Spartan Race: the mudder of all challenges is coming to London

Londoners who have a taste for punishment are invited to join the “world’s hardest” tough mudder-style challenge.

Spartan Race is a military-inspired obstacle course involving ropes, barbed wire, rolling waist-deep in mud and jumping through fire at the finish. It has taken place across the UK and arrives near the capital next month.

Joe De Sena, who co-founded it when he was a Wall Street trader 17 years ago, said: “Competitors are timed, ranked. Every time you can’t complete an obstacle you have to do 30 burpees. The race is everything you were told by your parents not to do — but it’s just athletics. Humans should be able to climb up walls, we were built to do it.

“I have great admiration for Sparta and Greek philosophers. They wrote that less is more, we should be resilient, it is important to change your frame of reference. We want people to take cold showers and run in the rain — we are a stoic brand.”

Spartan operates in 30 countries and more than a million people have taken part. Some 6,000 will race at Rapley Farm near Bagshot on September 30 and October 1.

Mr De Sena said he believed the event would be an Olympic sport by 2024: “It has exploded. People come up and show me their Spartan Race tattoos.”