Podcasts about weeeeeee

Weeeeeee're back after a few week hiatus to discuss a buttload of non-butt-like things. Plus, we reveal our new L Speed score for movies. Tonight we talk: Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, (starz) LSPEED: 12Madame Web, (Netflix) LSPEED: 21Lincoln Lawyer, season 1, (Netflix) (8 Episodes)  Tracker, (Hulu) (13 Episodes)  Expend4bles (Starz) LSPEED: 100  My Old Ass, (Amazon Prime), LSPEED: 11Inglorious Bastards, LSPEED: Fucking 5 (minimum is 6?) Plus, Arcane, season 2 (Netflix), Time Cut (Netflix), Trapped (Max), Brats (Hulu), Penguin season finale (HBO), and Agatha All Along season finale (Disney+)

Weeeeeee're BACK! Lucas Melo joins the show for a great convo on all the recent news from Pensacola and the Argo's new stadium build. We check out a D2 team in Texas picking up a D1 Opponent, take a look at some top NAIA Transfer classes, and a fun cover for a D3 version of the newly-released EA College Football video game. Thanks for tuning in! Video Chapters: 0:00 Episode Overview 3:29 Lucas Melo 23:52 Javelinas Add D1 Opponent 29:43 Top NAIA Transfer Portal Classes 33:15 EACFB is Here

Weeeeeee're back! With a bumper podcast reviewing not one, not two, but, oh – actually 2 games. One in a top secret hotel and the other billions of light years away in a massive garden. Probably. We've both been super busy and missed all our lovely listeners, but rest assured 2018 will be arcadtabulous. Yes, I went there. AND I MEANT IT. Now go and play Robert Smith and the Deadly Chicken Dinner. We also find out that Shaun is possessed by a Marmot or Marmite?

Bronks 3d bday pick!!! Weeeeeee!!!! Our first remote session so deal with it or don't. Ad: Bucket of Chum the shark movie podcast! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theevildeaths/message

Weeeeeee're back! We missed you too and are stoked to be back at it. In today's show we all spin the wheel of resolutions, Ally gets a massage, Klein has a birthday wish, Deadtooth kills a man, we see if a dude knows the band on his shirt and we check in on the GOAtline

I miss yallll we are back and we aint going nooooo where

coffin opening noise Weeeeeee're Baaaaaaaaaaaack!!!!! We're Alive!!!!!!  Adam and Alex had to weigh in on KB's newest spooky, well semi-spooky, well barely spooky, well not very spooky at all it turn out playlist.  Alex Swiftly Taylors.  Support Our Show on Patreon Please!! If you have a second, fill out this very short survey to help us define our demographic for potential advertisers. We haven't mentioned it in a while, but it would be truly awesome of you. Also, bonus points for reading this far in the show notes.  Check out our partner shows on the Missing Sock Network! And follow the Network on Instagram too. Follow Childz Play on Instagram and Twitter, and follow R. Alex Murray right now! Check Out our Merch and Keep On Boppin!  

Bonta, Shasky, and the roasters continue to preview the highly anticipated playoff matchup between the Kings and Warriors. 

Weeeeeee're back & kicking off season 3 of Unveiled off with a post wedding wrap up. There's no denying how much energy goes into the lead up and the wedding day itself…but what happens when it's all done & dusted? Here's our advice on how you can keep the wedding vibes high for a little while longer.Join hosts, Lucy from Lucie Weddings and her husband, Eddie from Ripple Weddings as they unpack all things weddings.

Summary:  On this episode of Act To Live, Jaime and Scott take some time to reflect on 2022. They discussed what they learned from the year, what they will take from 2022, and what they might want to leave behind. They also dove into some words they want to live by for 2023 and what that might look like.  ACTion Event of the Week:  Breathe in what you want to accept and love from 2022 and breathe out what you want to let go of from 2022 and say “WEEEEEEEE” (visualize what you are riding on as you breathe out).  Where do we walk to next?: Join us for more Act To Live with live mindfulness sessions and guest hosts.

Wasn't that fun? The Bills never lied down, and Lamar had to WORK. Win against an AFC opponent Win against a possible 1st round bye rival Devin is STILL under appreciated Laboring Lamar Want to contribute? Record yourself and send it to Vince. He will do the rest. Please keep it under 10 minutes, be respectful and do not use troll-ish takes. Email: vincetaylorpodcast@gmail.com twitter: @bite_sized_buff

Ohhhhh hey! Didn't see you there! Welcome back bayyyyybeeeeee! I'm so excited for season two and all the shit we'll be talking about. Our first episode is just me (your fav person). I give a short, informal update of my upscale dumpster fire ass life. I share three nonconventional tips that help me deal with trauma triggers and meltdowns and remind you that it's ok to NOT BE OK. Because bitch I am NOT OK most the time, ok?!?! ++++ Check out our website thesolcollective.org! Treat yourself to tees, sweatshirts & mugs - some inspired by our podcast and some that encourage self-love & self-reflection. I published a whole ass guided book called "Fuck Those Voices: A Love Letter & Journal For Women Who Live With Trauma." It's a guided journal with affirmations, reflection prompts & stories of my trauma healing journey to help women begin the process of healing themselves.  Use code "Chooch" for $4 off any purchase over $30 on our website. You knowwww you love a discount! ++++ Have a comment, question, topic request or feedback? Email us at choochontheloose@gmail.com. ++++ If you haven't yet shared the episode with a friend or rated, reviewed and subscribed, do that shit ASAP. Ratings and reviews helps the podcast get found so we (who is we? IDK) can make $ and have oiled up muscular dark skinned mens fan us & feed us grapes. If you really tryna help us reach that goal, our Venmo is @sonjacharde, Cash App $sonjacharde. The honorary T.I. said it ain't trickin if you got it. Go head and send that money "expeditiously." --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/choochontheloose/support

Weeeeeee backkkkk. Sit down and catch up on the shit we're barely speaking about on the daily and if you haven't caught up by now... shame on you. Leon Banks is in the building. Tap in and enjoy :)

We're Back. Tone and Jems catch you up on what's been going on and what you can expect for season 2 of Off the Rails.

Weeeeeee're Baaaaaaaaack!!! We recap all the Week 12 games including the Thanksgiving games. And.... we dropped a website! We feel like we can make this thing as big as we can, and we want to put out as much content out for everyone. We are going to be dropping mock drafts, power rankings, articles, polls, and more. If you want to read more about us here at the Podcast we have added some info about our personal lives as well. Its gonna be fun rounding off the season and heading into the playoffs soon! Link to the Website: https://routerunnerspodcast.wordpress.com/ - Route Runners --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Weeeeeee areeeeee back. The guys welcome in a special guest this week and another Lindenhurst Bulldog Alum, Christopher Smith the 4th. They recap another wacky week in the NFL that saw our first ever losing week Cover 3. We jump into last week's game with a Money Shot segment you don't want to miss. Lastly, we take a look at our season win total over/unders which for the most part are all looking fairly solid. We give our picks for week 11 and breakdown this week's Long Island football schedule. San Diego provides an unexpected boost to Takeout Take's that we did not see coming. Listen up and good luck this weekend!

Weeeeeee're back and we're diving into the Fear Street trilogy streaming exclusively on Netflix!  This was a fun dose of horror they dumped into our laps over the summer so we thought this would be a great way to kick off the next season of the show.  Don't forget to check out the full visual experience of the show on YouTube and be sure to subscribe and click the bell to receiver alerts for new content posts.  Be sure to follow us on social media everywhere @meedarkpresents

Yeeeow! It's Friday the 13th and I've lost my damn mind-along with the rest of the planet! Weeeeeee

Weeeeeee're Baaaaaaack! We decided to jump into some old Steven Spielberg TV Movies. First up we drive through the desert in DUEL. Then we wonder about the ease of which a family buys a house and moves in the same day. After that we discuss HEAT, OLD, and at the end of the show to avoid spoilers we talk MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE and LOKI.

Weeeeeee're Baaaaaaack! We decided to jump into some old Steven Spielberg TV Movies. First up we drive through the desert in DUEL. Then we wonder about the ease of which a family buys a house and moves in the same day. After that we discuss HEAT, OLD, and at the end of the show to … Continue reading DUEL & SOMETHING EVIL →

Hey there, UnKamenCast stalwarts! Weeeeeee’re back! Time got away from me (as it will) so prepare your hearts for a marathon of UnKamenCast about Kamen Rider Saber! |Right-click “Save As” to download|Episode Length 59:40| Kamen Rider Saber Episode 19 – Flame and Light, Sword and SwordEpisode 20 – Crumbling Castle, Will of the Sword As … Continue reading UnKamen RX! 260 – Dioramarama

Weeeeeee

Hoje é dia de dar moral para os seguidores que nos dão moral rsrs Neste quadro quem comenta os nossos posts lá no insta é lembrado! Tá por fora? Bom, é só seguir o nosso insta @b.treze e comentar os posts lá. A gente se diverte muito com a participação de todos e por isso aqui a gente te divulga também. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/btreze/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/btreze/support

We're back! season 2 baybeeeee!!!!!!! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Hey there, Heifer, and welcome to Angus Eye Tea - the podcast all about anxiety, depression, and now, BIPOLAR DISORDER! WEEEEEEE! Yes, you’ve been punk’d for over a year now, SUCKER. All jokes aside, a little over a year ago, I saw a psychiatrist for the first time and when she put the sorting hat on me, it yelled out “bipolar.” There’s been a lot of changes in my life, as you can imagine, and just when everything was leveling out for me, the pandemic hit. This is kind of a scary episode for me to post because I don’t know how people will react. I don’t know if this will affect any opportunities for me in the future, like if future friends/coworkers learn I’m bipolar and decide to stay away from me. I wouldn’t want to hang out with those people anyway but you get the picture. I don’t want to become a terrifying demon because I’m bipolar - I’d like to earn that right fair and square! I’m excited to talk to you more about my experiences with bipolar disorder. Thank you for all of your support. It means the world to me.

Weeeeeee’reeee baaaaack! 2020 has been one helluva year (hence our lengthy hiatus.) And though the coronavirus pandemic has brought devastation, there were glimpses of light amid the sadness. Hosts Iman and Pierre spoke to past guests who faced great loss and gained beautiful new additions to their family. Aisha and Joe, a married couple we spoke to last year, dealt with job loss, leaving NYC for Connecticut and working as a doctor when New York was the epicenter of the pandemic. Lindsay talks to us with her best friend Max about what it was like to be pregnant and give birth during the pandemic without her closest friend being physically present to support her. Tune in!

