TO SPARTA FROM EUREKA

She looks ahead–only a few more feet to go, the better part of twenty grueling yards behind her. She scales the eight-foot-tall plywood A-frame, using the chains and hand grips to propel herself forward. The Olympus can knock down even the most skilled racers; goodness knows it’s knocked her down in the past.

But not today.

Today, she has gripped and pulled her way across the 20 yards, dangling in the air the whole way. Today, she has conquered the Olympus. The 58-year old-woman lets herself drop back to solid ground and continues the race. One obstacle and one kilometer down; 29 obstacles and 20 kilometers to go.

Michelle Schutte is a Safety Manager at InterBel. She is also a competitor of the Spartan Race, a series of obstacle races of varying distance and difficulty held around the world. This year, her skills and strength took her all the way to Sparta, Greece, to compete in the Spartan Trifecta–one of the most challenging, most demanding physical competitions in the world.

Lighting the Fire

When Michelle’s younger sister Johna Morrison was about to turn 50, she had an idea. On a whim, she asked Michelle if they could compete in a Spartan Race in honor of her birthday. The Spartan Races, as Michelle learned, are three obstacle course races. The shortest is the Sprint, a 5k with 20 obstacles–such as the bucket carry, where racers carry a handle-less five-gallon bucket filled with gravel for 200400 meters. The Super is a 10k race that ups the obstacles to 25, and the Beast is a 21k race with 30 obstacles. piece of paper. She sealed the paper, sewed it onto the back of her jersey, and ran her first Spartan.

Michelle humored her sister, assuming she’d forget about her racing desire. After all, why would two 50-somethings choose to compete in a grueling obstaclestudded race?

Johna did end up forgetting about her Spartan suggestion, though for more tragic reasons than Michelle had expected. In 2017, around her 50th birthday, Johna lost her husband to suicide.

“If she wasn’t going to go, I was going to take her with me,” Michelle said.

The next year, Johna joined Michelle on the obstacle course. Bolstered by her sister’s support and participation, Michelle placed second in her age group and 17th out of all women in the 5K Sprint.

That race lit a fire in Michelle, and she has kept competing in the Spartan ever since. She’s added increasingly difficult races to her list of accomplishments, most recently the Trifecta: the three Spartan races, completed over the course of three days.