This time, Allison Tai didn’t have her daughter in her stroller holding her back.
Back in August, the Vancouver resident competed in the Squamish Days 10K run, pushing her 18-month-old daughter in a stroller to a Guinness World Record time.
But competing at the first-ever Spartan Race in Squamish, Tai left her child with her husband and jumped through fire, crawled through mud and climbed her way to the best female time, completing the course in one hour, 18 minutes, 58 seconds.
“It was awesome,” she said at the finish line. “The course was really well marked, the volunteers were helpful and the competitors were all just there to have fun.”
Tai said the 12-kilometre course was challenging.
“The obstacles were just hard enough,” she said, noting that the most difficult part was some of the hilly trail running in Smoke Bluffs Park and that the javelin toss was an obstacle that slowed her down. Tai qualified for the Squamish race after a second-place showing at the Spartan Race in North Vancouver in May. She said she’s still waiting on official confirmation from Guinness on her 10K stroller record.
The top finisher overall was Seattle’s Kris Brown, who completed the course in 1:02:42. Brown won a Spartan Race event in Malibu earlier this year to qualify for Squamish and agreed with Tai that the hills were tough.
“It wasn’t too bad, but hill climbing is always tough,” he said. “It can be pretty hard to stay motivated when you realize you have eight miles to go and you don’t know how they’re going to torture you next.”
The top team was the Bindusters from Duncan. The foursome completed the course in a total combined time of 6:00:44. They beat out the second-place Bromance team from Vancouver by nearly 15 minutes.
The top local time was posted by Jamie Pierotti, who was 31st overall with a time of 1:23:10. The fastest local female was Emma Seguss, with a time of 1:36:26, good for 123rd overall. Other top local times included: Ronan Deane (1:26:20), Aaron Rietker (1:28:52) and Ryan Chamberlain (1:29:10).
The course, which race organizers managed to keep secret, saw racers start at the Loggers Sports Grounds by jumping over flames before heading down the trails on Loggers Lane. From there, competitors crossed into the Smoke Bluffs before circling through Valleycliffe’s trails and returning back to the grounds.
In between all the trails, racers had to climb a number of different walls, pull heavy items like cinder blocks and crawl through mud under razor wires to finish. The penalty for not completing an obstacle was 25 burpees.
The course was completed by 629 individuals and 77 teams made up of four or more racers. For results from the race, visit www.raceheadquarters.com/results/2012/other/SuperSpartan2012IND.html.