Weeeeeee, it's cold up there in Canada, it's kinda cold here, but Janice is definitely in a colder environment. She is in fact, a colder comedian. She's definitely hilarious and certainly compares to her fellow circular bacon-eating killers. I tell ya when it comes to sandwiches Canadian Bacon has a leg up on everything else, and I really think Janice has a leg up on much of her compatriots. Make sure you follow her Instagram, and other places if you can find her. Janice Israeloff Home of the Rhino S.J. Network Audible Trial --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/adventuresofalbinorhino/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/adventuresofalbinorhino/support

Wisin y Yandel te fallaron, pero este corillo no. The pack is backkk together. Ya estamos grabando juntos y para hoy traemos la crucifixión de los clippers, el principio del fin de los nuggets y nuestras opiniones de Celtics vs Heat. Dale play, compartelo, criticalo..pero no lo dejesbpasar por alto. De ahora en adelante vamos a mover pila de kilooooos..de contenido entretenido. Weeeeeee out fam! Att. La otra cronica. #enelclutch #lacronicaparalela #tuspodcasterosfavoritos

It's a wild menagerie as I'm talking about the Patriots and the dumb takes going around regarding players that opted out of the season, the test I had to get this morning for the Rona and Demon Sperm. It's a short show because I'm woefully unprepared today! Weeeeeee!!! Check it out and tell your friends! Please? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/complaintsandobservations/message

Jeg har flyttet ut av by-kontoret mitt og må ommøblere hele mitt hjemmekontor/studio for å få plass til alt. I tillegg har jeg en del å si om hysteriet rundt "cancel-culture" og JK Rowling sitt paradoksale injuriesøksmål.Dette er forresten episode 60 av Tomprat. Weeeeeee! Få mer ekslusivt innhold på Patreon!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/tompratmedgunnartjomlid.

Old school or new? Deep dish or NY style? Some debates are forever in our heads, and everyone has an opinion and a need to argue it! So why not just throw out a discussion about two of the greatest NBA players ever?! Weeeeeee!!! This is fun!!!

Turns out, there is a dumpster out front. Weeeeeee!

Weeeeeee back. With wins and plenty of sh!t to say.

The boys are back after a month long hiatus. Back to the old tricks again. Hope you enjoy this episode come laugh w us...!!!

Grab a cuppa. Have a listen.

Weeeeeee’re 50! In a follow-up to our infamous lost NAMM interview, we were joined (remotely, natch) by everyone’s favorite Rig Doctor Mr. Mason Marangella, owner of Vertex Effects.Henry, Dave, and Mason have a very open and candid discussion about the origin and rise of Vertex Effects, his widely publicized and possibly misunderstood past controversy, and how he overcame and applied what he learned to create the successful business he has today.We also talk about Musicares, The Monkees and Van Halen, the Critter & Guitari’s Eyesy, the Vertex Steel String Clean Drive Mk. 2 and Dynamic Drive pedals, using batteries vs. power supplies, being a pedal builder and business owner during this time of COVID-19, demystifying buffers, soldered vs. solderless cables, and putting your pedals in context.Keep an open mind and an open heart.

After a long break Addy and Dylan reunite and enjoy the heck out of a conversation about everything and nothing all rolled together!!! Weeeeeee!

On today's episode, Alexis and Ollina have too much fun! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/fifthgradefever/message

Book1/Chapter 5, Born To Make You Happy. This week we break down Her Holiness, Britney Spears' Book1/Chapter 5, Born To Make You Happy. John Wayne shares...a lot. Aaron learns...a lot. Bessie Jo flies a helicopter...a lot We also welcome our first guest to the podcast. Jim, The Grand BJ, joins us and teaches us to WEEEEEEE. Follow us on Instagram, @wwbritneydo (https://www.instagram.com/wwbritneydo/), and hit us up with any comments or questions you have and you might be featured on a future episode. Credits Aaron: Aaron Nobu Nakaishi @aaronnobu (https://www.instagram.com/aaronnobu/) Bessie Jo: Bessie Jo Hill @bessiejohill (https://www.instagram.com/bessiejohill/) John Wayne: John Wayne Constance @johnnies007 (https://www.instagram.com/johnnies007/) Jim Nieb: Jim Nieb @jimniebhere (https://www.instagram.com/jimniebhere/) Special Guest: Jim Nieb.

Weeeeeee’re back..... kind of.?!?

Weeeeeee’re back..... kind of.?!?

