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Adventure Races Sweeping The Nation

Adventure Races Sweeping The Nation

2012-03-26
Source: Yahoo Sports


Joshua Mullins had endured a lot already: Trudging through mud, swimming through ice water, dragging a large rock on a rope.

Now, he was alternating hauling sandbags and five gallon buckets of rocks up a steep hill, "a giant mountain of a hill, for Texas at least." And he was doing it in the cold, driving rain.

He kept thinking to himself, "I've carried heavier things," recalling the massive drum cases he'd carry for his musician wife in and out of her gigs. The Bag of Doom, he called them.

Still, this was different. He'd signed a death waiver to do this.

Mullins, a 29-year-old recruiter in the Texas oil and gas industry, wasn't being punished. He wasn't in military training. He actually paid to haul those sandbags and buckets, part of an extreme adventure course called Super Spartan. It's just one of many extreme adventure courses in a booming industry that just doesn't seem to know the meaning of "enough is enough."

The Ironman Triathlon might be insanely long, but hey, no one's getting electrocuted during that 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and full marathon run. There's the Tough Mudder, Warrior Dash, Spartan Sprint, Spartan Beast, GORUCK, Mud on the Mountain, Survivor Mud Run, Obstacle Apocalypse, Hero Rush, Urban Dare and yes, the Spartan Death Race.

Many require signing a death waiver, and mud is the common denominator, along with a disdain toward the buttoned-up, vanilla marathon (or half-marathon, or any other traditional race). Discomfort, rather than time, is of the essence. Who wants to run on the concrete for two hours only to be greeted by a banana and an ugly T-shirt when you could crawl through barbed wire, get electrocuted, chop wood and finish it all off with a cold beer and live music?....





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