Time for the 2023 season finale review with the Spartan Race World Championship, hosted by the Abu Dhabi Sports Council. What an event this was last year, even with a couple of negatives, so I was excited to be heading out there again with a better season behind me, better preparation with my equipment and ready to test myself against the world’s best and the desert.
Though I had a very successful race in Sparta, achieving the accolade of World Champion in the Trifecta format, I was keeping myself grounded and humble going into this championship. Anyone could be attending this race that wasn’t in Sparta and with it being in the desert over the Beast distance, anything could happen. Because of this, I was going into the race with the same goals as Sparta:
- I would be content with a top 5 finish and having achieved at least one single race podium
- I would be very happy with an overall podium finish
- And if I got the top step? A man can dream but I would be over the moon.
What Is This Championship Weekend?
“Wait a second, weren’t you competing in a world championship only last month?!” You’d be correct, I was but Spartan Race have two separate world championships so let me explain how it all works, comparing the two of them.
The Spartan Race Trifecta World Champion that I competed in during November 2023 is more thoroughly explained in a blog here, breaking it down and taking you through how it went for me. The other option is to read this blog found here, giving you a less personal view of the Trifecta World Championship. However, the TLDR is that it’s raced across three days doing each race distance once, adding together your times at the end to award 1st place to who has the lowest time.
How this championship differs is that it’s only one race, winner takes all. If things go wrong, there’s no opportunity to try and make it up in a later race. So the winner is as simple as the first one across the line. There were three individual races here that you could compete it, all being invite only based on you qualifying prior. These were:
- 3km race – Elite only
- Beast (21km) race – Elite & Age Group
- 3km team relay – Elite only
I was only competing in the Age Group Beast race this year but next year? We’ll see about getting into the other ones.
Friday
Registration
It may seem like a minor change compared to last year but having the ability to conduct registration on the Friday was a great addition! I remember arriving last year to find a huge queue for check in and with only an hour or so to go until the athlete’s brief on the morning of the race. Not only did this bring unneeded stress but it hindered the warm up I wanted to do, meaning that I didn’t feel settled at the start line.
3km World Championship
Another addition to the race weekend was the 3km individual world championship race, giving those that weren’t due to be competing in it something to watch when picking up race packs. With the format that they were using to conduct this race and the layout of the course, it was an entertaining watch with some impressive performances on show! From what I know about the format, it’s race as a knockout format, with the races getting longer at each level and the fastest runners progressing to the later rounds.
Though, when we arrived, there seemed to be some sort of controversy going on concerning wave start times and a mix up of sorts. Unfortunately, I’m not sure exactly what happened however, this wouldn’t be the first controversy that I’d know about this weekend.
You’ll find out about that later.
Sheikh Zayed Grand Festival
We did consider a visit to the festival after missing out on it last year myself but wanting to see what it was all about. Plus with there being free entry as part of our race packs, it would make sense to make the most of it.
As tempting as it was with us being the area and driving past it, we decided to save it until (what initially was going to be) the Saturday evening. This was based on the fact that the Awards Ceremony was due to be hosted and with an early morning, we didn’t want to be out too late! We had to be up around 0500 to make sure food was eaten in time to digest it and have us fuelled for the race.
Saturday
Pre-Race
If I’m honest, I really didn’t like the distance that needed to be driven to get to the race site in the morning. With a 45 minute drive, a slight error could leave you with no time to complete your warm up as experienced last year.
To make sure I was ready as soon as possible, I’d made sure that I had packed my bag the night before, had my usual overnight oats prepped in the fridge and kit laid out to hop straight into. Everything in the morning was a smooth operation to make sure that I was in the car for 0600.
Thankfully, we managed be all packed up in the car just after 0600 and were on our way to the race site, getting ourselves in the zone.
We arrived at the race site with just enough time to get prepped, warmed up and go. I made sure to get myself into the zone listening to the usual playlist that I have used all year during my warm up, following the pre-race ritual I’ve fine tuned. Once correctly suited and booted, a cup of London Nootropics Mojo was consumed, a few more mouthfuls of electrolyte water and I set myself up with the enough salt tabs and gels to last the race.
Dropping the bag into the bag drop with 15 minutes to go, I made my way to the start line and did the final preps ready for go time. Got there just in the nick of time!
Here we go, it was show time…
Race
And just like that, we were off with a sudden start! No build up like in the UK or Sparta, the race was suddenly commenced and we were off!
The beginning of the race was on harder ground, allowing a decent pace to be created and let me get out front. I took on the same tactic that I did in Sparta by getting out front and running my own race.
As the sand started to soften up in places, I was joined by one of the Emiratis who was able to almost glide along like he was running on the road, much to my frustration. I tried to keep pace with him but he was just faster than me. The only chance I had to stay with him was that I had better obstacle efficiency, often coming out ahead again, only for him to catch up and breeze past me again.