Weeeeeee

 Shenanigans is defined by Webster's dictionary as tricky or questionable practices or conduct; also, high-spirited or mischievous activity. It's a word I never used until I became an old fogy. Now it rolls off my tongue like a good set of dentures secured by a bad squeeze of Fixadent. I can't remember what we called shenanigans when I was growing up, but we sure knew when we were up to them. I can tell you that I've been up to my share and it doesn't seem that over my forty plus years I've learned lessons very well because I still tend to enjoy engaging in shenaniganly activities, as you'll see in two of these three stories. My name is Michael Blackston and you're about to step right into a big pile of my funny, messy life. _________________  My mama still shakes her head at stuff I say and do. There's usually at least a little smile behind the shame, but I imagine a voice inside her head asking, Where did I go wrong? It's okay, Mama. I turned out pretty relatively enough alright-ish in the end and we should probably thank God I didn't end up worse than that. After all ... I Was A Stupid Kid Who Did Stupidly Stupid Stuff  As my oldest approaches manhood and the age when I have to trust him outside of my supervision, I cringe to think of what must be going through that head of his. I remember being his age and while the details are effectively buried under an avalanche of adult stuff that happened starting twenty years ago, stuff that includes bad eating habits, lack of exercise, tons of debt, two decades of happy marriage, a foot or ten I stuck in my mouth, and a toe fungus that seemed like it would never go away, there’s still a vapor of youth stank seeping through to the surface. It could be whatever ungodly manifestation is under my son's bed creating that odor, I suppose. I'm afraid to look. But as deep as the tiny details may remain at the bottom of my own life's heap, I do have some solid nuggets to remind me that if I don’t keep a close eye on my child, I’m likely to be removing layers of his skin from concrete and/or roofing materials before too long.  The memories that evoke that sort of worry in my mind are tattooed there for eternity. We laugh about them now when we’re gathered around the dinner table and begin to reminisce about the Days of Good Ol’, but in truth, they still hurt a little, they still embarrass, or they still scare the crap out of me.  I was stupid. We did stupidly stupid things and I wasn’t alone.  I had my cousin by my side for much of it, but some things are mine and mine alone to take ownership of. So which were which and what did we or I do? Here are a few instances of stupid, all true stories, from my childhood. Collecting Money From Neighbors For "The Functionally Illiterate" To Actually Buy Cigarettes Stupid Rating: EVIL  My cousin and I liked to smoke when we were about my son’s age. We thought we were cool and back in the Days Of Good Ol’, you could purchase cigarettes “for your aunt” if you were three years old. Tell the clerk they were for an adult family member and it was all good. We had one particular old man who worked the counter of a local convenience store that never asked questions and so we patronized his store often. Most of the time, we could come up with a couple of dollars for a pack of menthols with no problem, but on this occasion we had lots of daylight left and there was nothing we could get our hands on, money wise. I don’t remember who’s idea it was, but together we decided to grab a small crystal candy dish from my cousin’s coffee table and work the neighborhood going door to door asking for money until we’d collected enough to buy a pack. Most of the neighbors gave us a few nickels and sent us on our way. It wasn’t until one of them cocked an eyebrow and started asking questions that I had to improvise and came up with a story that turned into what we thought was a gold mine. I think it's important to mention that my cousin hid in the bushes while I knocked on the doors. The neighbor asked what charity we were collecting for and I hesitated only for a second. I had recently heard someone on the radio talking about helping those who couldn’t read and I said, “The functionally illiterate.” She asked what that meant and after I told her accurately, she gave me something like a dollar in quarters. I thanked her and calmly walked to the bush where my cousin was crouching and laughing. After it was all said and done, I think we collected enough for several packs of cigarettes and by the end of the day, we probably smelled like the Marlboro man after a stressful night. I’ve always felt an awful sense of regret and shame for doing that and as a result, I tend to give a little more than I normally would to the Santa that rings the bell.  Yes, we laugh, but we also understand the depth of the“butt whoopin’” we should have taken after a stunt like that. And before you shout, “Where were your parents?!”, you have to realize that we went to great lengths to ensure they thought we were on our best behavior and right outside in the back yard. Swinging On A Rickety Cable Over A Rocky Creek Stupid Rating: DUMMY  Again, my cousin was there, but I can’t blame him for my injuries. In the woods close to his house, there was a large oak tree that overhung a ten-foot ravine with a small, very rocky creek at the bottom. From a thick branch was tied a metal cable and at the end of the cable, a stick was tied into a loop so you could hold on. My cousin and his friend had found it and spent hours enjoying the bliss of swinging from the edge and out over the creek. He couldn’t wait to show me and we planned on a day of it the very next time I was over. That time came on a Sunday; I remember that. Mom was not easy about letting me spend the day out of her sight with friends, but she was trying to let me be a boy and gave me her trust. It didn’t help that I'd told her what we were planning to do.  “Absolutely NOT! You'll kill yourself!” she yelled and I promised we’d find something else to entertain ourselves. My eyes would have been shifty during that promise and I probably had fingers crossed behind my back because as we all know, that makes it a clever deception, not a lie - which is not a sin.  When we got to the tree, completely disobeying my mother, my cousin and his friend each took turns showing me how it was done. They pulled the cable in, took hold of the stick in both hands, pulled it tight, swung out over the ravine and back. Glee and laughter and cries of, “WEEEEEEE!” filled the spring day. It was my turn and it looked easy enough. I pulled the cable to myself just as they had. I grabbed the stick in both hands just as they had. I jumped straight out from the bank over the ravine just as they HAD NOT. I wasn’t the best at paying close attention and the pull it tight and swing part had escaped my notice. There is a big difference between pulling a cable tight and swinging over a ten-foot ravine with a rocky creek at the bottom and jumping straight into the air over the ravine so that there is quite a lot of slack in the cable, until that is, gravity takes effect moments later and the slack lets out violently. I knew it as soon as my feet left the safety of the bank, but there was nothing I could do. The cable snapped straight and I wasn't strong enough to hold on.  I fell the ten feet face first.  On my way down, I managed to protect my face with my left arm and break my fall with my right, which snapped both bones of my right arm cleanly.  My injuries could have been much worse, but I was lucky to walk away with a broken arm and a severely bruised face. There was no hiding it from mom, of course, so I gave her the details … I had slipped on some mud while walking by the creek and tumbled down the embankment. I Was A Teenage Ninja Mercenary Stupid Rating: IDIOT  I was fourteen when we moved to not only a new house, but also to a new state. Rambo was all the rage at the movies and so were ninja films. I was totally convinced that I would be a great military weapon for my country and also, I had seen First Blood more than 8,000 times. I was already qualified to be considered a master at sneakery. On top of that, I had a black ninja suit complete with hood and boots, so win/win. I decided that one of the first nights in our new house would be dedicated to sneaking out and wandering the neighborhood to engage in a little surveillance. After all, I’d seen Invasion USA, where Chuck Norris had to tackle a terror cell in what seemed like a normal, quiet nook of suburbia, so it was best to be prepared in the event that bazooka fire erupted in our back yard.  When the opportunity came, I suited up and soft-stepped through the house, backing against the walls and doing that quick around-the-corner peek all the expert silent assassins employ, although I knew my mom and step-dad were in their bedroom asleep. I opened the door and smelled the crisp night air. From a bush at the front, I scanned my surroundings and picked my route of covert ninja sweetness. I would cross the front yard fleetly of foot, making no sound and take my next cover behind a tree in the side yard of the house across the street. From the safety of those shadows, I would plan my next move of bold, swift execution.  It was late (or early) and there were no cars. Nevertheless, there was need for stealth and I took off across the yard like a panther. I made no sound; left no shadow. I was a breeze for all anyone but me could tell and I could see the tree in the side yard of the house across the street getting closer. The focus on my destination was sharp – too sharp – and so I didn’t see the chain-link fence between me and the tree. I hadn't noticed it before when we were moving in and, in the black of night, I did not notice it then.  I caught the thick metal top bar of the fence with my face, right in the middle of my upper lip. Dazed, I put a ninja glove to the point of impact and it stung like a mother. Then I noticed great droplets of blood speckling the pavement as I limped back toward my house. I carefully removed the ninja gear and hid it in my room, then went to my mother and explained how I had slipped on something in my bedroom and planted my lip into the corner of my wrought iron bed. She had no reason not to believe me as apparently, I was prone to slip on things.  So why do I cringe when I think that my son is coming into the fearless days of his life? I think you know the answer to that. History tends to repeat itself, so I need to be extra vigilant. I wish I had the time to regale you with every story like this I can think of and maybe one day I’ll tell some more. For right now, though, I think it’s all I can stomach. Although … Yeah, as bloody and painful as they may have been, sometimes I do still long to revisit those Days Of Good Ol’. ___________________  Wow, you say. This guy is lucky to be alive or at the very least, lucky not to be somebody's girlfriend in a maximum security prison. And I'll say to you, I know … I know. Someone was watching over me. I imagine God has assigned me some pretty awesome guardian angels over the years and I also reckon there's been a lot of turn-over at that position with angelic voices screaming, I can't take it anymore! Well, this next story will show you that shenanigans are still a part of my life. I submit to you now a tale of ...   Hotel Shenanigans  Since I travel so much, I’d expect that my readers and listeners will be treated to stories that center around hotels every now and again. One of the hardest things about consistently releasing content is figuring out what to write about. It probably wouldn’t be as tough if I were blogging about how to better yourself, make money online, or decorate the garage you’re renovating for your mother to move into by using trash you stole from your neighbor’s bin.  I, however, am making a valiant attempt at comedy and that ain’t so easy a task. I will say that it doesn’t make it any easier trying to type with fried chicken grease on your fingers because you’re on your lunch break and the buffet at Olde Town Café in Walterboro, SC has been calling to you since you drove by this morning.  Fortunately, I had an idea last night that helps in this area. I was bored while I waited in line at the front desk of my hotel to check in and I began thinking of ways I could up the entertainment ante of trips away from home.  When I first started traveling, the novelty of staying in hotel rooms was enough. I could go out to any of the restaurants that surrounded me, then see what was happening in whatever town I was working in at the moment. Afterward, what little night was left would be spent in the comfort of a room that would be magically clean and tidy when I returned after work that day. It didn’t take long, though, to become bored with all of the exploration and even the eating out. Soon my evenings began to consist of picking up a rotisserie chicken from Walmart and going straight to my room to den up like an old, decrepit bear with bad teeth and worn down claws. Had I any lawn in front of my hotel rooms, I would have screamed at children to, “Stay off it, by thunder!”  So as I stood in line behind every person who ever retired to Florida, I started thinking of fun ways to prank people in the hotel. I would never have to venture far from my room and still find entertainment that may be considered in poor taste, cruel, even evil, but would help me to pass the time with a smile.  