Overcoming obstacles for fun

Roxanna Escudero is 57 and has had five knee surgeries and a total knee replacement, so March 3 and 4 she took a trip to Las Vegas with four other people to run an 8.4 mile Spartan Race.

Spartan races cover miles over rough and varied terrain, with 20 to 30 obstacles depending on the course length, such as walls, mud pits and a variety of swinging, climbing and hauling challenges.

“I started last year,” she said. “A friend suggested that I take the Spartan training class.”

Over the three previous years, Escuerdo said she lost about 80 pounds from dieting, which led to the Spartan class at Pure North from January to April of last year.

In April, some others she met in the class encouraged her to come to the Spartan Super in Seattle, a course for 8.5 to 9 miles.

From that race, she was hooked, she said. She did the 3.5 mile Spartan Sprint in Bigfork, then trained through the summer for the Seattle Beast Spartan course, which she ran in September.

Seattle was the first time that Escuerdo ran a race with Tim and Lindsay Beaty, she said.

“We just met up last year, and she wasn’t going to do the super in Vegas with us this year, but I talked her into it,” Tim said of Escuerdo.

Tim said he has been doing Spartan races for 5-6 years, and originally raced to stay in shape for hunting season. But it has since taken over as the more dominant aspect of his life.

“Now it’s become to where I hunt less and I Spartan Race more,” he said.

“It’s so addicting,” Escuerdo said.

Yet, both Escuerdo and Beaty said they are no fans of running.

Escuerdo said she now can do about 6 miles at a slow jog without stopping.

Recently, it has become something she enjoys, in part for the peace and quiet of running in the morning, she said.

“I love running in the morning now, because it’s my God time, it’s my prayer time,” she said. “It’s just God and me at 4 o’clock in the morning, chuggin’ down the highway.”

But without that aspect, just running a race to run a race never appealed to her, she said.

“But my mentality for running has always been this: there’s no reason to run unless something is chasing me,” she said. “Big and brown and snarling at you.”

While Beaty does a training and works to stay in shape, the reason for Beaty has become the Spartan races.

Despite not being fans of running, they can’t get enough of the Spartan races, and both have completed the Spartan Trifecta, running a 3-plus mile Sprint with 20-plus obstacles, an 8-plus mile Super with 25-plus obstacles and a 13-plus mile Beast with 30-plus obstacles.

“It’s so addicting, the community, the events, the obstacles,” Beaty said. “If you fail an obstacle, then your goal the next race you do is to get that obstacle.”

Escuerdo said that she played All Navy/All Marine Corps softball and basketball and did bodybuilding after she left the military, so she has always enjoyed competition.

The challenge of overcoming obstacles keeps bringing them back, but so do the people they meet, Escuerdo said.

Escuerdo said that they met one woman who stayed with their group through the entire course in Seattle, and who recently invited her to go to a race in Boise.

And there was the man in Las Vegas who came to them after the race, thanking them for the encouragement that their group had offered him early in the course, Escuerdo said. Without it, he wouldn’t have made it past the first hill, he told them.

Making it over that hill was the difference between him quitting or finishing, the man told Escuerdo.

Beaty played college football and his wife, Lindsay, played college volleyball, so some competitiveness enters into it for them.

But it’s not just about competing against themselves and seeing themselves succeed, he said.

“For me it’s the team,” Beaty said. “I know I can do these things, but I want to see other people succeed too.”

Beaty talked of watching the looks on the faces of Lindsay Beaty and Escuerdo at the Las Vegas race when they finished, or Lindsay Beaty’s parents, Kelly and Suzie Garcia, who were with them on their team.

“I just love that ultimate euphoria when you get someone across the finish line,” he said.

It was Suzie Garcia’s first race, Beaty said.

“She was a soldier,” Beaty said. “I don’t even know what else to say,”

“She’s like my hero,” Escuerdo said.

While there is some intense competition near the top, the team-oriented attitude that Escuerdo and Beaty hold to is something they said is common in the community.

That can mean people offering verbal encouragement, or literally boosting each other over some obstacles, Beaty said.

They saw one man who had six other people helping to push him over a wall in Las Vegas, Escuerdo said.

“You just kind of help each other,” she said.

Even when doing “burpees,” also known as squat thrusts — the required “payment” for not completing an obstacle — they can and do help each other, Escuerdo said.

If someone has to do 30, someone else can come along and do, for instance, five, meaning the original person only needs to do 25, she said.

“I probably did 120 to 150 burpees in Vegas, but it’s all good,” Escuerdo said.

It’s also fun to have a race where a team can have 20, 30 or even more years separating the members, yet all of them are still having fun and being challenged, Beaty and Escuerdo agreed.

“Age is not a factor when it comes to Spartan Racing,” he said.

When people talk about age or aches or pains, Beaty said he tells them it will take training and preparation, but that anyone can do a Spartan event, complete the course, and have a good time.