different Chinese spot that was fine. Telling his fiancee about the ordeal, George said “we've been climbing there for years, this type of thing has never happened before”. They were not surprised that it happened the day he took me there.
We played video games late into the night and through the morning until we left for the airport. I was glad we left early because someone broke down in the middle of the Van Wyk causing a ridiculous traffic jam. I somehow made it to the airport in time, and boarded the first non-packed flight I'd had in … basically ever. I had a whole row to myself, with plenty of space and time to relax and reflect.
My goals for the year were accomplished. I had finally summitted Denali. I had completed the Killington Spartan Beast. George was off to New Jersey in a couple weeks to go do the most difficult Spartan Ultra he had ever done, over twice as long as the beast. What would I be doing? I did eventually get an email from that television producer saying the executives ultimately decided to go with another guy, but that he still wanted to use me for something. Who knows? I still had challenges to face, and goals to reach … but the ones I had in mind were going to take some serious money and resources … I needed to figure out how to get them... challenge accepted!
-NASH