Here are some things you might consider attempting the next time you’re in a hotel and have the proper tools at your disposal: The little girl at the end of the hall  We’ve all seen the imagery in one movie or another. There is nothing creepier than a little girl standing silent and alone in a place she shouldn’t be. The very end of the hall in a hotel is the perfect place and the stringier her hair, the better. Let her locks fall with reckless abandon in front of her face and if you can swing it, have her hold a teddy bear by the leg loosely at her side. This could be your daughter or your niece. Have her stand there in silence, staring straight ahead so that when people get off the elevator, they see her just standing at the end of the hall. When they approach (IF they approach), have her remain silent or softly whisper something like, “I’m sorry I was bad, mommy, but they told me to do it. Now it's your turn.” She can repeat that same line over and over or maybe just raise her finger to point at whoever comes off the elevator. If you’re a real sicko and have identical twins, station them at each end of the hall dressed exactly alike and with the same props you’ve decided on, with one twin out of sight. When the unsuspecting traveler approaches the first twin, have the one behind them speak from the other end of the hall. When the traveler turns, they see the exact same girl behind them. They will inevitably turn to look for the first girl, but she is gone; hidden around the corner. When they turn back, the second girl is gone and the first one behind them steps back into view and speaks the creepy line of dialogue. This can go on and on until the traveler either gets it and laughs at your cleverness or passes out and dies from a heart attack. Elevator Mind Games  I have to be honest, I’m not the first to think of playing pranks on an elevator by far. But if you have the guts to put yourself in an awkward position and make others very uncomfortable so that you may enjoy a thumping good time at another’s expense, an elevator is one of the best places to do it. There are always the classics, like facing the corner as if being punished while everyone else is enjoying the aggressive silence that permeates all elevators and looking blankly ahead. You might wait till the door shuts on a crowded elevator and ask, “So I suppose you all know why I’ve asked you here.” But I say kick it up a notch. After all, you have a captive audience and the old saying applies, Go big or go home!  When someone new gets on and chooses a floor, why not whisper under your breath, but loudly enough to be heard, “They’re pushing my buttons … They’re pushing my BUTTONS!”? Or perhaps you invite everyone to a pantie raid in your room later. If someone looks nervous, comfort them by saying something like, “Don’t worry. It shouldn’t get stuck for hours … again.” Phoning The Front Desk  There is no law against asking questions and the front desk clerk is there to help you.  Start easy. Make it something reasonable to lull them into a sense of pride in their top-notch customer service.  “Hello, front desk? This is Mike in room 326. Can I get a copy of my receipt when I check out in the morning?”  The clerk will show the utmost in customer service and never give a hint that while they understand your question to be legitimate, they also believe you to be an idiot for not already knowing you can get a copy of your receipt at check out. Then you move into phase two.  “Hello, front desk? This is Mike again in room 326. Can I get that receipt in Braille?”  “I’m sorry,” they’ll smile from the other end of the phone. If you could see them, you’d notice the stink-face they are giving you. “I’m afraid we can’t print a receipt in braille. I didn’t realize you were sight impaired.”  “I’m not.”  “Oh. Well is there anything else we can do for you?”  “You can print my receipt in braille.”  Click.  Now you’ve properly irritated them and the game is on …  “Hello, front desk? This is Mike in room 326. Sorry to bother you again, but could you send up some soap made out of baby tears? The stuff in this bathroom smells like it was made with old man sweat.”  “What are you talking about?” They may or may not still be attempting to keep an air of hospitality, but probably not.  Now you raise your voice as if their incomprehension is due to the volume of the call.  “I SAID, CAN YOU SEND ME UP SOME SOAP MADE OUT OF BABY TEARS …”  They will interrupt. “This isn’t funny, sir. Please make no more calls to the front desk.” Click.  Now the apology … in a different accent.  “Hello? Theees eees Miguel een room Three Tweeeenty Seeeex. (Make sure to roll your R sounds.) Let me apologice for de rudeness uff my preeevious calls. One final quesschon.”  There will be a sigh from the other end. “Yes?”  “Dun you thin it would be nice to give blind peoples a receipt they can read?” You should be prepared to be asked to leave.  If you’re creative and don’t mind being called all manner of offensive names, you can definitely make your next hotel stay interesting. Just do me a favor, don’t tell them I put you up to it. _________________   The Stuff Wings Are Made Of  You might think this will be an article about either angels, spicy bar foods, or colorful cartoon ponies with tattoos on their butts. It’s possible you’re thinking it might have something to do with birds or flying comic book hero demi-gods, but you would be wrong. This article is about the very bestest, most super-duper experience a human being could ever have.  It’s about live theatre and the crap that goes on behind the scenes … IN THE WINGS!  It’s the stuff wings are made of and I have a long list of shows under my belt to pull examples from.  When I was a young’n, only knee-high to a grass hopper, my mama taught me how to perform for an audience. As a child, I was in the casts of shows like Oliver, The Music Man, Annie Get Your Gun, and a local kids troupe production of Hansel And Gretel in which I donned the costume of an enormous cupcake made of sponge foam. But as puberty reared its ugly white head in the form of, well … white heads, I became uninterested in stagecraft. There was a dark time in my early teenage-hood-dom when I yearned to ride around in a pickup truck while my life’s soundtrack blared into the wind, sung by Hank Williams, Jr. I hunted and fished and felt I needed to prove that I was a country boy who could survive. And no, there’s nothing wrong with hunting and fishing in my opinion, but it’s not the person I’ve proudly become. I left that behind me after seeing my first show on Broadway. I traded my fishing rod for the face mic I’d dropped at the foot of the stage door a few years before when I lost interest. I picked that mic back up, fixed it to my cheek with medical tape and haven’t looked back. Now my fondest of memories take place at the theatre. Some are tales of onstage moments, but some of the best are the things that happened offstage and in the wings.  People who have never been a part of the magic that is putting together a live stage show frequently wonder what it is that makes us "theatre people" so darn crazy about it. And they wonder why, when the run is over, our eyes fill with tears and we weep like babies that are being ripped away from the one that gave them life. Just in case you’re one of those people who wonder, it’s because we’re babies being ripped away from something that gave us life!  Theatre is a lifeline to most of us. It’s where we take our deepest breaths, even when the choreographer has danced our feet into nubs that feel like they’re crusted with push pins and our lungs are filled with glass. Even when the director has made us run the same scene eight hundred times because someone got the giggles and now the whole cast has the giggles and the director thinks there’s nothing at all funny about it. We hurt and we laugh until we can’t breathe and to us, it’s still the best air we could ever take in.  But once the show is ready, or nearly ready, and costumed characters are flitting about the area just beyond the curtain legs at stages right and left, it becomes a whole new deal.  The wings during a show is a world all its own. It’s a dark and crowded land floating somewhere between the reality of the world outside and the fantasy playing out just steps away across the sight lines on the stage.  We have our instructions and they’re almost always the same for every show. One of them is "Stay behind the sight lines." That’s the painted or taped line on the floor that marks the boundary that separates the stage the audience can see from the mystery of the wings. If you cross it, someone in the audience can see you and that’s a no-no. If you do so, it's possible that the ghost of Thespus, the man credited as being the first actor to deliver a monologue, may curse you with fumble fingers and you'll spend the rest of your life dropping your props onstage. Many times I’ve toyed with the stage manager as I awaited an entrance and teased them with a toe pushed vicariously close to the line. Stage managers reserve the right to rip your limbs from your body if you cross the line or break a rule and they usually don’t care for my monkey-like shenanigans in the wings. I can’t help it, though. I become a kid again when the show’s going on. It’s like Christmas morning and every reaction from the audience is a gift under the tree.  Once, when I and my cast mates were about to open the first act of Into The Woods, which is done by raising the lights on a stage full of frozen characters who come to life, section by section, as the narrator introduces them, I turned to the actress playing my wife just before we were to take the stage.  “Did I ever tell you about the time I peed on my leg?”  She started laughing and was nearly roaring by the time the story was all told, just in time for the call of, “places.” We opened the curtain and she was doing everything she could to stifle her laughter. But that wasn’t enough. Several years later, I was directing my own production of Into The Woods and the same actress was reprising her role as The Baker’s Wife. I was not The Baker this time, but imagine her surprise when one night I, as the director, sidled up to her just before the curtain opened and whispered in her ear, “Did I ever tell you about the time I peed on my leg?”  I got a good elbow in the gut for that one, but there was still a grin at the corners of her mouth.  By the way, now it’s a tradition of mine to ask someone that question at least once right before they go on, no matter what show we’re doing.  Anyone who haunts the wings during a show will tell you that at some point another actor waiting in the wings all the way across the stage will catch your eye and do something stupid. I like to aggressively lip sing whatever musical number is happening onstage like I’m a rocker screaming out my hit ballad at a concert. If I happen to be holding a prop (It was my fencing sword during a recent production of The Addams Family – The Musical. I was Gomez), I’ll wield it like a guitar and accessorize my performance from the wings with a sweet air guitar solo. The best application of this particular shenanigan is when there is a group of people watching from across the way and your entrance is so close that you have to immediately jump from the shenanigan to your character and enter the scene onstage without so much as a pause. That kind of timing takes practice and a level of experience best left to veterans.  There’s always the high note in passing. Allow me to set the stage for this one. (See what I did there?)  You have a few minutes before your next scene. You have to pee and you don’t want to create a funny story to tell people just before they go out onstage. Or maybe you’re making the trek from the dressing rooms to the stage for the pre-show sound check. Whatever the reason, there is a journey you are taking among the corridors of the facility and you see up ahead that you are about to pass a fellow cast or crew member. What are you supposed to do in regards to greeting as you meet? There is only one thing you can do. You both open your mouths wide in the most comically exaggerated way as possible and let out a soprano’s “AHHHHHH!” high note. You don’t have to be a soprano. You don’t even have to be able to sing. It’s just something you do and I’ll bet more actors than not have at least once in their lives participated in this literal right of passage. It’s most effective when both are in full costume and makeup.  There’s the poke on the shoulder of the unsuspecting actor waiting to enter the scene. You poke and quickly turn away as if a phantom pokester is afoot. They almost never fall for it and will probably employ the, Oh you! stare.  I love backstage tomfoolery, as long as it doesn’t affect the show going on. There are plenty of other examples to tell and I’m sure I will because I love this stuff.  Shenanigans are simply a part of life for some people and I'm one of those. After a while, I finally gave up on acting responsible and have accepted that there will always be a little impish influence in me that enjoys a good, unhurtful prank.  Annnnnnnnd BLACKOUT!        

