Darlington ladies take on Spartan Racing
Pam Thomas, left, with Lorin Brunelle
By Samantha Lyles, Staff Writer, slyles@newsandpress.net
Most Americans consider diet and exercise when they’re essaying a lifestyle change, but that usually entails cutting calories and plodding a few miles on the treadmill. Darlington businesswoman Pam Thomas – bored with monotonous running and looking for a more exciting way to get fit – has recently entered the realm of Spartan Racing, adding obstacles like wall scaling, rope climbing, fire jumping and mud crawling to her training regimen. Boredom, as you might imagine, is no longer a concern.
“There’s a rope climb twenty feet up a rope that doesn’t have knots. There’s a spear throw which you have to really stick. You’ve got to jump over walls, go through water, crawl under barbed wire,” Thomas says, excitedly relating some of the obstacles she surmounted at her first Spartan Race, a Military Sprint that took place last month at Fort Bragg.
Pam Thomas
Thomas says she decided last October to drop some weight and try to get fit before her next birthday – the big 50. With a history of bodybuilding in her youth, before marriage and motherhood, her physique still responds better to resistance training, so she signed up for kettlebell classes at Darlington’s Fitness World gym, cut sugar and carbs from her diet, and dropped almost fifty pounds. At those very productive kettlebell classes, Thomas met instructor Shannon Silcox, who recently got into Spartan Racing and convinced about 40 gym members to sign up for the Fort Bragg Sprint.
Reebok Spartan Races are classed into three types: the Sprint race is 3+ miles and 20+ obstacles – perfect for beginners; the intermediate Super race is 8+ miles and 25+ obstacles; the grueling Beast race is 12+ miles and 30+ obstacles. While some racers are sponsored and classed as Elites, regular folks can sign up in the Open class, where the object is simply to complete the race without regard to finishing time or position rank. Each race tests different aspects of your body and mind, alternately challenging you to run fast, crawl slow, climb high, lift heavy weights, balance carefully, and think your way around obstacles that threaten to derail your progress.
Thomas says part of the appeal of Spartan Racing is the opportunity to work as a team, offering verbal encouragement and sometimes physical boosts to move each other forward.
“You do help each other, because sometimes you can’t just jump up and grab the top of an eight-foot wall. Especially girls; you might need a boost,” says Thomas, who paired up with her son’s fiancée, Lorin Brunelle, to tackle the Fort Bragg course. “You’re not competing with each other, you’re a team. It’s not like any other race.”
Silcox says Thomas isn’t alone in her enjoyment of the race’s teamwork aspect. She says that of the nearly 40 Fitness World members who competed in the Sprint, over 20 have already signed up for another race.
Both women describe the Spartan Race community as welcoming and inclusive, open to all bold people who can conquer their fears, master their physical pain, and trudge ahead in the face of adversity. As the official Spartan Race mission statement says, “Spartans laugh in the face of failure and continue forward. We welcome challenges and embrace discomfort.”
This decidedly hardcore attitude does not prevent the racing community from reaching out in compassion or helping each other through times of need. Silcox has witnessed this compassion play out in a very inspiring and personal way. While volunteering at a Spartan event in Ashville, she shot video of a one-armed combat veteran climbing a twenty-foot rope, displaying amazing determination as he was cheered on by a support team from Operation Enduring Warrior.
Shannon Silcox
“When I got home I threw the video up on social media and it just went viral,” says Silcox.
Soon the veterans in the video contacted Silcox and shared their full story and mission – to inspire and engage wounded veterans by encouraging them to participate in athletic challenges. Then Reebok Spartan Race picked up the video and added it to their online page, opening it up to a much broader audience… including a California mom whose eight year-old son had recently suffered a viral paralysis of his right arm. The little boy, Ryder, loves obstacle course shows like “American Ninja Warrior” and was inspired by the one-armed veteran’s gritty athleticism.
Silcox relayed this story to the vet (who lives in Miami) and he, in turn, hooked Ryder up with another single arm amputee in California who visited Ryder and taught him some one-armed techniques to make his daily life easier – like tying his shoes. That visit blossomed into a friendship and Ryder and his family eventually joined the veterans and Silcox (whose travel was financed by gym friends and a GoFundMe campaign) to run his first Spartan Kid’s Race over the October 1 weekend in Lake Tahoe.
Silcox ran the 14.7 mile Beast course at Lake Tahoe with the veterans, and says the experience was nothing short of inspirational.
“You’re out there with two wounded combat veterans, one of them had his service dog with him, and they’re working together figuring out ways to get over walls and climb ropes and hills…it’s really hard to put all of what I saw into words because it was all just so amazing,” Silcox says.
Ryder had a great time too, she says. He proudly wore his Spartan gear and medal to school last Monday, and he’s already pestering his mom to sign him up for more Spartan Races.
This fast-blooming addiction is normal, apparently, as Silcox only started racing within the last year and has already completed 12 more races. Thomas, after finishing the Fort Bragg Military Sprint, immediately started looking for other events within driving distance of Darlington. She’s registered for a Beast event October 29 in Winnsboro and plans to compete in a Super event in December in Georgia. If she completes all three races, she will earn – with a fair amount of blood, sweat, and tears – the coveted Spartan Race “trifecta,” finishing one of each event within a calendar year.
“This is my type of racing. I was always a tomboy growing up, running around outside and climbing trees, and now I get to do that again,” says Thomas.
To learn more about Reebok Spartan Races, visit them online at www.spartan.com.