PAIN AND GAIN
Joe De Sena is the man behind Spartan, a business built on pushing people out of their comfort zones – then rubbing their faces in the dirt and chucking them into freezing pools of water. But while the world of obstacle course racing (OCR) attracts those wanting a fleeting taste of toughness, De Sena has been dining out on extreme challenges for decades. Not only is he a veteran of ultra-endurance races, but the 52-year-old from Queens, New York, also ensures every day is a chance to forge physical fitness and mental resilience. That means freezing-cold showers, carrying a 20kg kettlebell wherever he goes, and repeating the same 1,000-rep routine every single morning. It’s an unrelenting ethos that has helped drive the business’ global success and, for OCR competitors, part of Spartan’s appeal must surely be that the man at the helm has plenty of experience in the field of pain and perseverance.
Men’s Fitness: How did Spartan begin?
“I’ve always done races all over the world – triathlons, ultra runs, adventure races – and particularly in the past, the bigger or more challenging the distance, the more interested I was in it. Because I’m an entrepreneur, when I was doing these events in the 90s, I started thinking, I could put on an event myself. But what I wanted to do was put on an event that emulated life. All the races I had done were point to point: you start in one place, end in another, and every few