Weeeeeee're back! With a bumper podcast reviewing not one, not two, but, oh - actually 2 games. One in a top secret hotel and the other billions of light years away in a massive garden. Probably. We've both been super busy and missed all our lovely listeners, but rest assured 2018 will be arcadtabulous. Yes, I went there. AND I MEANT IT. Now go and play Robert Smith and the Deadly Chicken Dinner. We also find out that Shaun is possessed by a Marmot or Marmite? TIMESTAMP: What We've Been Up To Since The Last Podcast – 0:00:00 Arcade News – 25m 45s Pickups – 37m 09s Feedback – 49m 31s Shout Outs! – 1h 12m 55s Tech Tips – 1hr 16m 23s Top 100 Games – 1h 22m 47s Flyer Quiz – 1h 28m 40s Featured Games Reviews – 1h 33m 34s / 1h 52m 20s Next Show's Game – 2h 21m 24s LINKS: Elevator Action Flyer (Japanese) Elevator Action Flyer (US) Sull's Blog On Elevator Action Elevator Action On Strategy Wiki Exed Exes Flyer (Japanese) Exed Exes On Strategy Wiki IGN Review of Exed Exes (Wii) Retro Asylum Xmas Podcast (featuring beardy fool) Favourite Jamma Cabs On UKVAC Monaco GP On FPGA Frantic Dimension Namco Tiny Arcade Machines New House Of The Dead VAC'ers at EAG Video 'Roust' On The Spectrum Pro(c) Atari Magazine Top 50 List     Ten Pence Hi-Score League Winners 2017.   ELEVATOR ACTION SCOREBOARD: Ben Granville 60,500 Taggsta 45,050 Charliefar 41,500 Sull 40,200 Mike Burke 39,200 Sal Bug 38,250 Chris MCBL 35,350 Steve Monkeychunk 33,150 Nik73 32,500 Tronads 32,000 Brian Haribo 28,600 Ian Cullen 27,500 Neil 20to5 25,250 Vincent Marmite 23,500 Mick Orwell 23,000 Flinnster 22,350 HeIsJImmi 21,600 Marc Bell 21,450 BoomGoPinball 20,750 Connor Molloy 16,650 Paul McCaskie 16,050 Shane Hollister 15,500 Lesoleil Dr. Dean 15,000 Brett May 14,500 Mark Happydude 13,150 Karl Parry 12,550 Rob Carpenter 9,150 Andrew Driver 9,150 Tactical Genius 8,500 Steve Tyke 7,200 Mark Clayton 6,700 Matthew Bridge 6,100   EXED EXES SCOREBOARD: Charliefar 1,318,900 Shane Hollister 627,700 Sull 364,400 Ian Cullen 336,700 Marc Bell 308,100 Nik SilverSmurfer 277,800 Matthew Bridge 229,600 Steve Tyke 227,100 Tactical Genius 213,500 Brian Haribo 204,000 Taggsta 195,800 Vincent Marmite 195,000 Paul McCaskie 184,500 Tronads 171,200 Flinnster 146,200 Nik73 125,800 Karl Parry 104,300 Chris MCBL 103,900 Mark Happydude 95,900 Swiss Toni 90,700 BoomGoPinball 89,900 Neil 20to5 83,700 Michael Lis 80,200 Stacey King 75,700 Chris CNP 74,300 Sal Bug 73,700 Connor Molloy 68,200 Tin Brother of Bronze 66,400 HeIsJimmi 55,800 I have no bunghole! 48,800 Mark Clayton 39,800 Damianiw 37,900 NEXT SHOW'S GAME: Irem's R Type ROM: rtype Lives: 3 Extra Lives: 100K, 200K, 350K, 500K, 700K Difficulty: Normal Submit your score on Twitter with #10pScore, or on Facebook as a comment on our podcast post. Pictures please! Three weeks to play this game, as Vic is in 'Merica and Shaun is at Play Blackpool when the next recording would be made. Deadline for score submissions is Feb 18th 2018 17:00 UK time. Check the Ten Pence High Score League Table  

Weeeeeee doggies!!!! The Rootin-est, Tootin-est hombres in town have prepared for you the hottest true crime Podcast this side of the Mississip!! Join us as we take a look into the last days of one BMF Albert (probably drank his own piss) Johnson.. The boys dig deeper than ever before to bring you a well researched, hard hitting, mildly racist breakdown of the tireless chase that eventually led to Albert’s demise… or did it???

