The world’s best endurance athletes are coming to Snohomish

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, April 9, 2019

This weekend, the Meadow Wood Equestrian center in Snohomish is hosting some of the world’s best endurance athletes, and there’s one thing those athletes have in common:

They’re going to get dirty.

The Spartan US National Series, a series of professional long-distance obstacle course races, returns to Snohomish on Saturday, and the defining feature of the tour’s Northwest stop is the way it has the racers getting up close and personal with the mud.

“It’s going to be awesome,” race director Lincoln Baker said. “We always expect rain there, so we made it part of the design. It’s going to be wet and muddy.”

Spartan is one of the world’s leading obstacle course organizations, holding more than 200 obstacle course races across more than 40 countries each year. The races range between 3-mile, 20-obstacle Sprint courses and 30-mile, 60-obstacle Ultra courses.

Saturday’s race is part of Spartan’s National Series, which has been going since 2012. The National Series includes five middle-distance races — known as Spartan Supers — in the 8-mile, 25-obstacle category. The Snohomish race is the third of the series’ five events, and the Elite division is expected to draw professional competitors from across North America. There are also age-group divisions for stronger competitors who may not be professionals, as well as an open division for more recreational racers.

The race itself is a combination of distance running and obstacle navigation. The obstacles include climbing over walls, crawling under barbed wire, hauling heavy weights, swinging on ropes, flipping tires, even throwing spears.

“It’s an adult playground kind of thing,” was Baker’s description.

The Elite men are scheduled to start at 7:30 a.m. Saturday, with the Elite women starting 15 minutes later. The winners of both Elite divisions are returning to defend their titles — Ryan Kent of Highlands Ranch, Colorado, won last year’s men’s race in a time of 1 hour, 4 minutes, 3 seconds. Canadian Lindsay Webster won the women’s race in 1:18:18. The winners of the Elite divisions receive $3,000.

“It was crazy,” Kent, a 33-year-old who makes his living as a professional Spartan racer, said about last year’s race in Snohomish. “It really embodied what Spartan is like. It was wet, muddy, cold, uncomfortable. But for me personally, those are the type of races I enjoy the most. It’s going to test you with more challenges.

“It was a great race, I pulled away about halfway through,” Kent continued. “I was being chased by some of the best athletes in the sport and I think I pushed myself about as hard as I could push myself, and I was fortunate to come away with the win.”

Snohomish is a unique setting in the Spartan world. Most of the other National Series races are in warmer and drier climates. Snohomish is where Spartan forces the athletes to get down and dirty in the muddy conditions.

While the setting for the Snohomish race is the same, the course will be set up differently than past races as Spartan likes to keep the athletes on their toes. The obstacles are mostly the same, but their location and order change. The course map is released to the competitors the day before the race, meaning they will know how the course is set up in advance, but won’t be able to prepare.

“It will be a fast course this year,” Baker said. “We have access to a wooded area, farmland, a creek crossing, we’ll have a river run if the water levels are safe. And a lot of it will operate around the festival area, so spectators won’t have to go far to see a lot.”

While Spartan races are designed to test the entirety of an athletes fitness, including upper-body strength, lower-body strength, flexibility and endurance, there’s one aspect that’s particularly important.

“Grip strength is pretty much what we rely on in this sport,” Kent said. “Sometimes there’s different ways to do the obstacles to save your grip strength. Let’s say you’re carrying an 80-pound bucket of gravel. If right after that obstacle you have a hanging Ninja Warrior-type obstacle, you probably want to hold the bucket differently to save your grip strength.”

While Spartan is known for its obstacle course races, the organization is using the Snohomish event to debut a new type of event. The Spartan Trail, a 10-kilometer, no-obstacle race through the terrain at Meadow Wood, takes place Sunday beginning at 7:30 a.m. The race is the first of the inaugural 12-race season.

“It’s an opportunity to introduce obstacle course racers to trail running and a way to introduce obstacle course racing to trail runners,” said Luis Escobar, who helped create the series and is the co-race director for Sunday’s race. “Our plan, our hope, our dream and vision is to create new opportunities for a larger audience.”

Escobar said he expects many of the participants in Saturday’s Spartan Super to also race Sunday’s Spartan Trail.

Competing in endurance events on consecutive days? That’s the definition of a Spartan.

If you have an idea for a community sports story, email Nick Patterson at npatterson@heraldnet.com.