It was like this for the first few kilometres of the race before his superiority on the sand created a decent gap between us and I was running on my own. This was emphasised by the mist that was engulfing the course, giving only a couple of hundred metres worth of vision.
Things were going really smoothly until the double sandbag carry, which I was looking forward to initially as I love carries. However, this one was a little trickier than expected. The bags weren’t the standardised Spartan ones and were instead hessian or plastic sandbags with string tying them off. This made them tough to get both on your back or shoulder and with the dunes that you needed to go up and down, the challenge only got harder.
I struggled here more than I would like to admit and need to really reflect on what went wrong for me in comparison to my high standards on a carry.
The other frustration I had was the fact that the bags were losing their ties a little too easily, seeing many competitors taking them off too easily, either on purpose or by accident. This resulted in vast amount of sand being lost, making the challenge easier.
Putting that behind me, I had to get back into my groove with the running and see if I could keep my proximity to the leaders. Trying to keep them in sight, I continued to push and chip away at their lead to me.
This pretty much went from about the 12-13km mark until the Atlas Stone at around 19km, with that distance between us fluctuating as we fought on. It was at the Atlas Stone that I caught up with the person in front of me, who informed me that they were infact in my age group and this gave me that final push to try and pull away from him, knowing this could be the decider for a podium place.
Everything was going smoothly until the finish line, not looking back at all as I pushed on, trying to increase the gap. Things were even going well for the multi-rig until I slipped off at the second to last rope and suddenly scared of losing my place to the guy I’d just passed!
I charged into the penalty loop, trying to get through it as fast as possible in case he completed the rig and was back on level terms with me. As I was running the return leg, I saw him starting the penalty loop and did admittedly, breathe a sigh of relief. However, I shouldn’t be relying on this in races and if I’d not had this fortune, the result could be truly disappointing again!
I came to the spear, took a deep breath, set my rope and myself and then, fired.
Like a movie slow mo, it flew through the air and…
HIT!
Just a fire jump to go and across the line with no real idea I’d finished. I saw two of the age group below but I had no idea who else was in the 25-29 Age Group, apart from who I’d overtaken.
Could I be within a chance of a podium or, dare I say it, a win?!
Quickly heading to the results screen, I typed my name in and up came…
2nd place!
Though I’d laid out my goals publicly going into this race, the first emotion that came over me was disappointment. Here I was, 2nd in the world in my Age Group and I was disappointed. Crazy to think when you look at my goals at the start of the year. Deep down, I feel the accolade of being able to say I was double world champion was what my heart ultimately wanted and that’s what was driving this disappoint.
I’d been beaten comfortably by over 5 minutes but part of me still started analysing where could I have picked up that time during the race to have closed the gap.
On reflection, it was a great result and I’d not lost to anyone I’d competed against before. But then, everything was about to change…
Aftermath
Sadly, it only took for about half an hour to pass before the results had changed and this time, for the worse. When I do well, I do tend to repeatedly check results in case anything changes, always fearing the worse, and this showed why I should.
Upon checking the results later on at the event site, an athlete had finished with a quicker time but started 30-40 minutes later. A dispute was raised by the athlete who’d been bumped off the podium and the late starting racer was penalised, dropping him down the rankings. This was inline with the Spartan Rulebook article 3.9.3 stating that if a competitor podiums but starts in the wrong wave, they are to be given a 30 minute time penalty.
With this apparently cleared up, as a group, we left the race site to go and freshen up at the hotel, have a nap, some food and then head back to the race site for the awards ceremony. However, when checking the results again at the hotel, it was discovered that the penalised athlete had been returned to first place.
Upon discovering this, I spoke to the now fourth place athlete to inform him as to what had happened and got ready to head back to the race site to enquire as to what had happened to over turn the result change.
Admittedly, this was unclear as it seemed that there were numerous versions of events. The main narrative that was given though was that the wrong age had been stated at check in thus an incorrect wristband was given out by Spartan staff, resulting in him starting in the wrong wave. For this reason, that it was a Spartan staff mistake, he was reinstated as the winner. We were also told of that the language barrier of the athlete and differing methods of determining age in different cultures led to this mistake.
As part of the explanation, there had been mention that senior individuals within Spartan and those hosting the event had been involved in this being overturned. Additional to this, though this may have no relevance to how things unfolded, it was noticed that the athlete’s team manager had a major part to play in the awards ceremony with him having a speaking part and awarding the first place award.
My personal feelings are that there are many times for staff and athlete to check they have been given the right start time, with it being stated on your ticket what age group you are competing in for both the staff and athlete, and as an athlete you’d see that the wristband you’d been issued was incorrect.