Spartan up! A first timer takes on the Beast.  (Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/SpartanUp.mp3] Link The funniest line of the day was when I was flying down an open field descent passing people in big clumps.  I yelled “Come on people you're being passed by a 54 year old guy!” A lady looks at me sideways and responds “Yeah, but not a normal one.” I took that as a compliment.  The great herds of hikers I passed were mostly pretty cranky about it.  I don't get it.  If you're out there you might as well enjoy yourself.  I suppose if you're at the end of your rope and some hairy, half-naked old guy flies by yelling “Weeeeeee!” it might piss you off.  … It wasn't easy, but it wasn't the hardest thing I've ever done.  I was a bit out of my element but I raced the Spartan Beast as best I could and did relatively well.  I met my primary goal of not dying and my secondary goal of not injuring myself.  I did get nicked up and was a bit sore.  It will be a couple weeks before all the bruises, scrapes and scratches heal.  But nothing broken or sprained.  I ran this event as a bit of a lark because they reached out to me and offered an entry.  My daughter Teresa wanted to come along and do the sprint so I signed her up too and I was glad for the company.  We made the drive up to Killington, VT Saturday morning.  I raced on Saturday and she raced Sunday morning so it was another nice endurance adventure weekend for us.  Having been offered a complimentary entry I figured I'd get my money's worth and run one of the events with a higher difficulty level.  When you look at the advertised events it starts with the Sprint, moves up to the Super and then up to the Beast.  The Sprint is advertised as 5k distance, the Super is a 10K and the Beast is around a ½ marathon.  There's a special shirt / 3-part medal if you do all three.  There are also longer events like running the ‘Ultra-Beast' which is the Beast twice and the Agoge which is a special multi-day event. Not knowing much about Spartan races I signed up for the Beast event which is listed as 13 miles and 30 obstacles.  I mean, it's only a ½ marathon, right?  How long could it take? How hard could it be?  I have my best adventures when I don't pay attention too much.  I'm in decent shape this summer and could jog any given ½ marathon in under 2 hours so I figured I'd do this in under 4 hours, right?  Two weekends previously I ran the very difficult Wapack Trail race which was 18 miles of technical single track over 4 mountains, twice in just about 4 hours.  At the end of July I ran a hot trail marathon in around 5 hours and that's twice as far as this Beast, right?  You see my logic here.  I looked at the Spartan training plans and they were, frankly, terrifying with hundreds of burpees, squats and pullups.  It was like something out of a gladiator movie.  Or that old “” I watched a few videos of races and it looked reasonably engaging but some of the athletes were clearly not in the best of shape.  I asked Coach to give me some Spartan specific training but, honestly, he thought it was stupid idea.  He basically gave me the same training he always does, maybe with a bit more yoga and core work.  I can honestly say I think I did more burpees on the course then I had done in all my training.  To summarize, I went into this Spartan Beast race having no idea what I was getting into and without training for it.  Guess what?  I did really well.  That's right.  I excelled.  I came in 10th in my age group out of 106 old guys. I was 220th out of 2296 males and I was 252 out of 3,213 overall.  And I think that's just the finishers.  They pulled a large number of people off the course due to injury and time limits.  How is this possible?  How did my tired, old marathoner butt out perform all these millennial cross-fitters?  It's simple.  I actually trained for the race.  They didn't.  It turned out the obstacles were 1% of the course.  99% of it was technical, mountain, trail running.  Well it was technical, mountain, trail running for me.  It was a miserable death march for all those well-chiseled, millennial cross-fitters who spent their training flipping tires and doing hundreds of pullups. I can honestly say, with a large dose of irony, that I was probably the only one who trained well and course specifically in the whole crowd.  I was able to fake the obstacles and play to my strengths.  I just rolled off Wapack and the Indy Trail marathon.  I WAS trained for this race.  I think another advantage I had was a certain familiarity with long races and suffering.  I can go pretty deep into the suffer locker when I need to and still compete.  I got the impression that these folks weren't as familiar with the sweet suffering of a multi-hour endurance event.  Don't get me wrong.  If I had to compete in the global tire-flipping, box-jumping games I wouldn't last 60 seconds.  I just happened to luck into a course that was basically a long mountain race.  Still, it took me 6 ½ hours to get through the course.  Mostly because of the 3-4 near vertical ascents of the mountain we did.  It was slow going.  Especially in the last couple hours when I was out of fuel.  What I discovered, (as I was getting ready in the parking lot), was that the average open participant takes 7-9 hours.  Really?  I had no intention of staying out there that long.  I told Teresa 4-6 hours max.  I mean it's only 13 miles.  The organizers told all of the waves starting after noon to carry headlamps and glow sticks but I thought that was just more ridiculous Spartan hyperbole.  It turns out it wasn't.  When I was leaving the venue that night you could see the long line of headlamps trooping along the slopes on the mountain.  Those technical descents would be really difficult in the dark.  Glad I wasn't out there.  There was some controversy because they let people start the Beast up until 2:00 PM, knowing the average cross fitter takes 7-9 hours.  Then they pulled them all off the course at 9:00.  Those people were a bit miffed at having paid a couple hundred bucks and traveled to Vermont only to get forcibly DNF'ed.  This was the ‘Open' division.  There is also a ‘Competitive' and an ‘Elite' division.  I toyed with entering as competitive, but then I got over myself and went with open.  The advantage of the competitive division is less traffic on the course and people generally know what they're doing.  The advantage to the open division is that they are far less strict about how you approach the obstacles.  The volunteers really didn't care if we did obstacles correctly or did all the penalty burpees for not completing the obstacles.  I think I could have run around the obstacles and no one would have stopped me.  … It was a nice, warm sunny day when Teresa and I rolled into the venue.  We had to pay $10 for parking (on both days).  There were shuttle buses to the starting area.  I got kitted up before we went on the bus.  Looking at the weather I decided to go shirtless.  I had the same Hoka road shoes that I used in my other trail races. I had my water back pack – I had considered trying to ‘live off the land' but there didn't look to be much support on the course and I didn't want to run out of water.  I had three old Gu's that I threw in the pack for fuel.  I didn't want to carry a bunch of stuff because of the obstacles.  Any extra stuff would have to be dragged through the course.  Instead of a hat I made a hippy-helmet out of an old bandana with a chilli pepper motif.  I didn't wear a watch or sunglasses.  I put my wedding ring in a zippered pocket in my pack – I have lost a little weight and it's not so tight anymore and I didn't want it coming off in an obstacle. .  They made you wear a headband with your number on it and a timing chip on your wrist.  I put on a pair of Zensah calf sleeves as well. Everyone I saw had either calf sleeves or tall calf socks.  I figured they knew something.  I threw a pair of running gloves in the pack in case my hands needed protection.  I went with my tried and true Brooks baggie shorts with the liner and the man-thong tech undies. I greased up the pointy bits.  That was it.  We were off.  Teresa helpfully painted a large Spartan logo on my belly, because, hey, when in Rome.  I joined the queue-up for the 12:15 open Beast wave. There looked to be around 100 or so competitors in my wave.  The first thing they do is make your climb over a 4 foot wall to get into the corral. That's a nice touch. Then an announcer whips the crowd into a frenzy.  I was chatting with some folks who came in from Ohio, a husband and wife and their friend.  I related how it was my first Spartan race and I hadn't trained much but was a runner.  They said “You'll be fine, just don't go out too fast.” But their eye's seemed to say “you have no idea how much trouble you're in.” With much hoopla were sent en masse on our way.  The first obstacles were 4 foot high beams that you had to vault.  I stopped to help a woman who could get over them.  In retrospect, she probably didn't' finish.  One of the early obstacles was to crawl under barbed wire.  There were two of these on the course.  I found these hard because it tore up my knees to army crawl through the dirt.  I had to take my pack off and push it ahead of me, which was a pain and got it all dirt covered.  Many people roll like logs under the barbed wire.  This seemed to work for them but they kept kicking me in the head in the process as I was moving pretty slow.  My strategy on the obstacles was to get as much help as I could, take my time and not get injured.  Another signature obstacle early in the race is the Bucket Carry.  You get handed a plastic 5 gallon bucket.  You have to fill it up with gravel and carry it up, around and down the hill.  It turns out all my yoga and core was good for these carrying things – or maybe it's all the years I've spent running through airports with bags – but I found this really easy and you can see me smiling in the photos.  I'm having a blast.  There were a constant series of walls you have to climb over of different heights.  I managed the shorter ones, but with my ability to do 3 pullups I had to get help getting over the tall ones.  In the open division getting help is encouraged. Teamwork is part of the Spartan value system.  Good thing too, because without help I would not have made it through many of those obstacles.  It was a warm day.   The course was dry from lack of rain.  I was glad to have the water pack because I was working hard and sweating.  They did manage to engineer in some mud pits in the second half of the race, including one that you had to go completely underwater to get under an obstacle, but these were quite manageable.  The big water obstacle was an actual open water swim about half way around the course.  I say ½ way because it was about 6 miles in but time-wise this was probably 1/3 of the way through.  Like many ultra-type events they back loaded much of the difficulty and the back half of the course took much longer.  It's a mental game. They like to throw hard stuff at you when you're tired and think you're almost done.  I knew the race played this way from reading Joe's book.  One manifestation was to have an obstacle right after every hard climb.  Another was to have nonsensical mile markers along the course. The actual distance was somewhere between 14 – 15 miles.  If you were watching for mile markers you were playing a fools game because they were purposefully random to mess with you.  The water obstacle was a lake near the start line around 6 miles in.  You hit this after running (well I ran) down the mountain and you're well warmed up by then.  It's preceded by a tall climbing obstacle.  These climbing obstacles were all super easy, unless you were afraid of heights.  I joked that we had playground equipment in the 70's when I was a kid that was worse.   When you got to the shore line they stuffed you into one of those big orange life jackets.  Which, prevents people from drowning, but also prevents those of us with a background in triathlon from swimming.  The water was advertised as 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  More hyperbole.  I would guess it was around 65 or 70 but cold enough that when people go from running down the mountain into the water they immediately cramp up to holy hell.  I started cramping too, but knew what was up and just tried to relax my legs.  I wasn't getting any propulsion from my kicking anyhow with the shoes on.  The best strategy seemed to be to float on your back and use your arms to avoid the leg cramps and the lean on giant life jacket.  When you got to the middle there was a bridge with rope ladders hanging from it.  This was called the Tarzan bridge.  You were supposed to climb the rope ladder and swing across dangling rope hand holds to the other side.  Swimming in cold water and climbing the rope ladder was no problem but I just don't have the hand grip strength to swing from ropes and plummeted back into the water after my second grip. This is where I ended up doing my first 30 burpee penalty.  I ended up doing 90 on-course penalty burpees.  Twice for these dangly obstacles and once for being a total spaz in the spear throw.  I did all the burpees I was assigned. I didn't do them well, but I did them.  Mine were more like the down-dogs I had trained for than the clean Spartan burpee.  Another advantage of being in the open division.  Then they made us swim/wade another ¼ mile to get back on the trail and the really hard climbing that was to come.  One obstacle I am tremendously proud of is the rope climb.  This is just what it sounds like.  You climb a rope 20 feet and ring a bell.  The last time I had done this was in 8th grade.  And as a chubby kid with no upper body strength I was awful at it.  But this time I wanted to do it. I set my goal to at least try every obstacle and give it my best. For some reason I had out run the pack and was alone at the rope climb.  I chose a rope.  I stood and slowed my breathing.  I took a deep breath and centered my hands to my heart with my eyes closed.  Then I climbed that rope and rang that bell like a champ.  I may have screamed “F-You, rope” in some sort of mindless exorcism of eight grade demons.  After the water obstacle the majority of the competitors seemed to be spent. They were all walking.  Every time I came to a flat spot in the trail there would be 20-30 people lounging around resting.  Not me.  When the trail opened up I was psyched to have running room and took off at a trot.  Why walk?  You're going to get there faster running and you use a different muscle set.  I had been choking down a Gu every hour or so when I felt my energy flagging.  And they helped.  I also brought some Endurolytes with me in a sealed plastic canister but they got all broken up from the jostling but they were gone about 3 hours in. Due to my lack of proper preparation and poor expectation setting I brought enough supplies for a 4 hour race and ended up going 6 ½ hours.  I was hitting the wall in those last couple hours.  Nothing I haven't felt before.  Even in my current lean state I've got plenty of fat to fall back on.  Not really much I could do except keep moving forward. Then it got hard.  About 3 ½ to 4 hours into the race we headed up the final climb.  Up until this point we had climbed parts of the mountain 2-3 times already.  It alternated from trooping up the ski slope to scrambling up some gnarly single path technical in the woods between the slopes.  And when I say gnarly I mean it.  Very steep, loose dirt, roots, rocks and trees.  In places you could use your hands to pull yourself up.  They even had ropes in particularly steep spots.  What made these technical sections hard was you could only go as fast as the person in front of you and there were few opportunities to pass.  Technically it's known as “the theory of constraints” – which is a fancy way of saying everyone moves as fast as the slowest person.  You'd have to pick your spots and try to jump by people.  Otherwise it was a conga line of slow moving feet.  It made it hard to choose a good line and get a rhythm going.  The one potential upside was all the young cross fitter booty in cross fitter booty shorts I had to eyeball from six inches away all day long.  That wasn't awful.  They may not know how to trail run but they look good in their clothes.  Going down was the same gnarly single path but you could build up momentum and get by people easier.  A couple times I tucked in behind the ultra-runners who seemed to have some sort of implied passing right and just followed them.  Once I figured it out I was just brazenly running the left fringe of the trail blowing by people by the score.  I'd yell “Ding! Ding!” or “Out of control old guy!” (that got a couple chuckles) or “Coming through!” but overall they had no sense of humor and yelled at me unless I said “on your left!” I'm not used to people being so cranky at a trail race.  But these weren't trail runners.  And this is the big reason I placed relatively high.  They walked.  I ran.  And I have to tell you it was fun bouncing through the woods, swinging from trees and passing people.  Some of the open field descents were too steep to run.  You had to do that shuffle hop movement where you're basically out of control and just touching the ground to slow down every once in a while.  This was dicey because the pack was thick and everyone else, especially later in the race was not handling the descents with much dignity.  Apparently they were having knee and quad burnout because they were fighting the downhills.  They were stopping a lot, walking backwards or sideways and even scooching down on their bums.  I had to avoid all this.  There were a couple steep sections where people would kick rocks loose and then those rocks would roll down the hill at velocity like 2-3 pound missiles.  Everyone would scream “Rock”.  You'd hear “Rock!” and then “Owe! That really hurt!” I made it through all the hard stuff without falling except once in the woods where I went elbow deep into a mud hole where a spring came out of the mountainside.  Then as I was careening down one of the last descents in the open slope I caught a toe.  I was in open ground so I tried to tuck and roll and it worked I popped back up on my feet.  But, in the process I slammed my shin and my elbow on some rocks.  The shin really hurt.  There wasn't much I could do about it.  I pulled up my calf sleeves so I wouldn't have to look at the wound, gritted my teeth and kept running – hoping I didn't do too much damage. Then there was the last climb.  By this point we were well into the race.  I was well out of fuel and running on fumes.  It was a super steep 2 mile hike straight up the gondola path to the top of the mountain.  This was a death march for everybody.  It was just a long conga line 3-4 across slogging up the slope.  I will admit to stopping and resting a number of times on this ascent.  When we final clambered out into open ground at the very top of the mountain it was in the clouds and windy.  The spectators up there had coats on and were shivering.  The temperature dropped and being mostly naked you would think I'd be cold, but I was well into suffer mode and the cold air woke me up a bit.  Now I knew we were done climbing and the finish was down at the bottom of the mountain somewhere.  Of course there was an obstacle at the top of the mountain that had to do with carrying logs like suitcases which was no problem.  I caught my breath and took off down the fire road.  I leaned on my training again, cleaned up my form and ran.  I used my core and it felt awesome to be moving again after all that slow hiking.  … Coach kept telling me not to worry about the race, that the Kardashians could do it.  Could the Kardashians do it?  Yeah, if they had enough time.  Overall on the course I saw a number of people that really didn't look like they should be doing a race this hard.  I think the positive is that assuming you started early enough you could take as much time as you wanted.  You could take all day and work as a team and in that sense anybody could do it.  I did see people getting taken off the course for injuries.  Mostly knees and ankles.  I think some of them may have been faking an injury to get of the damn mountain! For all the out of shape types there was definitely the lean, cross fit archetype as well.  Lots of compact, fit looking people with six pack abs.  That's the Spartan community. This race was the culmination of a long journey for many of them, from the sprint, to the super and now their ultimate conquest of the beast.  I met people from all over the country. I passed one guy who had flown in from Australia.  I was wondering if I would see anyone with phones or earbuds on the course.  I know the Millennials love their phones but the obstacles make having wires a bad idea.  I didn't see any wires. I did see a couple wireless headphones, but the one surprising thing I came across was speakers.  At least 4 people I passed had speakers strapped to their packs and were blasting music.  I don't know how they managed the water obstacles with those.  Mostly it was millennial hip-hop music that I am too old to appreciate and I remember some Blink182 late in the race but I passed a dude up one of the scrambles and he was blasting some Lynyrd Skynrd.  I obligingly yelled “Whatdayall wanna hear?. Free bird!”  He said it was random and the next song might be Christian music.  We all agreed this climb would be an excellent place to convert people – the kind of place that made you want to ask God for help.  So yeah, that's a new one on me.  Speakers strapped to your backpack in a race.  To finish up the narrative I got to the bottom of the mountain, ready to be done with it.  But they put 5 obstacles in the last ¼ mile just to mess with you.    spazzed out on the spear throw and had to do 30 burpees which left me totally drained for the subsequent log carry.  I managed the Atlas ball carry.  I had no hope of the last dangly rope thing and did another 30 burpees (these took a while because I was running on fumes).  Then over the last A-frame climby thing and a final leap across the fire and I was done.  The picture I had of myself leaping over the fire in my head was much more flattering than the actual picture.  I look like a hobo fleeing a structure fire.  When we were watching the finish earlier some fit young dude literally did a flip over the fire.  That is styling.  Not me.  I'm the dirty hobo.  Was it hard? Yeah. Was it the hardest thing I've ever done? No way.  People who have worn their Garmins on the course clock it at 14.83 miles.  They also clock 6,700 feet of elevation gain.  That's more than a mile.  That's more than Wapack.  That's more than the Grand Canyon.  So, if you want to run this version of the Spartan race go get your lederhosen and start mountain training. The man who won the elite version of my race on Saturday was a 26 year old who did it in 3:32.  The woman was a 29 year old who did it in 4:34.  In my open division the winner came in at 4:15 the very last runner took 17 hours to cover the course.  That's a long day.  The average looks to be in the 8-9 hour range.  Just so everyone knows I want credit for the memorization obstacle.  The way that works is that you have to memorize a number early in the race and they are supposed to ask you for it later in the race.  Both Teresa and I had to memorize the number, and I took great pride in knowing that my familiarity with memorization techniques would give me the clear advantage.  But no one ever askes either of us for our numbers!  For the record Quebec-949-5373. We slept in an old hotel in White River Junction and grabbed some barbeque and a craft brew.  I earned it.  I had a bit of a hard time sleeping because I had so many open scrapes and wounds every time I rolled over my whole body lit up like tearing a Band-Aid off.  Teresa tackled the sprint the next day and due to robust genetics she placed 1st in her age group, proving all Millennials aren't soft.  I was getting around fine.  My quads were a bit sore but nothing like after a hard road marathon.  I could tell I went deep into the glycogen stores because I had the odd struggle with finding the right nouns.  As the week has progressed the scrapes are healing.  The nastiest is a rope burn on the back of my ankle from one of the traversing obstacles.  I was oddly body sore all over like I had been rolled up in a blanket and beaten with sticks.  Nothing hurt badly, but everything hurt a little. I'm content with 6 ½ hour finish.  Will I go back?  Maybe for the shorter races to get the other 2 pieces of the medal and complete the ‘trifecta'.  After all I started with the hard one.  Teresa and I had a nice adventure.  I got a firsthand look at the Spartan races.  I don't know about all the courses but this one, this beast in Killington, ran a bit like an ultra, maybe a 30k in effort level.  If you're looking for something interesting go ahead and try a Spartan.

