🏈 Growing up watching the NFL, every time a Broncos game was on TV you’d see visiting players on the sidelines sucking on oxygen masks in between plays, clearly not used to the altitude of Denver (5,280 ft). I remember always thinking, “Dude it cannot be that bad!”

🏆 Well, now picture Mammoth Lakes in California, double that altitude (10,000+ ft), with athletes racing up and down a mountain, and you’ve got the first ever Spartan Super World Championship.

🏔️ Earlier this month I was fortunate enough to be covering this inaugural event and I was *shocked* at how quickly I gassed out. Roaming around at 10,000 ft with zero time spent acclimating had me sucking air just running between obstacles to capture content.

🥇 Kudos to the truly world class athletes that bombed through a 10K course that was 30 degrees at the start line, featured 20 obstacles of carries, climbs, and brutal barbed wire crawls (not including the penalty burpees), up and down a mountain, while running flat out the whole time.

Insane.

Thinking back to those NFL players with the oxygen masks…can I get in on that?