As frustrating as it is, in particular for the athlete who’d now dropped to fourth, the decision is final and I have to move on from it. I can’t dispute that he was quicker than me, though there are open questions about was he paced to a quicker time by someone faster in that Age Group wave and that need to be raised about weight of sandbags later in the day.
The double sandbag carry saw many of them be reduced in weight either on purpose or accidentally with the string ties coming off the non-standardised bags, with many losing sand. Then there were the holes in the standard sandbags which saw sand stream from them but weren’t removed from the course, leaving them available to be carried by athletes later in the day. There were even suggestions that athletes from particular nations were pointed in the direction of these lighter sandbags by the volunteers.
Overall, the turn of events did leave a bad taste in my mouth about how it turned out and from the outside, something seemed off.
Parade of Nations
Sadly, though it was touted to be at the Sheikh Zayed Grand Festival in the evening, everything changed on race day with the evening’s events taking place at the Al Wathba race site. It was a shame that this changed last minute, as I was looking forward to heading to the festival and seeing what could be set up there for the Parade of Nations, noting how unorganised last year’s was.
Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like this year’s was much better. Firstly, it was a little confusing as to which flag we were meant to be getting, with the United Kingdom being separated down into the constituent nations and then it wasn’t quite a parade as such, like seen in Sparta, with it more a gaggle of flags, going up on stage when called up for a collective photograph.
One real shame with it being during the Awards Ceremony and not on the Friday is that it doesn’t entice many nations to stick around for it, as it’s usually only those who are getting podiums or have decided to stick around at the race site. To make this better, tying it into something on the Friday would improve the numbers and ensure you don’t have a stream of nations called out but no one showing.
The other contributing factors compared to Sparta is that it’s not centrally located in the city so access isn’t as easy and you aren’t already there the athlete’s brief. Something to be better organised to allow better attendance, as this will improve the community element of competing in Abu Dhabi too.
Awards Ceremony
After everything that happened with the result, I did my best to keep a pokerface but unfortunately, I couldn’t help but let out my emotions by my expression. As usual, there was the usual procedure of giving out the Elite awards first followed by the Age Group athletes. It’s a shame that such a moment was tainted for me and I wasn’t able to enjoy it as much as I should have but hey ho, it’s done now.
I did try my best to find one of me smiling but this is the best that I could do.
Afterparty
Unfortunately this isn’t something I can really comment on if there was an afterparty and if so, what it was like. From what I saw on social media from other athletes, it seems that many went to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Festival located only 10 minutes or so from the race site. As a great gesture, free entry was part of the race packs that we had.
However for us, as a collective, we decided to leave after the Age Group podiums to get back to Abu Dhabi to head for a lovely dinner at Wagamama at the Abu Dhabi mall before a quiet night in to be rested and ready for day two of running. Reflecting on things, I feel this was also partly influenced by the general mood within our small camp about what happened with the results.
Sunday
Pre-Race
Thankfully, waking up on Sunday this year, I wasn’t in such a tender state and felt ready to be able to not only drive to the race site but run in the two races that I had lined up. There was a genuine fear that I would let my brother down after last year’s showing but we were good to go! At least we had time to squeeze in an actual breakfast before heading off to the race site.
With this being a couple of Open races to allow me to walk away with the Trifecta, there really wasn’t much of an intense warm up unlike the day before. I just got myself ready, got to the start line and headed off, knowing that I had only 1 hour 45 minutes to complete this one before I was due to go again. I couldn’t let me brother down so I made sure not to hang around.
Race - Super
After the arduous sections of the course had the day before, Super was a a bit easier on the body and legs, comprising of the initial faster section from the day before, which was a lot more enjoyable without the pressure of it being a competitive race.
Admittedly, it was hard not to get carried away when a natural leading pack formed, containing mainly Emiratis who once again, glided over the sand like it was concrete! Though this time, when I was getting tired, I would go to power walking up those dunes knowing there was no pressure.
Thankfully, this race took a hard left after Stairway To Heaven, avoiding the soft sand that had tormented me the day before. Yes, there were some dunes to tackle but nothing on the Beast race, making the race a little more manageable and enjoyable.
For the last 2-3km of this race, I was joined by none other than this year’s 3km Spartan Race World Champion, Veejay Jones, who was out on a training run for that day. You know? Just a casual 10km Spartan Race in the desert for a training run.
It was good to chat to such a down to earth guy about his sporting career, what’s next for him and an insight into the life of an Elite Spartan World Champion. It definitely made the run a lot easier and before I knew it, we were at the finish, where Veejay showed us all how it’s done on the multi-rig! At least I was able to follow in completing it (why could I not do that the day before?!), hit my spear throw and crossed the finish line in the usual style.
A fully clean race and a second spear throw hit? Wild times!
A quick photo opportunity with the main man, smoothie and protein shake, and then it was go time for round two. It was time to take my brother round his first ever Spartan Race and what a location he chose to do it!