Spartan up! A first timer takes on the Beast.  (Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/SpartanUp.mp3] Link The funniest line of the day was when I was flying down an open field descent passing people in big clumps.  I yelled “Come on people you’re being passed by a 54 year old guy!” A lady looks at me sideways and responds “Yeah, but not a normal one.” I took that as a compliment.  The great herds of hikers I passed were mostly pretty cranky about it.  I don’t get it.  If you’re out there you might as well enjoy yourself.  I suppose if you’re at the end of your rope and some hairy, half-naked old guy flies by yelling “Weeeeeee!” it might piss you off.  … It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done.  I was a bit out of my element but I raced the Spartan Beast as best I could and did relatively well.  I met my primary goal of not dying and my secondary goal of not injuring myself.  I did get nicked up and was a bit sore.  It will be a couple weeks before all the bruises, scrapes and scratches heal.  But nothing broken or sprained.  I ran this event as a bit of a lark because they reached out to me and offered an entry.  My daughter Teresa wanted to come along and do the sprint so I signed her up too and I was glad for the company.  We made the drive up to Killington, VT Saturday morning.  I raced on Saturday and she raced Sunday morning so it was another nice endurance adventure weekend for us.  Having been offered a complimentary entry I figured I’d get my money’s worth and run one of the events with a higher difficulty level.  When you look at the advertised events it starts with the Sprint, moves up to the Super and then up to the Beast.  The Sprint is advertised as 5k distance, the Super is a 10K and the Beast is around a ½ marathon.  There’s a special shirt / 3-part medal if you do all three.  There are also longer events like running the ‘Ultra-Beast’ which is the Beast twice and the Agoge which is a special multi-day event. Not knowing much about Spartan races I signed up for the Beast event which is listed as 13 miles and 30 obstacles.  I mean, it’s only a ½ marathon, right?  How long could it take? How hard could it be?  I have my best adventures when I don’t pay attention too much.  I’m in decent shape this summer and could jog any given ½ marathon in under 2 hours so I figured I’d do this in under 4 hours, right?  Two weekends previously I ran the very difficult Wapack Trail race which was 18 miles of technical single track over 4 mountains, twice in just about 4 hours.  At the end of July I ran a hot trail marathon in around 5 hours and that’s twice as far as this Beast, right?  You see my logic here.  I looked at the Spartan training plans and they were, frankly, terrifying with hundreds of burpees, squats and pullups.  It was like something out of a gladiator movie.  Or that old “” I watched a few videos of races and it looked reasonably engaging but some of the athletes were clearly not in the best of shape.  I asked Coach to give me some Spartan specific training but, honestly, he thought it was stupid idea.  He basically gave me the same training he always does, maybe with a bit more yoga and core work.  I can honestly say I think I did more burpees on the course then I had done in all my training.  To summarize, I went into this Spartan Beast race having no idea what I was getting into and without training for it.  Guess what?  I did really well.  That’s right.  I excelled.  I came in 10th in my age group out of 106 old guys. I was 220th out of 2296 males and I was 252 out of 3,213 overall.  And I think that’s just the finishers.  They pulled a large number of people off the course due to injury and time limits.  How is this possible?  How did my tired, old marathoner butt out perform all these millennial cross-fitters?  It’s simple.  I actually trained for the race.  They didn’t.  It turned out the obstacles were 1% of the course.  99% of it was technical, mountain, trail running.  Well it was technical, mountain, trail running for me.  It was a miserable death march for all those well-chiseled, millennial cross-fitters who spent their training flipping tires and doing hundreds of pullups. I can honestly say, with a large dose of irony, that I was probably the only one who trained well and course specifically in the whole crowd.  I was able to fake the obstacles and play to my strengths.  I just rolled off Wapack and the Indy Trail marathon.  I WAS trained for this race.  I think another advantage I had was a certain familiarity with long races and suffering.  I can go pretty deep into the suffer locker when I need to and still compete.  I got the impression that these folks weren’t as familiar with the sweet suffering of a multi-hour endurance event.  Don’t get me wrong.  If I had to compete in the global tire-flipping, box-jumping games I wouldn’t last 60 seconds.  I just happened to luck into a course that was basically a long mountain race.  Still, it took me 6 ½ hours to get through the course.  Mostly because of the 3-4 near vertical ascents of the mountain we did.  It was slow going.  Especially in the last couple hours when I was out of fuel.  What I discovered, (as I was getting ready in the parking lot), was that the average open participant takes 7-9 hours.  Really?  I had no intention of staying out there that long.  I told Teresa 4-6 hours max.  I mean it’s only 13 miles.  The organizers told all of the waves starting after noon to carry headlamps and glow sticks but I thought that was just more ridiculous Spartan hyperbole.  It turns out it wasn’t.  When I was leaving the venue that night you could see the long line of headlamps trooping along the slopes on the mountain.  Those technical descents would be really difficult in the dark.  Glad I wasn’t out there.  There was some controversy because they let people start the Beast up until 2:00 PM, knowing the average cross fitter takes 7-9 hours.  Then they pulled them all off the course at 9:00.  Those people were a bit miffed at having paid a couple hundred bucks and traveled to Vermont only to get forcibly DNF’ed.  This was the ‘Open’ division.  There is also a ‘Competitive’ and an ‘Elite’ division.  I toyed with entering as competitive, but then I got over myself and went with open.  The advantage of the competitive division is less traffic on the course and people generally know what they’re doing.  The advantage to the open division is that they are far less strict about how you approach the obstacles.  The volunteers really didn’t care if we did obstacles correctly or did all the penalty burpees for not completing the obstacles.  I think I could have run around the obstacles and no one would have stopped me.  … It was a nice, warm sunny day when Teresa and I rolled into the venue.  We had to pay $10 for parking (on both days).  There were shuttle buses to the starting area.  I got kitted up before we went on the bus.  Looking at the weather I decided to go shirtless.  I had the same Hoka road shoes that I used in my other trail races. I had my water back pack – I had considered trying to ‘live off the land’ but there didn’t look to be much support on the course and I didn’t want to run out of water.  I had three old Gu’s that I threw in the pack for fuel.  I didn’t want to carry a bunch of stuff because of the obstacles.  Any extra stuff would have to be dragged through the course.  Instead of a hat I made a hippy-helmet out of an old bandana with a chilli pepper motif.  I didn’t wear a watch or sunglasses.  I put my wedding ring in a zippered pocket in my pack – I have lost a little weight and it’s not so tight anymore and I didn’t want it coming off in an obstacle. .  They made you wear a headband with your number on it and a timing chip on your wrist.  I put on a pair of Zensah calf sleeves as well. Everyone I saw had either calf sleeves or tall calf socks.  I figured they knew something.  I threw a pair of running gloves in the pack in case my hands needed protection.  I went with my tried and true Brooks baggie shorts with the liner and the man-thong tech undies. I greased up the pointy bits.  That was it.  We were off.  Teresa helpfully painted a large Spartan logo on my belly, because, hey, when in Rome.  I joined the queue-up for the 12:15 open Beast wave. There looked to be around 100 or so competitors in my wave.  The first thing they do is make your climb over a 4 foot wall to get into the corral. That’s a nice touch. Then an announcer whips the crowd into a frenzy.  I was chatting with some folks who came in from Ohio, a husband and wife and their friend.  I related how it was my first Spartan race and I hadn’t trained much but was a runner.  They said “You’ll be fine, just don’t go out too fast.” But their eye’s seemed to say “you have no idea how much trouble you’re in.” With much hoopla were sent en masse on our way.  The first obstacles were 4 foot high beams that you had to vault.  I stopped to help a woman who could get over them.  In retrospect, she probably didn’t’ finish.  One of the early obstacles was to crawl under barbed wire.  There were two of these on the course.  I found these hard because it tore up my knees to army crawl through the dirt.  I had to take my pack off and push it ahead of me, which was a pain and got it all dirt covered.  Many people roll like logs under the barbed wire.  This seemed to work for them but they kept kicking me in the head in the process as I was moving pretty slow.  My strategy on the obstacles was to get as much help as I could, take my time and not get injured.  Another signature obstacle early in the race is the Bucket Carry.  You get handed a plastic 5 gallon bucket.  You have to fill it up with gravel and carry it up, around and down the hill.  It turns out all my yoga and core was good for these carrying things – or maybe it’s all the years I’ve spent running through airports with bags – but I found this really easy and you can see me smiling in the photos.  I’m having a blast.  There were a constant series of walls you have to climb over of different heights.  I managed the shorter ones, but with my ability to do 3 pullups I had to get help getting over the tall ones.  In the open division getting help is encouraged. Teamwork is part of the Spartan value system.  Good thing too, because without help I would not have made it through many of those obstacles.  It was a warm day.   The course was dry from lack of rain.  I was glad to have the water pack because I was working hard and sweating.  They did manage to engineer in some mud pits in the second half of the race, including one that you had to go completely underwater to get under an obstacle, but these were quite manageable.  The big water obstacle was an actual open water swim about half way around the course.  I say ½ way because it was about 6 miles in but time-wise this was probably 1/3 of the way through.  Like many ultra-type events they back loaded much of the difficulty and the back half of the course took much longer.  It’s a mental game. They like to throw hard stuff at you when you’re tired and think you’re almost done.  I knew the race played this way from reading Joe’s book.  One manifestation was to have an obstacle right after every hard climb.  Another was to have nonsensical mile markers along the course. The actual distance was somewhere between 14 – 15 miles.  If you were watching for mile markers you were playing a fools game because they were purposefully random to mess with you.  The water obstacle was a lake near the start line around 6 miles in.  You hit this after running (well I ran) down the mountain and you’re well warmed up by then.  It’s preceded by a tall climbing obstacle.  These climbing obstacles were all super easy, unless you were afraid of heights.  I joked that we had playground equipment in the 70’s when I was a kid that was worse.   When you got to the shore line they stuffed you into one of those big orange life jackets.  Which, prevents people from drowning, but also prevents those of us with a background in triathlon from swimming.  The water was advertised as 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  More hyperbole.  I would guess it was around 65 or 70 but cold enough that when people go from running down the mountain into the water they immediately cramp up to holy hell.  I started cramping too, but knew what was up and just tried to relax my legs.  I wasn’t getting any propulsion from my kicking anyhow with the shoes on.  The best strategy seemed to be to float on your back and use your arms to avoid the leg cramps and the lean on giant life jacket.  When you got to the middle there was a bridge with rope ladders hanging from it.  