On the morning of Thursday, July 24, EventBrite started receiving a few emails and calls from customers looking for Dirty Girl refunds. While the slow trickle wasn't too peculiar, demands for refunds come with the territory - even for events that have a No Refund policy that you must click to accept before registering - as the flow of inquiries grew into a torrent of angry customers, the staff needed to get to the bottom if it. Dirty Girl had to date been a great customer, and there was no advance notice that the Charleston, West Virginia date was in danger of being held. The confusion gave way to a sickening feeling when the EventBrite staff pulled up Dirty Girl's Facebook page, and saw the comment above. With the WV event cancelled without notice, the worst was yet to come.

The announcement is the culmination of a goal set by Joe for Spartan at the outset of its creation, a goal realized largely by ensuring that Spartan provided a best-in-class obstacle racing product globally. The collective efforts of our team should be applauded in this accomplishment, and the show is something in which I hope all of you take great pride and ownership.

In an earlier article, Mud Run Guide started the conversation as it pertains to OCR sanctioning & the Olympics, and Margaret Schlachter from Dirt in Your Skirt followed up with a piece about the Future of OCR. Somewhere in between, an ancillary debate started on the safety of events on the whole following Avi Gupta's death at Tough Mudder and the apparent "softening" of that event since then. Inevitably, electric shocks, jumping through fire, high jumps, dark tunnel crawls were discussed which led to stories of zaps that caused faceplants, stumbles that resulted in burns on fire obstacles, stitches from exposed screws, broken bones, near-drownings, and near-misses that make your heart leap. A handful of Mud Run Guide fans virtually got together and shared some stories, here are a few (with most event names redacted).