After a busy few weeks of racing from multi day trails runs to 120km Adventure races it was good to be back at Warrior! Although racing does get some good miles on the legs its not always the best for training due to longer recovery times and sometimes having to taper for the events but man you get to see some awesome places! Getting to the venue on Saturday it was cold and raining but man did the obstacles look good! I was actually slightly nervous for the obstacles as I hadn’t gotten much time for strength training since the last Warrior. Sundays race started out very fast with the guys going out hard! Soon I was off pace and struggling to keep them in sight, this was a bit of a change after Warrior 2 but I tried to focus on running my race how I felt comfortable. After about 8km in I was lying in about 8th position finding myself pushing a bit too hard over some rather technical trails and after the double gum pole carry I had to slow the pace slightly to ensure I don’t burnout.

I was running rather comfortably in between two groups which helped with the pacing. At about 12km we got to a heavy jerry can carry where I was able to get a gauge on who was where in the field, and at that stage Claude and Armin had opened up a rather big lead on the rest of us! Think I must have been about 7min behind at that stage! After that it was back up and down the mountain on the technical trails with a few more carries, so I was able to make up a bit more time on the leaders and coming in towards the race village I heard I was still 5min off the leaders. Not focused on them though I was just trying to get myself to those last obstacles as fast as possible! Overtaking one of the runners on the trail and another on the rope climb I was now down to 6th place just behind Thomas and having a brief pause to dry our hands at the one rig we both knew it was go time!

Thomas getting through just before me and onto the tire pull there was only a handful of obstacles left, but that tire pull!!! Yoh it felt like it stopped me dead in my tracks! Losing time here to the others was not part of the plan and this is still something I’ll have to spend more time training but at least I knew we had Breaking Point waiting for us and was super excited to see how I’d fare on it! Jogging towards the obstacle I saw that Claude had just fallen and was about to start for his 2nd attempt, wasn’t quite sure where Armin was but I knew no one had made it through yet. Starting out through the hanging ropes my calf went into crap, a rather bad one! I stretched it out on the net for a bit before attempting to go under. By now Thomas was tackling the last section and had just completed the rig and moved his way up to first place. It was Brad and Louis waiting to give it a go now as I made my way under the net.

They both went at the same time with Brad making it and Louis failing right before the end, I caught my breath, chose my line and took my chance, not waiting to give the others more time to rest the arms. Pole shuttle, swinging cliffhanger and bell, I was through! Now it was both a push to ensure I stayed in 3rd and to possibly try catch Brad in 2nd as he was probably about 40sec in front of me. Ironrig was awesome, so awesome I had to go back and play on it again after the race see my video below:

https://www.facebook.com/greg.avierinos/videos/1763787123692144/

With only a few obstacles left I wasn’t able to make much time up on the other two but was very happy with the 3rd place after a very tough race with a very competitive field!! The level has definitely stepped up in 2018! Huge thanks to all the sponsors!! Still loving the High5 gels for racing!! The new X-Talon 230 with sticky grip were awesome and drained surprisingly well considering the protective rand around the shoe.

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