Daniel Bourke and Zenith signed up for a Spartan Ultra, a 50 km trail race with 60 obstacles, just three days before this video. They have six weeks to train, starting from a 74-78 kg baseline with limited long-distance running experience. The video walks through their strength workout, post-exercise meal, and weekly training plan of endurance runs, Spartan-specific strength work, and recovery days.
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What are we training for today, brother?
Uh, our Spartan Race, Ultra Spartan Race we signed up for. 6 weeks away.
6 weeks? Alright, so what's a Spartan Ultra?
So Spartan Ultra is a 50km run with up to 60 obstacles throughout the course. And, uh—
Hold on, hold on, how far?
50km.
50km? Yeah, 50. So we just signed up 3 days ago to a Spartan Ultra, which is a 50km race with 60 obstacles through the Gold Coast hinterland. It's all trails, it's not just your standard road race where you run along for 50 kilometers. And I've never run over 10Ks in my life. What's the furthest you've run?
Yeah, 10Ks as well.
10Ks? Yeah.
So it's gonna be a big, big push. Be good though, be a good challenge.
We went to the Spartan website and got like a training plan and I kind of adjusted it. We've got 6 weeks from today. We've done the first 3 days, which was a run and some sort of strength training. Today is all about strength training as well because that's what you have to do in Spartan Race. It's a combination of running and strength, and so it's just all across spectrum of fitness. And today's workout, we have 15 minutes of AMRAP, which is as many reps as possible, of 5 deadlifts and 5 push-ups. And then we go on to a little circuit, which is 5 rounds of some core and stability exercises. 6 weeks out, weighing in. All right, 74, 74.5. 5. I want to try and get down to about 70-ish, so I'm a bit lighter weight so I can run a bit easier, uh, because carrying extra weight is not fun when you're running 50Ks. 78.
So 78. 78.
Yep. So what do you want in a state?
Yeah, between maybe like 7 to 5 kilos.
Yeah, get down to around 70. I've been 70. I've been 70. I think 70 is a good number. Yeah, that's for sure. Look at Zenith the beast, just jumping in with some deadlifts. What weight were we doing here, bro?
Uh, it's body weight, so it was about 80 kilos.
80 kilos, yeah. I think next time we could do a bit more. This is set 1, so what we were doing was 5 reps of deadlift straight into 5 reps of push-ups, uh, for about— what was it, 15 minutes? Yeah, 15 minutes. 15 minutes. 15 minutes. And then I was doing the same weight, so it was easy. It was easy that we're about the same weight. So 80 kilos, I think for next time go to at least 90, potentially 100. Yeah, um, but nonetheless, it was still, still pretty tiring. I think, yeah, you'll see here in the last set, that's 14 minutes, so this will definitely be the last one. How we were going was, I think, every 30 seconds or so we'd complete one, and then as soon as the, the other person was done, as you'll see here, Zenith jumps in as soon as I was doing my push-ups, and he finishes off for his last set.
Yeah, I was really tired at this point. It's definitely a good challenge. These are Spartan trainings.
How do you think your, um, your form was here? I know you were saying you were, you were getting a bit sloppy at the end with the deadlifts.
Yeah, just, I don't know, I just wasn't holding my, uh, wasn't holding my core tight, as you can see just there, just let go.
Getting the sweat, sweat going. Yeah, but I think we wrapped that one up. That was That was real good, real good start. Then we went on to the next round of exercises, which was, uh, bodyweight pulls, which is what you can see here now. And we're supposed to do these for a minute straight. Now I struggled even through the first set. Oh, and while I was doing bodyweight pulls, Zenith was doing lunges, and lunges were going for a minute as well. But you'll see I'm struggling here, and we're not even Not even through the full minute. How are you feeling at this point?
Oh, I could not do them. I was, I was really struggling.
Yeah, I mean, if you can do bodyweight pulls like what, what you see there for a minute, I mean, you're fit. And then of course, this one looks like I'm having a rest, but, uh, that's for glute activation. So essentially we're doing a hip bridge. So what I'm doing there is thrusting my glutes towards the roof, um, really trying to get that pelvis up towards the sky. And you're tapped out here, mate.
Yeah, I was wrecked.
I'm fucking dead. And then again, we went through this circuit. I think we did 5 rounds. So how it went was 1 minute body pulls, 1 minute lunges, and then 1 minute of the hip bridge. And we did that for 5 total rounds. And yeah, here I'm done. I'm toasted. The facial expressions are coming out. Here we go. There we go. And that was it. Alright, so we just got back from the shops. We got eggs and we got greens, some more stuff. It's time to cook up a Spartan-worthy feed. We tried to film in the store, but we got kicked out. Apparently you're not allowed to film in the store unless you got permission from— who was it? Ah, Fairfax Media? It's not—
Wow Media.
Wow Media. That's it. Woolworths. So thanks, Woolworths, for the stuff, but I really wish you could film in your store. So we've got a Spartan feed ready. Got some greens, some eggs, nice and simple. And then I just put some garnish on it with some olives, salt and pepper, tomato, a bit of olive oil. Worcestershire sauce. It's a few things on here actually, just to really spice it up. But the foundation is still just protein and fats from the eggs and some nice vitamins and minerals from the, from the greens. That's, that's what we really need to get into us. So the first time doing Strength Workout 2 is done. What'd you find the hardest?
Uh, probably the deadlifts and push-ups. That definitely took it out at the start.
Yeah, 15 minutes, you'd be surprised how much it takes out of you. You think, okay, 5 reps. We did about body weight. I think you'll You would have seen that in the workout clip. And then straight into push-ups every 30 seconds. It takes it out of you, don't underestimate it. You overest— no, you underestimate how hard it's going to be. And then after that we did, uh, bodyweight rows, and they were actually— they were killer. Yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't do them for a minute.
Yeah, it'd either be them or the deadlifts that took it out of me the most.
Yeah, for a minute, those for a minute. So that's— I've got some work to do to get better, and we got We've got flies going around all here trying to get on the food. So for the rest of the week, we have endurance and Spartan training 1. Endurance is a 4K run plus Spartan training 1 in, in, uh, in the same day. Grip and stability workout, that's 3, and then strength workout 1. And then after that is rest slash walk, active recovery. So the way I've planned this out, we're going to do training every 3 to 4 days when— and then a rest day after that. And on the rest day, we're trying to keep active, not just just lying about and whatnot. And as for nutrition, it's mostly going to be this kind of stuff, nothing too overcomplicated. But I do, as I mentioned at the start, want to drop a few kilos. I know you do too as well, to be a bit lighter weight over that 50km distance. Yeah, that's going to wrap it up. And we got— I want to try and release about one of these videos every week, uh, leading up to the race. So stay tuned for more.
