Asia Pacific Spartan OCR championships filled with podiums, uphill and downhill battles

This past weekend, three of Guam's most accomplished obstacle course race athletes competed in the 2024 Fiji Spartan Asia Pacific Championship in Nadi, Fiji. Known worldwide as Sparta trifecta weekend, Marites "Tess" Esma, James Sardea and Belen Sidell represented the island, with Sidell posting the strongest results.

"I'm so proud of my team: Belen and Tess. They are getting stronger and performing better in every race," Sardea said. "Hopefully, next year, we will have a bigger team in the next APAC Championship hosted in the Philippines."

In the three races, from longest to shortest, Beast, Super, and Sprint, the 42-year-old Sidell delivered two first-place finishes and a silver medal performance. On Saturday, while competing in the Beast, a 21-kilometer race with 30 obstacles, she finished atop the podium in 3 hours, 15 minutes, 46 seconds.

"It is rewarding to know I'm progressing relative to my peers," Sidell said.

In the Beast, Sidell finished ahead of two local competitors and one from Brazil. Fiji's Laura Grant, who finished three minutes and 17 seconds behind Sidell, was awarded the silver medal.

Heading into the Asia Pacific Championships, Sidell had won the 2024 Pattaya Spartan and entered the race with an uneasy confidence. She had done enough to win the North ASEAN Series Championship but was unsure if the same amount of effort would be enough to secure the Asia Pacific Championship.

"Well, you always wonder if that performance was a fluke or have I really started to achieve my goals?" Sidell said. "I'm super duper thrilled and grateful, of course, to my coach, James Sardea, Urban Fitness Guam and Tess Esma, who pushes me in my training."

Throughout the three races, Sidell and the other competitors experienced 6,000 feet of elevation changes, extreme temperature and smothering air.

"Running those hills is not a joke," Sidell said.

Along with challenging conditions and mettle-testing obstacles, where Sidell pushed herself to perform harder than ever before, the potential of encountering dangerous wildlife and a poorly marked course weighed heavily on the soon-to-be champion.

"On the Super, I was a bit confused which way the course went. So, I got a penalty for missing one obstacle. But I learned a valuable lesson: to be more mindful of that possibility. Hopefully, it won't happen again," she said.

With a valuable lesson learned, Sidell found her way but struggled with one of the obstacles. As she set out to conquer the Twister, a monkey-bar-like apparatus with handholds that moved and twisted, she lost her grip and crashed to the surface.

"I tried my best, and I fell in the middle of it," she said.

After succumbing to the obstacle, Sidell continued but found the race to be an uphill battle. Literally.

"Carrying a sandbag uphill was killer," she said. "But, I did it."

With her two most challenging obstacles out of the way, a pair of water crossings left her feeling uneasy. She wasn't afraid of the water. But she was deathly scared of what may lay underneath the surface.

"I was scared of crocodiles," Sidell said. "The water was 10 feet deep."

A downhill battle

For the 47-year-old Esma, competing in the Beast proved to be a daunting challenge. After more than 4-1/2 hours of pushing her body to the breaking point, she delivered a fourth-place performance, a mere 40 seconds behind Fiji's Melanie Stewart (4:36:59).

"Fourth place is fine for me, but I did my best," said Esma, adding that she loved running through the hills and learned two valuable lessons: "not being overconfident and not telling my age to my opponent."

Esma told The Guam Daily Post that Stewart was far behind her, and she "didn't see her while running in the hills."

"All of a sudden, she pops up at the finish line," Esma said. "The problem here is that some obstacles have no guard, that's why it's easy to cheat."

Esma said that some athletes can go directly to the finish line and not even perform their penalties.

It was "so unfair to the one who has not cheated," she said. "But if you don't have proof, it's useless."

Whereas Sidell had found lugging a sandbag uphill to be one of her greatest challenges, Esma struggled with the downhills.

"My toenails were broken going downhill," she said.

Sardea completes trifecta

For James Sardea, the elder statesman of the trio, he completed all three races: Beast, Super, and Sprint.

The Super is a 10-kilometer race with 25 obstacles. The Sprint is a 5-kilometer race with 20 obstacles.

"Spartan Fiji was what I expected: hot and mountainous," Sardea said. "Running a total of almost 6,000 feet in 37 kilometers with 75 total obstacles during the hottest two days ... was brutal."

Sardea, who placed fourth in the Beast, fifth in the Super, and fourth in the Sprint, is eager to age-out of the men's 50-54 division. Next year, the 54-year-old will turn 55 and move up to the 55-59 age division, where he expects his fresher legs and youthfulness, comparatively, will earn several trips to the podium.

"After completing the trifecta, three race, I realized that I can't wait to move up next year in the next age category. I would've been first in all three races," Sardea said. "But training at this level and keeping in shape is what matters – keeps me strong, healthy, and feeling young."