The 2027 South West Spartan Event Weekend adds the final piece to an unexpected Spartan challenge for Tough Smudge.
The main event at Badminton Estate is actually the day before, when I’ll be taking on Tough Mudder South West. As with Scotland earlier in the year, Tough Mudder occupies the venue on Saturday before the course makes way for Spartan on Sunday.
With the travel and accommodation already required for the Tough Mudder weekend, it seemed too good an opportunity to waste.
This time, though, there is only one Spartan race on the schedule, and it is the biggest of the three traditional Spartan distances.
Spartan Beast 21K
On Sunday I’ll take on the Spartan Beast, a 21 km obstacle race featuring 30 obstacles around Badminton Estate and the surrounding Gloucestershire countryside.
The Beast is the longest of Spartan’s three core race formats, stepping up considerably from the Sprint and Super that I’ll experience in Scotland earlier in the season.
Badminton is regarded as one of Spartan’s flatter and faster venues. The course uses Badminton Park along with the neighbouring fields and woodland, providing a mixture of terrain with enough smaller hills to ensure that “flat” certainly doesn’t mean effortless.
Once again, the objective isn’t racing for a position. The challenge is to complete the distance, tackle the obstacles and see how my body responds to another substantial OCR effort the day after Tough Mudder.
And there is an added significance to this particular finish line.
Completing the Spartan Trifecta
The Beast should complete my first Spartan Trifecta.
At the Scotland Spartan Event Weekend in June, I’ll tackle both the Sprint 5K and Super 10K. Adding the Beast 21K at Badminton means completing all three core Spartan race distances during the 2027 calendar year, which is what is required to earn a Spartan Trifecta.
So what started simply as a way of making better use of two long journeys for Tough Mudder has accidentally developed into another challenge of its own:
Sprint 5K + Super 10K + Beast 21K = Spartan Trifecta.
It won’t be the special achievement of completing all three races during a designated Trifecta Weekend, but that isn’t really the objective.
For 2027, three Spartan races spread across two Tough Smudge weekends feels quite enough.
Probably.
Event Details
Event: 2027 South West Spartan Event Weekend
Date: Sunday 15 August 2027
Venue: Badminton Estate, Badminton, South Gloucestershire
Format: Spartan
Run: Beast 21K
Distance: 21 km
Obstacles: 30
Category: Open