Matt “The Bear” Novakovich did not arrive at his first Spartan Race with a plan to become part of its history.
He barely knew what Spartan was.
His brother-in-law, a Green Beret, had told him about a brutal obstacle race in Virginia that was harder than anything he had encountered during military training. That was enough to get Novakovich on a plane.
“I flew down to Virginia knowing nothing about the race other than that there were tough obstacles and a lot of climbing,” Novakovich remembers.
What happened next became one of the defining stories of Spartan’s early years.
“I’m Hobie Call.”
Novakovich started the race around 25th place, watching the racers around him and copying their approach to obstacles he had never seen before.
Within 20 minutes, he had moved into the top 10.
Then the climbing began.
As the terrain grew steeper, Novakovich suddenly found himself alongside the leaders. He struck up a conversation with one of them.
“Where are you from?” Novakovich asked.
The response was not exactly what he expected.
“He looked at me in a weird way and said, ‘I’m Hobie Call.’”
Novakovich’s response?
“Cool. Never heard of you, but nice to meet you.”
At the time, Call was the name in obstacle course racing. Novakovich was simply a newcomer figuring things out as he went.
He lost roughly a minute watching Call roll efficiently beneath the barbed wire while Novakovich crawled on his hands and knees, scraping his back along the way.
Then came another climb. Novakovich caught him.
A spear throw followed. Novakovich nailed it on his first attempt.
Soon they were climbing again, this time carrying a 50-pound log. Call told Novakovich he was cramping.
Novakovich thought he might be bluffing.
So he tested him.
“I pushed it as hard as I could for the next five minutes.”
When Novakovich reached the finish line, nobody was behind him.
He had beaten Hobie Call by six minutes.
Spartans would later call it one of the greatest upsets in the history of the sport.
Before long, Novakovich was on the phone with Spartan founder Joe De Sena.
De Sena gave him a name.
The Bear.
“One hundred races later and a whole new family of friends, I was in it,” Novakovich says.
From One Race to a Way of Life
That first victory changed the trajectory quickly.
Spartan flew Novakovich to compete at the World Championship. His children, Josh and Liz, began traveling with him. Soon, racing was not something he occasionally did. It became part of the rhythm of his life.
At his peak, Novakovich estimates he raced close to 35 Spartan events a year for five years.
He had already experienced high-level endurance competition before Spartan. He ran competitively in college, raced marathons, competed as a professional cyclist and became a professional mountain runner.
But Spartan taught him something different.
In traditional racing, everything could be controlled.
Training blocks. Tapers. Courses. Preparation.
Spartan refused to cooperate with that formula.
“With Spartan racing, I never knew,” he says. “It taught me so much about physicality and pushing my body way further than I thought it could.”
That required something beyond fitness.
It required learning how to continue when the comfortable option was to stop, and "learning how to grind through things that most people stop for as soon as things get tough.”
That lesson did not stay on the course.
“Spartan Was Always More Than a Race”
For Novakovich, Spartan became a metaphor for everything outside the race tape.
The sport’s old message, “You’ll know at the finish line,” resonated with him because life rarely provides a course map either.
“Just when you’re moving along, things seem easy and life couldn’t be more simple, it always seems that it is ripped away and we are presented with new growth and learning opportunities,” The Bear says.
Over the years, those lessons followed him through experiences far more difficult than an obstacle race.
He has fought through the Alaskan wilderness. He went through a painful divorce. He experienced moments when people treated him poorly and circumstances seemed impossible.
Again and again, he returned to the same idea: Keep moving. Keep learning. Find something in the difficulty that makes you stronger, and lean on the people around you.
“The family that I gained from that community was life-changing and has helped me through many challenges,” he shares.
A Challenge No Race Could Prepare Him For
Then came the challenge that changed everything.
On June 19, Novakovich’s son Josh died tragically while surfing the bore tide in Alaska.
Josh was more than his son.
“He was my best friend," Novakovich says. "He was the protector of my daughters. He was my inspiration. He was my everything.”
They worked together. They played together. They taught each other.
When Josh died, Novakovich says it felt as though the world had disappeared beneath him.
But in the grief that followed, Matt, his daughters, Josh’s closest friends and the people who loved him found something unexpected.
Growth. Empathy. Connection. A deeper understanding of love and what it means to show up for other people.
“The greatest and worst thing that’s ever happened to me has become a new blessing, a new challenge and something that I know has helped all of us grow beyond our wildest imaginations,” he explains.
It also reinforced something that Novakovich had learned years earlier on Spartan courses:
You do not always get to choose what comes next. You only get to choose what you do when it arrives.
The Battles That Built The Bear
There are plenty of race memories from more than 100 starts.
One still stands above many of them.
Novakovich was chasing his third victory in Virginia, this time against Hunter McIntyre. The trash talk before the race was relentless. The race itself lived up to it.
Fog covered the course. Conditions were miserable. Novakovich remembers the lead changing hands at least a dozen times.
It finally came down to the last stretch. On the final rope line and through the barbed wire, Novakovich opened a gap of roughly 20 feet.
It was enough. He crossed the finish line first. Afterward, he found McIntyre on the ground.
For all the competition and all the trash talk, Novakovich reached down, grabbed his hand and helped him back to his feet. That moment captures another piece of what Spartan came to mean to him.
Competition matters, but community matters more.
What Spartan Leaves Behind
Ask Novakovich for the lesson that has followed him longest and the answer is simple:
Learn how to grind. And remember that you are not doing it alone.
He saw tens of thousands of people arrive at Spartan races from completely different lives.
Different backgrounds. Different levels of fitness. Different body types. Athletes with disabilities. Elite competitors. First-timers who simply wanted to prove something to themselves, “all with one goal to better themselves and to strive to love those around them,” he says.
It is precisely that kind of impact the Spartan Collective exists to recognize.
The Collective is not simply about podiums or results. It is about the people who helped shape Spartan through their actions, their stories and the impact they left on the people around them.
Few stories fit that idea better than The Bear.
Stop Waiting
For someone considering their first Spartan Race, Novakovich does not offer a training tip – he offers a life lesson.
“Stop waiting for a reason to sign up for something," he says. "Stop waiting for the perfect moment.”
His son’s life reinforced that message in a way no race ever could.
“We never know when our life is going to be taken from us," The Bear explains. "If my son taught all of us anything, it’s to live life to the fullest. To love strongly and to give back to others as much as you can.”
Sometimes, signing up for a race is just signing up for a race. Sometimes, it opens a door you never expected.
Novakovich knows that better than most.
The Bear Returns
Matt Novakovich is now 52. He has not raced Spartan in years. So naturally, he decided his return should be easy.
He chose Killington.
“I felt inspired recently to come down and do the hardest Spartan race that was ever made, and that was the course in Vermont,” he says.
There is something fitting about it.
More than a decade after showing up in Virginia with no idea who Hobie Call was, The Bear is once again stepping onto a Spartan course without knowing exactly what is waiting for him.
Only this time, an entire generation of Spartans knows who he is.
The newest member of the Spartan Collective is not joining from the sidelines.
The Bear is coming back.
And at Killington, we will find out what is still left in the tank.