Race - Sprint
As we set off, I let him set the pace for what he was comfortable, not wanting to push him unnecessarily. This experience was about him and I wanted to help guide him through it all as much as I can, allowing him to enjoy it.
I won’t go into too much detail about the race itself as that’s his story to tell, if he wants to. For me, I managed to do everything bar the multi-rig, coming off the last rope before I had chance to reach for the bell. Three spear throws though this weekend? 100% record?! Mental!
As for my brother, I am very proud of him for taking on the task in such a challenging environment and though he faced his issues along the way, he had the integrity to do every penalty loop, completing the race properly. He even surprised himself and those who know him with what he was able to achieve along the way.
I don’t think he hates me too much for my more direct encouragement (I hope!) but we’ll see if he’s back for more next year, taking on the UK series. He did mention it but we’ll see if he’s truly down in the new year.
Most importantly for me though, I managed to finally get a desert Trifecta whilst in Abu Dhabi and avenge my failure from the year before. Along the way, it came with a third place on the world stage, a run with an Elite World Champion and most importantly, seeing my brother achieve something people doubted he would do.
All round, a very worthwhile weekend!
Lessons Learnt
One final round of lessons learnt for us both to learn from so that next year we can both bring the best athletic package as possible. These are a mixture of confirming what I picked up from last year and how correcting them brought me success, and new lessons from this year’s race.
Not Giving Up
This is just another example of why you shouldn’t give up when you feel like you just settling for where you’re at. There are several times during the race that I was considering just settling with where I was and not making the effort to try and catch the person in front of me. This was particularly true during the middle section of the race.
However, not accepting where I was in the race, I kept pushing and did my best to try and reel in at least the person who I could see several hundred metres ahead of me. This eventually paid off with me getting level at the Atlas Stone with only a couple of kilometres left to go, where I found out that they were infact in my age group, giving me that final push to stay ahead of them.
Now I know, based on how things turned out, I would have missed out on a podium if I had let them get away from me!
Train For The Terrain
Shown by the proficiency of the Emirati in front of me during the Age Group wave that I was running in, you could tell that he’d been training on that terrain as he made the sand look like concrete. He just glided over it. Whereas my preparation hadn’t included any sand and because of this, I paid the price and likely cost me at least second place.
I found that my running wasn’t as quick as his on the sand though on the harder sections, I was overtaking him. Later in the race, I was also was plagued by fatigued legs and some numb feet from tight lower leg muscles, affecting the speed that I had whilst trying to pick up the pace. This wouldn’t have happened if I had conditioned my legs better for the conditions I was facing.
One for next time!
Having The Right Preparation & Equipment
This lesson is more a confirmation of what was learnt last year in that having the right equipment prepared to race is essential for the terrain and environment that you are in. It wasn’t the smoothest ride to get my desert gaiters for this race but it definitely paid off. There wasn’t any stopping to empty out my shoes this time nor any horrendous blisters that ruined the rest of my trip.
Another thing that I was glad that I made the investment in was a last minute purchase of some Oakley sunglasses with Pryzm lenses at the airport. I made the mistake of leaving my pair at home and was going to just go without. However, a last minute change of heart at Heathrow meant that I could pick up a pair for half price and they were priceless on race day! Starting with them on, I decided to remove them temporarily to wipe my face and see what it was like without. The sun glare was bright and they soon were returned to my face!
What's Next
That wraps up all of my races for 2023 and I’m very much ready for off season now. It’s been a long season, starting in May and with everything else in life, I feel has taken it toll on the mind and body. It’s time for a spell of reducing volume and stress, reset for the new year and plan out next year’s events.
Of course, I aspire to be sticking with the Spartan Race format, hopefully stepping up to the Pro level and testing myself against the best in this format. I’ve also started looking at the UK OCR series, both the standard and endurance, to bring some variety to my races and a new challenge. There’s even part of me that’s considering going ‘full send’ with the Tough Mudder Infinity in Saudi Arabia in February to see what prize money I could achieve.
Alongside OCR, I have a couple of big challenge ideas as well as some UK based ultras to get more into that, knowing where I want to take myself and test myself in the future. Spartan Ultra World Championship may certainly be on the cards too.
We’ll just have to see. There’s plenty going on next year with my life such as finishing my medicine courses, qualifying and starting to practice so I’m going to have to take it one step at a time.
That should give you everything you’d need to know about how the Spartan World Championship turned out this year, giving a good comparison to last year. For those of you that were here to read about my specific story and get more details based on the Instagram posts I put out, this should have scratched that itch for you.
Talking of Instagram, be sure to head to my social media links below and follow me if you’re new around here. There you can get real time updates on what’s going in my life, my sporting activities and get extra words of wisdom about being better for yourself and in life. You’d be silly not to!