This was called the Tarzan bridge.  You were supposed to climb the rope ladder and swing across dangling rope hand holds to the other side.  Swimming in cold water and climbing the rope ladder was no problem but I just don’t have the hand grip strength to swing from ropes and plummeted back into the water after my second grip. This is where I ended up doing my first 30 burpee penalty.  I ended up doing 90 on-course penalty burpees.  Twice for these dangly obstacles and once for being a total spaz in the spear throw.  I did all the burpees I was assigned. I didn’t do them well, but I did them.  Mine were more like the down-dogs I had trained for than the clean Spartan burpee.  Another advantage of being in the open division.  Then they made us swim/wade another ¼ mile to get back on the trail and the really hard climbing that was to come.  One obstacle I am tremendously proud of is the rope climb.  This is just what it sounds like.  You climb a rope 20 feet and ring a bell.  The last time I had done this was in 8th grade.  And as a chubby kid with no upper body strength I was awful at it.  But this time I wanted to do it. I set my goal to at least try every obstacle and give it my best. For some reason I had out run the pack and was alone at the rope climb.  I chose a rope.  I stood and slowed my breathing.  I took a deep breath and centered my hands to my heart with my eyes closed.  Then I climbed that rope and rang that bell like a champ.  I may have screamed “F-You, rope” in some sort of mindless exorcism of eight grade demons.  After the water obstacle the majority of the competitors seemed to be spent. They were all walking.  Every time I came to a flat spot in the trail there would be 20-30 people lounging around resting.  Not me.  When the trail opened up I was psyched to have running room and took off at a trot.  Why walk?  You’re going to get there faster running and you use a different muscle set.  I had been choking down a Gu every hour or so when I felt my energy flagging.  And they helped.  I also brought some Endurolytes with me in a sealed plastic canister but they got all broken up from the jostling but they were gone about 3 hours in. Due to my lack of proper preparation and poor expectation setting I brought enough supplies for a 4 hour race and ended up going 6 ½ hours.  I was hitting the wall in those last couple hours.  Nothing I haven’t felt before.  Even in my current lean state I’ve got plenty of fat to fall back on.  Not really much I could do except keep moving forward. Then it got hard.  About 3 ½ to 4 hours into the race we headed up the final climb.  Up until this point we had climbed parts of the mountain 2-3 times already.  It alternated from trooping up the ski slope to scrambling up some gnarly single path technical in the woods between the slopes.  And when I say gnarly I mean it.  Very steep, loose dirt, roots, rocks and trees.  In places you could use your hands to pull yourself up.  They even had ropes in particularly steep spots.  What made these technical sections hard was you could only go as fast as the person in front of you and there were few opportunities to pass.  Technically it’s known as “the theory of constraints” – which is a fancy way of saying everyone moves as fast as the slowest person.  You’d have to pick your spots and try to jump by people.  Otherwise it was a conga line of slow moving feet.  It made it hard to choose a good line and get a rhythm going.  The one potential upside was all the young cross fitter booty in cross fitter booty shorts I had to eyeball from six inches away all day long.  That wasn’t awful.  They may not know how to trail run but they look good in their clothes.  Going down was the same gnarly single path but you could build up momentum and get by people easier.  A couple times I tucked in behind the ultra-runners who seemed to have some sort of implied passing right and just followed them.  Once I figured it out I was just brazenly running the left fringe of the trail blowing by people by the score.  I’d yell “Ding! Ding!” or “Out of control old guy!” (that got a couple chuckles) or “Coming through!” but overall they had no sense of humor and yelled at me unless I said “on your left!” I’m not used to people being so cranky at a trail race.  But these weren’t trail runners.  And this is the big reason I placed relatively high.  They walked.  I ran.  And I have to tell you it was fun bouncing through the woods, swinging from trees and passing people.  Some of the open field descents were too steep to run.  You had to do that shuffle hop movement where you’re basically out of control and just touching the ground to slow down every once in a while.  This was dicey because the pack was thick and everyone else, especially later in the race was not handling the descents with much dignity.  Apparently they were having knee and quad burnout because they were fighting the downhills.  They were stopping a lot, walking backwards or sideways and even scooching down on their bums.  I had to avoid all this.  There were a couple steep sections where people would kick rocks loose and then those rocks would roll down the hill at velocity like 2-3 pound missiles.  Everyone would scream “Rock”.  You’d hear “Rock!” and then “Owe! That really hurt!” I made it through all the hard stuff without falling except once in the woods where I went elbow deep into a mud hole where a spring came out of the mountainside.  Then as I was careening down one of the last descents in the open slope I caught a toe.  I was in open ground so I tried to tuck and roll and it worked I popped back up on my feet.  But, in the process I slammed my shin and my elbow on some rocks.  The shin really hurt.  There wasn’t much I could do about it.  I pulled up my calf sleeves so I wouldn’t have to look at the wound, gritted my teeth and kept running – hoping I didn’t do too much damage. Then there was the last climb.  By this point we were well into the race.  I was well out of fuel and running on fumes.  It was a super steep 2 mile hike straight up the gondola path to the top of the mountain.  This was a death march for everybody.  It was just a long conga line 3-4 across slogging up the slope.  I will admit to stopping and resting a number of times on this ascent.  When we final clambered out into open ground at the very top of the mountain it was in the clouds and windy.  The spectators up there had coats on and were shivering.  The temperature dropped and being mostly naked you would think I’d be cold, but I was well into suffer mode and the cold air woke me up a bit.  Now I knew we were done climbing and the finish was down at the bottom of the mountain somewhere.  Of course there was an obstacle at the top of the mountain that had to do with carrying logs like suitcases which was no problem.  I caught my breath and took off down the fire road.  I leaned on my training again, cleaned up my form and ran.  I used my core and it felt awesome to be moving again after all that slow hiking.  … Coach kept telling me not to worry about the race, that the Kardashians could do it.  Could the Kardashians do it?  Yeah, if they had enough time.  Overall on the course I saw a number of people that really didn’t look like they should be doing a race this hard.  I think the positive is that assuming you started early enough you could take as much time as you wanted.  You could take all day and work as a team and in that sense anybody could do it.  I did see people getting taken off the course for injuries.  Mostly knees and ankles.  I think some of them may have been faking an injury to get of the damn mountain! For all the out of shape types there was definitely the lean, cross fit archetype as well.  Lots of compact, fit looking people with six pack abs.  That’s the Spartan community. This race was the culmination of a long journey for many of them, from the sprint, to the super and now their ultimate conquest of the beast.  I met people from all over the country. I passed one guy who had flown in from Australia.  I was wondering if I would see anyone with phones or earbuds on the course.  I know the Millennials love their phones but the obstacles make having wires a bad idea.  I didn’t see any wires. I did see a couple wireless headphones, but the one surprising thing I came across was speakers.  At least 4 people I passed had speakers strapped to their packs and were blasting music.  I don’t know how they managed the water obstacles with those.  Mostly it was millennial hip-hop music that I am too old to appreciate and I remember some Blink182 late in the race but I passed a dude up one of the scrambles and he was blasting some Lynyrd Skynrd.  I obligingly yelled “Whatdayall wanna hear?. Free bird!”  He said it was random and the next song might be Christian music.  We all agreed this climb would be an excellent place to convert people – the kind of place that made you want to ask God for help.  So yeah, that’s a new one on me.  Speakers strapped to your backpack in a race.  To finish up the narrative I got to the bottom of the mountain, ready to be done with it.  But they put 5 obstacles in the last ¼ mile just to mess with you.    spazzed out on the spear throw and had to do 30 burpees which left me totally drained for the subsequent log carry.  I managed the Atlas ball carry.  I had no hope of the last dangly rope thing and did another 30 burpees (these took a while because I was running on fumes).  Then over the last A-frame climby thing and a final leap across the fire and I was done.  The picture I had of myself leaping over the fire in my head was much more flattering than the actual picture.  I look like a hobo fleeing a structure fire.  When we were watching the finish earlier some fit young dude literally did a flip over the fire.  That is styling.  Not me.  I’m the dirty hobo.  Was it hard? Yeah. Was it the hardest thing I’ve ever done? No way.  People who have worn their Garmins on the course clock it at 14.83 miles.  They also clock 6,700 feet of elevation gain.  That’s more than a mile.  That’s more than Wapack.  That’s more than the Grand Canyon.  So, if you want to run this version of the Spartan race go get your lederhosen and start mountain training. The man who won the elite version of my race on Saturday was a 26 year old who did it in 3:32.  The woman was a 29 year old who did it in 4:34.  In my open division the winner came in at 4:15 the very last runner took 17 hours to cover the course.  That’s a long day.  The average looks to be in the 8-9 hour range.  Just so everyone knows I want credit for the memorization obstacle.  The way that works is that you have to memorize a number early in the race and they are supposed to ask you for it later in the race.  Both Teresa and I had to memorize the number, and I took great pride in knowing that my familiarity with memorization techniques would give me the clear advantage.  But no one ever askes either of us for our numbers!  For the record Quebec-949-5373. We slept in an old hotel in White River Junction and grabbed some barbeque and a craft brew.  I earned it.  I had a bit of a hard time sleeping because I had so many open scrapes and wounds every time I rolled over my whole body lit up like tearing a Band-Aid off.  Teresa tackled the sprint the next day and due to robust genetics she placed 1st in her age group, proving all Millennials aren’t soft.  I was getting around fine.  My quads were a bit sore but nothing like after a hard road marathon.  I could tell I went deep into the glycogen stores because I had the odd struggle with finding the right nouns.  As the week has progressed the scrapes are healing.  The nastiest is a rope burn on the back of my ankle from one of the traversing obstacles.  I was oddly body sore all over like I had been rolled up in a blanket and beaten with sticks.  Nothing hurt badly, but everything hurt a little. I’m content with 6 ½ hour finish.  Will I go back?  Maybe for the shorter races to get the other 2 pieces of the medal and complete the ‘trifecta’.  After all I started with the hard one.  Teresa and I had a nice adventure.  I got a firsthand look at the Spartan races.  I don’t know about all the courses but this one, this beast in Killington, ran a bit like an ultra, maybe a 30k in effort level.  If you’re looking for something interesting go ahead and try a Spartan.

The gang meets a mysterious and deadly new creature on the mountain, then gets to go for a griffin ride! Weeeeeee! Hope you enjoy this one, things are starting to pick up as the party reaches the Sarvaath Mountains.

by Mark Anthony LordFounder & Spiritual DirectorBodhi Spiritual Center, Chicago